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    101+ Practical Ways to Raise Funds: A Step-By-Step Guide with Answers
    101+ Practical Ways to Raise Funds: A Step-By-Step Guide with Answers
    101+ Practical Ways to Raise Funds: A Step-By-Step Guide with Answers
    Ebook535 pages7 hours

    101+ Practical Ways to Raise Funds: A Step-By-Step Guide with Answers

    By Anne Hart

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    About this ebook

    Raise funds and/or promote your favorite cause. Develop original creativity enhancement products such as writing vocational biographies. Solve problems and publish measurable results. Design practical media projects that easily can be turned into home-based businesses or one-time projects.

    Homeschoolers, parents, teachers, students, entrepreneurs, and workers interested in opening powerful, affordable-budget, trend-ready home-based publishing, writing, or video podcasting and video news release-production businesses and creative writing fundraising events will enjoy these unique applications to help you create your own board games, projects, businesses, publications, and events.

    Sample business start-ups (or one-time project) categories include the following categories: description of business, income potential, best locale to operate the business, training required, general aptitude or experience, equipment needed, operating your business, target market, related opportunities, and additional information for resources.

    Develop practical projects using the skills of video production, creative writing, book and pamphlet publishing, or newsletter design. These skills include adapting stories, novels, news events, or scripts and skits to numerous platforms, formats, and media types.

    Inform others how to avoid pitfalls and blind spots that can derail careers early in the game. The campaigns are ideal for most promotional, business, or training situations.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateDec 11, 2007
    ISBN9781532000164
    101+ Practical Ways to Raise Funds: A Step-By-Step Guide with Answers
    Author

    Anne Hart

    Popular author, writing educator, creativity enhancement specialist, and journalist, Anne Hart has written 82 published books (22 of them novels) including short stories, plays, and lyrics. She holds a graduate degree and is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and Mensa.

    Read more from Anne Hart

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      Book preview

      101+ Practical Ways to Raise Funds - Anne Hart

      Copyright © 2007 by Anne Hart

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      ASJA Press

      an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

      iUniverse

      2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100

      Lincoln, NE 68512

      www.iuniverse.com

      1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. (For all category)

      The information, ideas, and suggestions in this book are not intended to render professional advice. Before following any suggestions contained in this book, you should consult your personal accountant or other financial advisor. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or damage allegedly arising as a consequence of your use or application of any information or suggestions in this book.

      ISBN: 978-0-595-48058-6

      ISBN: 978-1-5320-0016-4 (ebook)

      Contents

      Introduction

      102 Fund-Raising How-To Career Development, Problem-Solving, Practical Training, or Vocational Biography Pamphlets to Publish

      Chapter 1 How to Write and Develop Scripts for Computer and Board Games

      Chapter 2 Designing Success Story Newsletters as Anniversary or Event and Celebration of Life Gift Books

      Chapter 3 How to Bind Your Own Current Events Research Book or Booklet by Hand

      Chapter 4 Pop-Up Books for All Ages

      Chapter 5 5-6 Week Course in Writing and Publishing Gift Books and Newsletters

      Chapter 6 50 Strategies on How to Apply Writing and Publishing Techniques to Create Memoirs, Inspirational, and Life Story Gift Books or Newsletters

      Chapter 7 Personal Histories & Autobiographies as Points of View within Social Histories

      Chapter 8 Personal History Time Capsules as Gift Books, Annual Newsletters and DNA-Driven Genealogy Reports Publishing

      Chapter 9 Romantic Wedding and Anniversary Gift Books, DVDs or Newsletters

      Chapter 10 Description of Business

      Chapter 11 Directories and DVDs as Gift Books: Entertainment, Walking Tour Guides, Historic Neighborhoods, Galleries, Museums, and Dining

      Chapter 12 Description of Business

      Chapter 13 News Clipping Collection on a Theme Newsletter, Report, Disc, or Niche Market Gift Book

      Chapter 14 Age-Related Hubs as Family History Newsletters, DVDs, Reports, and Gift Books

      Chapter 15 Conference or Reunion Newsletters, Discs, and Gift Books

      Chapter 16 Digital Scrap Booking, Newsletters, DVDs, and Gift Books from Slide Shows

      Chapter 17 Publishing Dating History Newsletters, DVDs, and Gift Books

      Chapter 18 Writing and Publishing Celebrities’ Lessons Learned from Life as Newsletters, Discs, Reports, or Books

      Chapter 19 Writing and Publishing Mind-Body-Spirit Gift Family or Women’s History Video Newsletters, Reports, and Gift Books

      Chapter 20 Writing and Publishing Inspirational Video and Print Newsletters, CDs, DVDs, or Gift Books

      Chapter 21 Writing and Publishing Self-Help Seminar and Convention Newsletters, Discs, Reports, or Year Books

      Chapter 22 How to Write and Produce Great Video Extended Family Newsletters

      Chapter 23 How to Write a Course Syllabus: Teach Online to Market Your Book or Family and Corporate Video and/or Print Newsletter, Pamphlet or Book Publishing Business

      Chapter 24 Publishing or Producing Materials for Reunions and Video Conferences

      Chapter 25 Writing, Publishing, and Producing Video News Releases

      Appendix A Newsletter Templates on the Web

      Appendix B Multi-Ethnic Genealogy Web Sites

      Appendix C General Genealogy Web sites

      Appendix D Bibliography

      Appendix E Use Haiku as Proverbs and Slogans for Newsletter, Video, or Life Story Gift Book Themes and Inspiration, Meditation, and Before a Work Break or Siesta

      Appendix F 1,008 Action Verbs for Gift Book Writers and Publishers

      Appendix G Template for a Handwritten Newsletter—Print or Multimedia

      Appendix H Expressive Arts in Creativity Research: Projects and Assessments in Imaginative Writing

      Appendix I List of Anne Hart’s 85+ Published Paperback Books in Print

      Introduction

      The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it.—Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

      Benjamin Disraeli, novelist, debator, and prime minister in England (elected to parliament), wrote many novels, including a trilogy Coningsby, Sybil, and Tancred. and The Life and Reign of Charles I (1828). A nearly three-page listing of Disraeli’s quotations appear in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

      Cheers to Simplicity

      Do you want to raise funds or solve problems for your favorite cause by writing, publishing, or producing? Simplicity sells. About keeping things simple, clear, and consistent, that’s the first thing I learned when I went to technical writing school to learn to write computer manuals two decades ago after I tried to get a real-world teaching job with a masters degree in creative writing—fiction. We used to wear buttons saying clarify and simplify. It prevents logorrhea. It sure helped when I entered the field of medical writing.

      The following five details helped to sell my fiction (23 novels): simplicity, commitment, consistency, universal values, and clarity. If you write fiction, you write about what keeps families together, puts bread on the table, and pulls its own weight. You write about searching or brainstorming for answers, surprises, measurable results, imagination, and solutions to problems close by instead of looking for creativity enhancement, success, or the unexpected in all those far away or exotic places. And yes, that illustrates simplicity without talking down to the readers. Make the reader feel important. Who does it best?

      It’s the people that write user-friendly books. The skills you learn by writing computer manuals transfers to writing novels when people can follow the simplicity and still feel good after reading your book. Hooray for all writers who emphasize clarity through simplicity. It sells.

      102 Fund-Raising

      How-To Career Development,

      Problem-Solving, Practical Training,

      or Vocational Biography Pamphlets

      to Publish

      Raising funds? How do you do it? Simply interview folks in these occupations and write their brief vocational biographies. You can hire freelance writers to write the biographical interviews emphasizing what they do on their job, education/training, and experience, target market, location, and expected income. Market your publications at career development events and conferences and with school libraries and career, human resources, or employment centers.

      Your publishing effort can be pamphlets, glossy magazines, books, or loose leaf vocational biographies that you market to schools, career centers, and libraries. Advertise for people to interview that do these types of work as their main form of income or as a part-time business.

      You can find them in various professional and trade associations related to the industries or occupations. Publishing vocational biographies can be in paperback or as a video news release on the highlights of various vocations. One example could be a day in the life of a book packager. Keep the vocational biography short and focus on the highlights.

      Pamphlets could run 45-100 pages. Here are some suggested vocations that haven’t been covered in depth too many times. You could focus on the 50 vocations that will grow in the next decade or choose vocations such as these below that emphasize hobbies and beyond as vocations such as archivist leading to a possibly more secure job with one’s state.

      1. American Studies Participant/Observer/Reporter

      2. Adoptions Researcher

      3. Anthropologist/Applied

      4. Antiques and Paper Collectibles Dealer in Family History/Postcards/Photos/Diaries

      5. Archivist/State Employee

      6. Area Studies Specialist

      7. Attorney/Notary/Court Records Researcher

      8. Banking historian

      9. Biographer

      10. Book author/article writer/columnist

      11. Book Locator

      12. Book Packager

      13. Braille Transcriber/Genealogy Records

      14. Career Consultant or Counselor

      15. Clarifying Secrets in Memoirs Writing/Intergenerational Writing/Publishing Specialist

      16. Clergy

      17. Collectibles Dealer

      18. Computer Database Manager/Researcher/Designer

      19. Conference and Seminar Event Planner

      20. Conservator

      21. Court Records Researcher/Historian

      22. Diary Conservator

      23. DNA-driven Genealogy Researcher

      24. Documentarian

      25. Estate Sales and Auction Directors

      26. Ethnographer

      27. Eulogy Writer

      28. Family Conflicts Mediator

      29. Family History Gift Basket Entrepreneur

      30. Family History Internet Theater Producer

      31. Family Newsletter Publisher/Designer

      32. Family Recipe Publisher

      33. Genealogist

      34. Genealogy Camp Coordinator/Life Story Writing or History Research Camp

      35. Genealogy Club Events Coordinator

      36. Genealogy Events and Trade Show Planner

      37. Genealogy Software Designer

      38. Genealogy Software Manufacturer’s Representative

      39. Genealogy/Family History Teacher—online or in person

      40. Genetics Counselor

      41. Geographic Area Genealogy Researcher

      42. Gerontologist

      43. Gift Book or Booklet Publisher/Writer/Designer

      44. Gift Manufacturer—Family History Novelties, Collectibles, Memorabilia

      45. Greeting Card Writer/Personalize for Families

      46. Handwriting and Documents Researcher

      47. Historian

      48. Historic Genealogy Society Administrator/Founder/Researcher

      49. Historical Handwriting Analyst

      50. Historical Society Coordinator/Founder/Administrator

      51. Immigrant Ancestor Project Coordinator

      52. Indexer/Genealogy Books, Records, and Web-based Databases

      53. Intergenerational Interviewer

      54. Internships Director for a University

      55. Intimate Journeys Genealogical Walking Tours of Neighborhoods Connecting Families

      56. Journalist

      57. Librarian

      58. Library of Congress Employee

      59. Linguist/early handwriting specialist/Languages

      60. Locator of Descendants for Restoring and Returning Historic Photos, Ephemera, and Memorabilia (found in antique shops, at estate sales, and displayed in restaurants).

      61. Matchmaker

      62. Medical Historian

      63. Memoirs Writing Educator

      64. Museum Archivist

      65. Music/Musician Genealogist

      66. Native American/Indigenous Peoples History/Genealogy Researcher

      67. Novelist/Playwright/Memoirs Writer

      68. Oral Historian

      69. Paper Sales/Marketing/Manufacturing (for conservation and library or museum uses)

      70. Personal Historian

      71. Personalized Family History Greeting Card Design, Poems, Illustration

      72. Photographer

      73. Probate, Wills, and Estate Paralegal or Attorney

      74. Progenealogist

      75. Public Historian

      76. Public Servant/Government Employee

      77. Public Speaker

      78. Publicist/Public Relations Director

      79. Publisher

      80. Rabbinical Dynasty Genealogist

      81. Radio or TV Genealogy Talk Show Host

      82. Real Estate Historian (world-wide historical property ownership research)

      83. Records Administrator

      84. Reunions Planner

      85. Sales/Genealogy Products/Marketing Manager

      86. Satellite/Internet Connections

      87. Scholarship Researcher/Ethnic, Area, or Surname Scholarships

      88. Skip Tracer (locate people who moved away)

      89. Social History Researcher

      90. Sociologist

      91. Software Designer/Family History/Genealogy

      92. Specialist in Finding Women’s History-Related Documents (such as maiden names)

      93. Surname Group Administrator/Researcher

      94. Teacher/Time Capsules and Social History

      95. Time Capsules Craft

      96. Transcriber

      97. Translator

      98. Travel Agent: Ethnic and Family Tours Specialist

      99. Traveling Genealogist

      100. Two-Line Tombstone Writer

      101. Videographer

      102. Walking Tour Guide-Extended Family and Reunion Walking Tours of Ancestors’ Neighborhoods around the World or Locally

      Chapter 1

      How to Write and Develop Scripts for Computer and Board Games

      This book explains the following strategies:

      • How to Publish for Home Schoolers and Parents

      • How to Earn a Practical Living Opening Home-based Publishing Businesses

      • Organizing, Designing, & Publishing Life Stories, Issues in the News, Current Events, and History Videos, Board/Computer Games, Scripts, Plays, and Books

      Raise funds and/or promote your favorite cause with practical media projects that easily can be turned into home-based businesses. Home schoolers, parents, teachers, students, and anyone interested in opening home-based publishing, writing, or video podcasting and video news release-producing businesses can enjoy these business start-ups or one-time projects.

      They are simple-to-organize home-based businesses or one-time projects that can be operated on a part-time or full-time basis online at home or on the road. These are projects or home-based businesses families can work on together. Run these projects or home-based businesses online. Or meet with people at events to raise funds or through tutoring and coaching sessions.

      Practical projects for fund raising using writing and publishing or the skills of video production may include learning how to adapt a story, novel, news event, or script to as many platforms, formats and media as possible and to sell to multiple markets, either online, as a game or as interactive learning materials such as multimedia. Computer game scripts aren’t only for computer games anymore.

      They’re for learning to avoid pitfalls and blind spots that can derail careers early in the game. Publishing vocational biographies for fund-raising, public relations, or streaming video news releases on the Internet can be a family-run business for stay-at-home parents or home schoolers or a one-time project.

      Many communications businesses or projects can be operated at home. Emphasize publishing or video production for the sake of fund-raising for your favorite causes. These projects or businesses can be started and operated on affordable budgets. One example would be video news release production. Another would be creating board games. One more would be writing and publishing loose leaf inserts of vocational biographies marketed to schools, libraries, career centers, trade and professional associations, and career development conferences.

      Board games and computer game scripts are used in dramatizations for training and learning simulations and applied coursework in a variety of learning materials. These projects also may be used for ‘infotainment’ and ‘edutainment’ at all levels or for hobby businesses. The businesses are verbal-skills oriented. Scripts and training videos or multimedia projects are used for corporate training.

      Web sites are interactive for executives, corporate assessments, and for Web sites viewed by children and young adults, seniors, trainers, and students. Here’s how to write a computer game script that you can adapt to any type of simulation training or interactive learning as well as entertainment fiction or creative nonfiction.

      The average computer screen interactive video or game has twice that amount to account for the camera directions, the director’s directions (since you’re the director and the writer on the computer as you are in animation). So to adapt your screenplay to the new media, separate the beginning, middle and ending exactly as you would cut off the beginning, middle, and ending of a short story or novel. In a screenplay, every scene forms a creative concept. In the industry, the executives try to separate the one-line high concept from the whole-story-based creative concept.

      A creative concept is a basic device that’s used like an all-encompassing net to catch all the important events of the story. Think of your creative concept as a Native American dream catcher net full of feathers and beads woven into memories and facts of your story. Its one purpose is to grab the audience’s attention and squeeze until it gives pleasure or emotional response, like fear.

      Summarize the highlights into a single paragraph that tells the story. In a screenplay, it has been said and for the past two decades been written about that you divide your story into three acts. However, in adapting a script or story to the new interactive media, you don’t divide it into three acts, and you don’t divide it into six acts.

      You bring out eight octopus-sized tentacles or branches and you hang your computer game script or interactive book story on those eight branches. It has been said that at each new path, or what the screenplay books of the seventies used to call turning points, a new crisis happens that propels the action in forward. However, in the new media, each new crisis instead propels the action down another branching pathway, through another road, and into another narrative.

      Again, the reader chooses when the action is supposed to branch and turn on its dime to move forward in not so much a new direction, but in the direction the reader says that it will move. The writer no longer chooses. Interactively, the reader chooses.

      If you need to write a premise and introduce your hero, in an interactive script you adapt your old media book by writing a summary of the end first and then working backwards to the first chapter or the first page.

      Interactive learning materials, multimedia, and books for policy analysis as well as entertainment and learning are adapted by writing back starting with the end of the book, story, or script and shuffling the deck. The crisis that sets the story in motion is never limited to only one crisis, but eight, or four, or two, or some other even number. Let the reader choose the crisis the viewer wants to work with, and give more than one summary of each chapter. You adapt a script to the new media by working backwards from the end of the adventure.

      Here are some problems to solve as you write your dramatizations for training scripts online or computer game scripts:

      • In a nonfiction interactive script, find your biggest weapon to slay the problem that has to be solved in the action of your nonfiction script. This cliffhanger approach is good when you’re writing a how-to training video, film, or CD-ROM learning tool.

      • Create a high-stakes races to hook your cliffhanger on.

      • Find a new acronym for each 7-minute scene in your script and lay your cliffhanger on at the end of each 7-8 minute segment of a nonfiction script.

      • If you’re looking for a cover-all that makes your script hang together, use the cliffhanger to make a connection between what’s a household name in your script, the problem to be solved, and the method your narrator or main character uses in the dramatization to solve the problem and reach a conclusion.

      • Sell your cliffhangers to the interactive TV market targeting ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) technology. ADSL is high bandwidth Internet connectivity that you can use to bring your script to commercial quality video on the Web. Use videoconferencing as a means to transmit your scripts to a live audience interested in nonfiction—that is problem solving, skill training, test taking/preparation, and feedback at business meetings.

      • Use wireless paths to sell your cliffhangers, and use cliffhangers in training videos and videoconferencing. The phone companies are eager to get into the interactive TV business.

      • Write scripts about bandwidth itself for a technical audience as practice, using cliffhangers every 7-8 minutes as paths provided for the narrator to take new action and move the script faster until a problem is solved at the end and the skill is learned by the corporate employee or student watching your script.

      • Teach logical and action-oriented decision-making to prevent ‘flat’ writing. Have your script read before a live audience or through videoconferencing, and have your audience choose which cliffhangers to insert at each point. Use about 8 cliffhangers per instructional film script.

      • Cliffhangers can be used in nonfiction comic books or graphic instructional materials. Most comic books are 32 pages in length. Double that size to 64 pages and you come out with a script for a computer game lasting 22 minutes or more. You also get a graphic novel at that length or a booklet on how to perform a special skill.

      The competing cliffhangers grow in volume as the story moves forward, even if it’s a routine safety instructional film to train vehicle drivers. Test your cliffhangers’ performance. Set up a Web site and get feedback from your cliffhangers from an audience. Try before you make your cliffhangers permanent.

      You’re teaching even if you’re not writing anything instructional in the traditional sense. Propaganda films teach a lesson, too. You arrive at the emotional response of the audience through cliffhangers. Then you appeal to their thinking, logical side to insert the facts that come after the cliffhanger.

      The narrator, the product, or the audience can become involved in the cliffhanger and solve the problem to get the answer. Use mazes when appropriate. Even mazes can become cliffhangers, and text mazes of logic are useful only when you are teaching the viewer to use test methods to solve problems.

      Increase emotion, tension, and time pressure as cliffhangers progress in time and rapidly move forward in plot stemming from the decisions characters choose. Don’t force the audience to think through very complex puzzles, riddles, or clues when they are under the umbrella of intense emotion and time pressure.

      Most people view a script to have fun and learn by passive imprinting and associations rather than to be forced to solve problems while viewing a screen or even reading a script. Therefore, let the dramatized character solve the cliffhanger/problem. A cliffhanger is a substitute for a problem to be solved in a nonfiction script. In a fiction script, a cliffhanger is hidden problem to be solved and exposed suspense requiring emotional reactions to solve.

      Five Steps to Dramatizing Interactive Personal Essays for the New Media

      1. Ask a specific question.

      2. Use the essay to answer the question.

      3. Write the question at the start of the essay and make your question interactive inserting many branches or possibilities each possibility narrowing down more and more to concentrate your reader’s mind.

      4. Use the interactivity to ask the reader how does this paragraph help answer the question?

      5. Whenever the paragraph finishes answering the question begin a new branching narrative, pathway, or choice for the reader. It’s time for a break of concentration and a shifting to a cliff-hanger. Even the brief personal essays in interactive media can have cliffhangers, even in nonfiction, autobiography, and other personal essays based on life experience. Many experiences can lead to a topic for writing in any media, such as how to receive email interviews.

      Another fiction with a real-life practical use online topic you can make a script or article from is how to get terrific email interviews. Books can be written from lists such as a list fleshed out of what are the funniest things that happened to employers recruiting employees on the Internet, such as viruses that came with resumes.

      Base your writing on interviews with dozens of human resources personnel that hire people from the Internet based on resumes and correspondence coming in my email and from Web page recruiting. If you don’t like to transcribe digital recordings of voices, use voice to text technology to transcribe your audio recordings.

      Or ask writers to email you answers to questions you email to them, if they want to (or are able to) give you their time to actually write out an answer and email it to you. This gives the person you interview time to think and write exactly what the person wants you to put into your book or article. An emailed interview answering specific questions you ask by email allows the person interviewed to pause and think instead of talking off the top of her or her head and then calling you to change and revise comments as the recordings are transcribed over and over, making you do all the revisions.

      A writer gets all interviews for a book from the Internet. I once wrote a book based on hundreds of interviews all gotten by email. I requested the interview by email and got the person on the other side to give me the interview by email only.

      Most of my interviews in the past were with famous and best selling authors and screenwriters, including interviews with big-name screenwriters who switched to writing for the new media (like Ken Goldstein, publisher/screenwriter of the Carmen San Diego series for Broderbund), and several other best selling interactive novel writers/publishers, and virtual press publishers.

      You could write computer game scripts, design board games, animation scripts, essays, or write articles or books on how to get great interviews by email for any writer who is working on a book or a column. Your title could be: Secrets of Success in Email Interviewing. What’s the funniest thing that happened to you on the Internet while writing your column or other creative writing? Now let’s look at an email interview sample from the late 1990s on writing for the digital media (multimedia writing—called writing for interactive multimedia in the 1990s decade.).

      1990s Decade Interview

      Jeffrey Sullivan of DigitalArcana, Inc.

      http://www.DigitalArcana.com

      What outlook do you see in interactive multimedia for freelance fiction and/or nonfiction writers as far as making a living, opening a writing service or home-based business, or getting a job?

      There is tremendous opportunity for writers (both fiction and non-fiction) in the area of interactive media. The incredible growth in the market has spawned a strong appetite for new talent, and the increasing market shares in the more mature sub-markets mean some increase in pay rates. Building a career in this field remains a fantastic opportunity, but there are some things to remember:

      1. Know your field. Don’t just hop on the bandwagon because you hear interactive is the next hot thing. Not only will it be easy for potential employers to sniff this out, but it’s the absolute worst thing you can do, both for your personal employment opportunities, and for opportunities for writers in general. One of the biggest problems in interactive is that there are a lot of displaced writers from other media who figure that writing is writing, so they just hop into interactive, over-promise what they can do in this tricky medium, and leave producers with a bad taste in their mouth for professional writers.

      2. The newer the field, the more appetite, but the less the pay (in general). if you want to be on the cutting edge, be prepared to pay the dues.

      3. Love this stuff. If you’re just in it for a paycheck, then #1-2 above will ensure that you not only flop, but that you make it harder for other writers to follow you.

      What kind of training would a writer need to start a career as a freelance writer in interactive multimedia?

      The two key ingredients are experience in the genre of interactive you want to work in, and solid writing skills. Solid writing skills is something I’ll take as a given (if you don’t have it, I can’t tell you how to get it). Experience is easy to acquire. Go out there and use the products you want to create. If it’s adventure games, play adventure games ravenously. If it’s edutainment, then experience all of them out there.

      One caveat: don’t just check out the hot titles in a field. There’s nothing worse than hearing a person rattle off the two or three best known entries in a field as their favorites, a sure sign that they haven’t done their homework. (A side note: if I had a dime for every time I heard someone tell me they had an idea for a cross between Doom and MYST over the past few years, I’d be independently wealthy.)

      For the older writer—55+—who has been rejected by ageism from the Hollywood screenwriting market, or for the novelist seeking a publisher, what does interactive multimedia offer?

      I hate to say this, but in many of the interactive fields, ageism is even worse in interactive. In all of the hot areas like cutting-edge gaming and interactive fiction, there is a fairly strong perception that anyone over the age of 30 (!) doesn’t get it, and can’t write this stuff.

      The perception is that well-established linear writers simply can’t think non-linearly as interactive often requires. However, I think that in the fields of reference, education, and entertainment, there may be much less of this attitude. Since my experience lies elsewhere, however, I can’t be sure.

      How would a freelance writer of fiction or nonfiction who has been doing print writing for years begin to make the leap to get into writing interactive multimedia? Are there any jobs out there for writers who can’t find work on daily newspapers because of the downsizing of daily newspapers?

      If you’re a newspaper writer, your best entree into interactive may be with the marketing department of an interactive company; there your skills are the most directly relevant. Once you’re in, you can absorb the culture and experience, and try to branch out into other areas.

      For general writers, the key is, as I’ve mentioned above, knowing the field. Know as much as you can about what has worked (and what has not) in your field, and know why things work or don’t, in your opinion. Knowledgeable people in this field are rare, so preparing yourself is a great way to get that foot a little farther in the door.

      What advice would you give to creative writers of all types to enter the new media?

      Know the area you want to work in exhaustively. And try to know the other areas at least in passing. You never know where a good idea (or even a bad one) in one field will yield a great innovation in another.

      Is there anything readers might want to know about the hidden markets in interactive multimedia? Can one work at home?

      Working at home is a definite option in many cases. Interactive firms, being much more highly computerized in general, are a lot more comfortable with the concept of telecommuting or simply working off-site than many other industries.

      Is it easier to sell to the interactive multimedia market than to try to find a print publisher for one’s novel, screenplay, or how-to nonfiction book?

      No. With respect to a book, you can create what is essentially the finished product. with respect to a screenplay, even though the script isn’t the finished product, the accepted convention is that writers don’t do anything more than a script. In interactive, however, the norm is to need to do a prototype or sample art in addition to a design document, so there is more to do to get an idea sold. Add to that the fact that many companies have more ideas than they can handle, and the market for new ideas is not as great as it once was.

      What education is best for a freelance creative writer to get a foot in the door in the new media?

      A background in computers, writing, game playing (if you’re interested in the game market).

      Can a writer educate himself at home and work at home, or must there be a college degree with a major in interactive multimedia to enter the occupation of writer in this field? In other words, will a B.A. in English get one in the door? What other job titles are there in interactive multimedia for writers? What else can they do in this field to find work? How long have writers been writing for interactive multimedia? Five years? Three years?

      Absolutely not.

      For one thing, these college degrees are so new that there are few people in the market who will even have one. Second, this industry values credits and experience over degrees more than many other fields. The more technical your interest, however, the more likely that a degree will be necessary, but there’s an exception. Experience over academic degrees often is requested for persons experienced in one or several niche areas of technology. It’s where the technology is so new that there are not enough people to fill the high demand. You’ll need to know how to operate, upgrade, troubleshoot, and repair rapidly evolving gadgets and devices while training others.

      What’s the future of multimedia for freelance creative writers?

      I think that creative people will be the guiding force in moving interactive media into a new and mature mass-medium. Technology can only take you so far, and although we’ve been driven by it so far, it is becoming harder and harder to differentiate your product on technology alone. Soon, it will be impossible. The companies know this, but they are often caught between two cultures (technology driving product and content driving product); soon their minds will be made up for them.

      Copyright 1997, 2002 Anne Hart. All rights reserved.

      * * *

      What Problems You Can Solve By Turning Family Newsletters into Board Games or Computer Game Scripts/Stories and Time Capsules to See Measurable Results

      DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS

      Tired of only paper print annual family newsletters? Try multimedia—video with text, music, voice, and pictures. Put warmth, kindness, and inspiration into photos, video, and text to cheer up viewers and readers. The annual family video and print newsletter, handwritten newsletter template using circles for messages and squares for photos, or a photo and text calendar delivers energy through celebration of life.

      Use a new, dramatic viewpoint, what’s called a fresh news angle. It’s something so new that viewers learn information that can be used in a different way.

      Make multimedia newsletters.

      It’s like discovering hidden markets or exploring new patterns and spaces. What are the unique qualities of your information? Contrast and balance the dynamic imagery.

      What actions can you use? Emphasize what the family (or corporate) tradition represents. How do visionary events, change, the future, and reality contrast or compare with solidarity, energy, roots, genealogy, and tradition? How does it all work together as energy and character that provide the foundation of the family or corporation? These tips c.an be used both for video or print family newsletters and corporate case history success story newsletters.

      1. Children: Have each child write about what they have done or are doing on an annual basis. If the child is too young, summarize in a short paragraph any updates.

      2. Parents: Keep a separate business newsletter for updates on your business. Decide whether you want to talk about acts of kindness, promote yourself or your achievements, or ask about others. What’s left to discuss? Repairing the house? Choose a topic you want to emphasize that is universal, simple, and about values and commitment or teach a new subject to your readers with universal appeal with which they all can identify.

      3. Information: How efficient and effective is your news information? Be informative rather than directive. Present information instead of giving them directions as commands. What are you expert at? What are you beginning to study that eventually you will have acquired expertise? What do you have time to do and write about that is not overwhelming you with overwork?

      4. Shorten Text: Use large page margins on your newsletter text. Keep videos to 7 minutes before you break for another topic so viewers can pause. On videos, don’t read from a script. Talk into the camera.

      5. Charisma: Be passionate, enthusiastic, and charismatic in your writing, Use humor and jokes in good taste. Use the element of surprise for humor, not disdain. Instead of flat writing, emphasize acts of kindness you and your children have done.

      6. Kindness: What behavior helps your writing to be more animated rather than flat in tone and mood or texture? Each act of kindness measures a range of change in your growth. Emphasize the range of change as forward movement. Let your newsletter pay it forward as it has been said in support groups, by encouraging readers to keep passing forward the acts of kindness to others as a choice for growth, change, and vision.

      7. Balance: Each topic should be equal in length or at least balanced. Don’t write the entire newsletter about one topic and then squeeze in a paragraph on another issue.

      8. Relationships: Explain and define who each person is. Put a date on each event or photo along with the name and the relationship. Example: This is a photo of ABCD, my paternal niece taken on July 4, 2006, at the World’s Fair in EFGH, California.

      9. Scrapbooks on DVDs: Decide whether you want your newsletter in text and on a CD or DVD or in print/paper/text form with different information from an interview or life story highlights placed on DVDs or CDs that you enclose with the paper newsletter. Or would you send the newsletter as a PDF file by email? A document file? Mailed in an envelope as a paper? Or saved on DVD as text along with video, with the print edition mailed together? Provide formats such that anyone can read the dated information with or without a machine to play the disc.

      10. Time Capsules of Humor: Use uplifting, tasteful jokes, poems, art, video, writing, life story highlights, and volunteer work experiences to connect your extended family to community service which extends your family of humankind’s accomplishments even further. Create an annual time capsule from your conception of an annual family newsletter or video newsletter. The time capsule then becomes an heirloom that can be conserved and preserved for future generations catalogued by year.

      What to Include

      Corporate Case Histories and Success Stories or Extended Families’ News

      Your family video or print newsletter can be a business that you do for other clients. Decide whether you’d like to do corporate case histories and success stories or family history and genealogy as newsletters either in print and text paper or on DVDs and CDs or all of these for all types of clients-family, corporate, or professional, educational/institutional.

      A professional newsletter could focus on a medical or legal practice, for example, or other professional.

      Enjoying the preview?
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