#whole paragraphs describing how they’re going to organize information later in the chapter

[carolofthebell]

I don’t know if I can explain to you all how bad a read the new D&D Player’s Handbook is. This needs editing just so desperately. It’s possibly the most redundant thing I’ve ever read.

Here’s some samples from the Feats Section:

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

Bad Vegetarian | Feeding Habits #1

Hey People of Earth!

As you can see from the title, not only do we have a new series of writing updates, we have a new series of writing updates for a whole new novel that was! not! supposed! to! happen!

For any of my friends who miss Moth Work (aka myself), guess who started writing a sequel literally no one asked. :)

I’ve had ideas for spinoff stories for Moth Work (as if MW wasn’t enough of a spinoff) and was peer pressured into starting this novel by @sarahkelsiwrites​ and I’m really happy about it! I have yet to come up with a title, but the moment I do, shall inform you, but for now, we’re calling this MW2!

This book (if it even ends up being a book) starts with chapter one, Bad Vegetarian. Unlike MW, MW2 starts in Lonan’s POV (not sure I’ll switch but I’m sure it’ll be inevitable), and I’m here for it!

I’ve been wanting to explore Lonan and Eliza’s relationship in more detail since having them come together in MW by complete fluke, and oh! is the tea piping!

This chapter really illustrates how truly dysfunctional this relationship is on both sides. Here’s a break down by scene:

Scene A:

Lonan is paint shopping with Eliza who has just gone vegetarian (which is the def the most normal thing she’s spontaneously done lately). Eliza feels like celebrating by painting their entire kitchen red.

Lonan particularly is drawn to blues, but since this ain’t what Eliza wants, they go with a brilliant red.

Scene B:

Lonan lines the kitchen with painter’s tape as Eliza bothers their neighbours for paint rollers, while trying to convince himself this relationship is still somewhat okay.

While doing this, he gets his weekly call from Unknown Woman who he’s been in contact with for the last few weeks. What for? We don’t know! They talk in code, and he realizes Unknown Woman’s situation is getting worse, and impromptu, tries to do something about it.

Scene C:

Lonan and Eliza bump into each other as he’s exiting the apartment and she’s entering, and have a short, strained conversation about why he’s leaving (she’s not aware of top secret phone calls that make this book feel lowkey like the old dystopians!)

Scene D:

Lonan attempts to drive to Unknown Woman but only knows she lives in Arizona (not great for directions lol). While in the car, he realizes it’s essentially impossible to get there without knowing where he’s going, and eventually gives up and heads home.

Scene E:

TW: blood

Lonan re-enters the apartment only to find Eliza “bleeding” in the kitchen. She’s actually just being wild and this “blood” is wall paint.

Scene F:

If we haven’t already seen the dysfunction, oh does it get worse! As Lonan and Eliza try to have a *moment* Eliza has a conversation by herself and gets a lil gaslighty.

Halfway through this, Lonan gets a phone call from Unknown Woman who we finally find out is his ex-girlfriend Glenne. Sounds like tea but he’s genuinely only helping her out of her toxic situation (which will be clarified later) though Eliza’s skeptical.

This chapter was a lot of fun to write! I wrote a majority of it today, and am really happy to have a *chill* project. While I love my other books (the three I am apparently now working on at once), it’s nice to have a place to dump my ideas with characters I know very well in situations I’m comfortable in whenever I feel like writing but don’t have tons of time/ideas/energy.

Excerpts:

Here are the opening three paragraphs! The first sentence sets up the POV a little weirdly, but I think it works with a later sentence that sort of mimics this “reminder” kind of style:

There are no rules, just remember, Eliza is vegetarian. She’s into earth tones, neutral tones, leafy greens, root vegetables. It’s all new. The day she announced her diet change, she also announced a desire to repaint the kitchen, to fit the new aura, to fit the new ethics, but she wants to paint the kitchen blood red, and Lonan is still a meat-eater. He reminds himself: there are no rules, just remember, Eliza is vegetarian.

In the hardware store he thumbs paint chips. They’re set up in an array, almost like checkers, dissolving in a gradient from reds to purples. Eliza wants red, “Not necessarily earthy, but the root of organism, of life,” so Lonan looks at the blues. They’re all a variant of a seaside theme—Sea Breeze, a cloud-like blue, Beach Umbrella, a wispy aqua, Seafoam Serenade, muted like the soft side of a turquoise. Repainting the kitchen matters little to him, and so do the blues, but the red section, devilish, makes him shuffle his blue deck faster.

Radio from the store’s intercom tins through the speakers, dampened by the hustle of carts, the thud of bodies against the concrete flooring. He holds many cards up to the light, Secret Getaway and Parisian Summer almost the exact shade, but still he flicks through, until half the pile is indistinguishable, and the other half are blues he likes and not reds, like Eliza’s asked.

The next excerpt sort of highlights the last six months of Lonan’s life as he’s been on this whirlwind of keeping up with all the things Eliza has tried. I have added kudzu pudding and other kudzu food just for my pals @sarahkelsiwrites​ and @shaelinwrites​ (rlly want kudzu pudding):

Her sudden vegetarianism is not confusing to him. Eliza tries new things all the time, something he’s learned after living with her for half a year. One time, she brought home four different kinds of dried beans to make into tea, and together they drank it atop the balcony, the Vegas strip across them somehow tasting better. One time, they ate a variety of kudzu foods for a week because Eliza said invasive species had to be killed somehow, and so they spooned kudzu pudding into their mouths, kudzu root powder into their water, kudzu salads with salted almonds. One time, she put them on a warmth ban, and they ate only frozen peas, potatoes, raspberries, turned the thermostat down until every surface crackled. She liked the feeling of subtle frost on the countertops, how it jolted her when she touched it accidentally in the morning. He found her many mornings awake before him, transfixed to the table with both palms soldered to its surface, like she’d forgotten she wasn’t a part of it. One time, she paid to have the furniture in the house rearranged, not good enough for her spirit, and then reverted it two days later. “The couch doesn’t like being so close to the refrigerator,” and he could’ve asked “did you ask it?” but said, “Understandable. It shouldn’t be forced to catch a draft.” So her vegetarianism is normal. Already, she’s switched their meat supply to beetroots, chickpeas, tofu she rips apart bare-handed. For the last three mornings, they’ve both taken a shot of spinach and gingerroot, a liquid that burns to make you feel alive, as if you weren’t already.

The next excerpts kind of surprised me with their amount of humour! Not something I expect from Lonan, but I’m glad he has some sass back lol (CW: some upsetting animal imagery):

There is nothing wrong in this relationship. Everything is Eliza’s new favourite adjective—stunning. Everything is scrubbed with kitchen bleach, glittering like a plasticky pool float in the shallow end, stunning. Everything is planned, put in a calendar, a notebook, a flitter of receipts, but always planned, stunning. Everything is better, even better than better, a better that can only be described as stunning.

Lonan uses this word frequently now, rolling out a strip of blue painter’s tape and trying to find different ways it stuns. Sticks when he sticks, peels when he peels, keeps its edge when it needs to keep its edge, so it’s stunning. The bubble television is turned onto a channel about sheep, and as he lines the baseboards, outlets, catches glances of a sheer buzzing against skin, sometimes a hunting knife slicing until there’s blood. 

Eliza is asking a neighbour for paint rollers because they bought four cans of wall paint, two paint trays, a box of garbage bags, three rolls of painter’s tape, and a small paintbrush each for both of them but forgot the rollers. Stunning.

The following excerpt highlights that Lonan has a cellphone! Is Fostered just a bizarre alternate reality of a time period that doesn’t exist? Perhaps! (CW: some upsetting animal imagery):

Today, they’ll prime the cabinets, the walls, and tomorrow, scroll a coat of red onto both. The kitchen will look more like the inside of an anatomical heart, the sinks and drawers like ventricles, but this is Eliza’s vision—her tastes come alive.

The sheep are being herded by a collie. As Lonan rips another strip of tape with his teeth, he stares at the screen mounted in the corner, at the almost-naked sheep dashing across a field. How many will be slaughtered, he doesn’t know. The narrator must’ve said that, but there is no plan, really, for death. Even for sheep.

He kneels toward the kitchen vent, the tape roll linked around his wrist, and smooths a line of tape down. Eliza doesn’t want to paint the vent—it wouldn’t complete her vision—and so it will remain the original wall colour, a square of cream so worn, it’s almost grey.

Here we have some hints at Eliza’s weirdness:

He straightens and looks at her. She’s bundled in her fur coat even though she has always insisted she’s good at even Vegas’ warm winter. Since going vegetarian, she’s insisted it’s fake, even though he’s read the lining tag—100% mink. He doesn’t know why she’s needed her coat when she’s only walked up a few flights of stairs but doesn’t care to ask.

She approaches him with her thumb out, and when that thumb presses into his eye socket, he flinches.

“What happened here?” she smooths the dip of his under eyes, her fingertips cold. He smells her perfume, different today, always different, a smell like cloves and lavender. “Are you sleeping?” She presses onto her toes, examines the other side, and her frown deepens. “This doesn’t look like eight hours.”

“I’m sleeping,” he says, though they both know this is a lie. It’s taken her two weeks to notice.

“I can run to the pharmacy,” she says. “If you need a refill.”

“I’m sleeping.”

“I didn’t notice this morning—I would’ve given you another energy shot.”

Here’s a line I like because of a) skin and b) sun:

Lonan goes nowhere. This is not his plan. Asphalt whips under the skin of each tire, the setting sun wringing him blind. 

Fully sharing this for the verb zags (and also because I accidentally roast cities tho I love them I am one of these blink-less people):

He doesn’t know where he’s going. Arizona is the only thing he knows about her, doesn’t know if she lives in an apartment, a duplex, a house—fully detached, semi-detached. As he pulls into a residential neighbourhood somewhere along the vague line he’s drawn on the map from Las Vegas to Arizona, he watches for all these options. In the distance, a jogger zags across the street with her golden retriever, children play basketball on a driveway, still in their school uniforms, another woman clips the wilted stems off a magnolia bush. 

It’s when he gets closer to the apartments that the sameness is noticeable. High-rises with pearlescent windows that go pinkish in the sunset—all of them identical. Each building evenly spaced, more like a board game than a place to live. Even the space around each building is the same—the same rose hedges, the same iron fence, the same people bustling in and out, all wearing some variation of the same pantsuit, all holding some other hand—child, partner, lover. The same haircuts, smiles, eyes like marbles, as if there’s a store somewhere that sells copies, a catalogue for eyes that don’t blink. He’s been looking into the sun for too long, there must be a difference, but the longer he looks, the more indistinguishable they become.

To get out of explaining where he wants to go when he and Eliza bump into each other, Lonan says he’s visiting his sister (Reeve), and because she’s iconic and must make an appearance, here’s a line ft. our queen:

He could make the lie true. Reeve is somewhere in the country, he imagines, dancing in a faceless city, living in a motel room, tipping everyone well. 

(^^ all true)

Here we have Lonan identifying with the animals more than anything else for the second time in one chapter (TW for more blood imagery):

Lonan hooks the car keys onto the lanyard by the front door and slings his coat across the couch. The television is set to the same channel as before, though the program has switched from sheep slaughter to birdwatching. On screen, a heron perches by a riverbed, opalescent in the sunshine.

“Did you hurt yourself?” he asks, the heron now frisking up the white bark of a tree. He glances at the fluorescent red dripping between her fingers, pattering against the tile.

“I was opening the paint cans.”

“With a kitchen knife?”

He gestures to the blade on the counter, blood-free, newly sharpened.

“It’s all I had on hand.” She pulls her wrist closer to her, runs her index finger along the injured area.

“It’s clean.”

“I washed it, Lonan.”

This next one has some blood imagery so TW for that!

The heron has moved closer to the riverbed. It watches the water knowingly, its subtle simmer of movement, and after a moment of watching, strikes its beak down so it spears a trout. He misses the part where it eats. Eliza’s clicked off the TV from behind him.

She slams the remote onto the counter so hard, its back clatters off and onto the tile. “I cut my arm with a kitchen knife while opening paint cans. It happens.”

“I don’t see a cut.”

“Why would I make that up?”

“I don’t see a cut.”

She walks toward him. He expects her to shove her wrist in his face, but she doesn’t. She just holds it, some of the blood fluorescing pink, splashes onto her toes.

“You got to see your sister?” she asks.

“She cancelled.”

Eliza clucks her tongue, examining her wrist, and then she extends her arm, revealing the full patch of pale skin gone red.

Lonan takes it, and with his fingernail carves a line through the red to reveal the healthy patch of skin, painted, uncut.

And finally, here’s the last line of this excerpt that essentially explains where the title comes from ft. predator VS prey symbolism:

He’s reminded once more of the heron, how it plunged into the riverbed with ease, and the trout dangling in its beak, its commitment to life most fervent the moment before being consumed. 

So that’s going to be it for this update! I don’t know how frequently I’ll be writing this, but it’s been a lot of fun so far. I’m excited to explore more relationships I haven’t turned over in a while as a little side project while I do other things! Hope y’all enjoyed!

--Rachel

[writtenbyhappynerds]

Unit 3: Face Claims, Please Stop Using Emily Rudd

     Ok. So now lets look at face claims. Face claims are a broader topic to character creation and OCs as a whole. I like face claims. They’re great, because they allow you the writer to get in your head what the main character looks like and how they fit in with the cast and the world. I have nothing against face claims, I use them myself because I like to visualize what I’m working with. However, as we’ve seen in Unit 2, it’s on the writer to convey what the character looks like. As we’ve seen in Unit 1, the character should be cohesive with the rules of the universe. Face claims and characterization can apply the first two units very easily. 

     Reference images are for your eyes only, so that you can see what the character looks like. When describing a character, pull details from your reference image to explain what they look like. You do not have to be overly specific. Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way is a prime example of being overly specific, given the first paragraph of her fanfiction My Immortal is: 

     “Hi my name is Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way and I have long ebony black hair (that’s how I got my name) with purple streaks and red tips that reaches my mid-back and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Amy Lee (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Gerard Way but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m a vampire but my teeth are straight and white. I have pale white skin. I’m also a witch, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a black corset with matching lace around it and a black leather miniskirt, pink fishnets and black combat boots. I was wearing black lipstick, white foundation, black eyeliner and red eyeshadow.”

     Never do this. I will find you and we will have a very nice conversation about how to improve your writing. Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way breaks the three big rules of characterization and character description: She drops the face claim directly in the narrative (Amy Lee, lead singer of Evanescence), she describes every characterizing feature about her (vampire teeth, ebony black hair), and she describes her complete outfit. To give a better standard of describing characters, we are going to fix Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way. 

     Young Adult novels very often stick to height, hair color, eye color, and body shape. This is something you as an author should think about, but sticking just to this blueprint can be pretty generic. When you look at other people, those aren’t the only things you notice, right? Those aren’t even things you necessarily need! A big example of going against the grain of the standard is found in The Great Gatsby. Despite having loads of color imagery, we never learn what Daisy’s hair color or eye color is. But somehow, we don’t need them because we are supplemented with, “Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it. Bright eyes and a bright, passionate mouth.” Fitzgerald focuses on how his characters carry themselves and their facial expressions. These give descriptions of their personalities. When he does describe hair color or eye color, he does it in a way that fits with the style and vibe of his writing, and you as a writer can do the same. 

     In my own personal opinion, eye color does not need to be described immediately. You can save small descriptions of your characters and sprinkle them in throughout the story, rather than dumping an appearance in one paragraph. In one instance you can describe what a character’s wearing, and in another later on, describe their hair as they pull it away from their face. Describe it as it changes from the normal. Jeremy Scott’s The Ables is a great example of character description and characterization. The main character is blind, which means that the cast gets by on contrasting personalities. We don’t know the ethnicity of many of the characters until we’re halfway through the book, and the main character only learns his basic appearance because it’s been described to him by his parents. Things like eye color and hair color and how tall someone is don’t matter as a whole. What matters is how it can be applied and further the story and the personality of the character. A character having curly brown hair? Don’t necessarily need that. A character who takes the time to curl her brown hair every morning? That tells me something about that character. Small moments, and giving descriptors through details can really help you avoid the paragraph dump. 

     Character Bios are the bane of my existence. Do not put character bios in the beginning of your fanfiction. All you’re doing is giving me a paragraph I’m not going to read. Character bios are lazy writing. It’s low-hanging fruit to mention them as something to not do. There are so many ways to incorporate detail into a story. By putting in a character bio, you tell the reader that you either: don’t know how to incorporate these facts, are too lazy to incorporate these facts, or don’t care enough about what you’re writing to incorporate this information that we must know immediately about your character. In addition, we don’t need to know your character’s favorite color and the music they like on page one, so why do that to yourself? Not caring about your work can ruin a fanfiction. If you don’t care about what you’re putting out there, how can you expect your audience to care enough to read it. 

     Another important aspect of characterization is show-don’t-tell. Which we’ve all heard, but I’ve rarely seen it used. When used effectively you can draw the reader in, and allow them to use context clues to draw their own conclusions. A good rule of thumb, and the Show Don’t Tell 101 is that you show emotions, and tell feelings. You don’t need to tell me how the floor swayed under someone’s feet and they felt as if they were underwater. You can just say they felt tired that morning. However you can show emotion, and show the full range of anger and pain when someone’s upset to convey properly how that character is feeling. This is something that requires a light touch. It ties in with context clues and foreshadowing. I shouldn’t know from the third line of dialogue of a Shane Dawson fanfiction that the OC has an eating disorder. I shouldn’t know when exactly two characters are going to end up together, or when two characters are going to split apart. It should come as a surprise. An example I can give is a story I have of two spies who fall in love. From the first chapter, it’s obvious to the reader how this world is a game to them, and how they click and exist on that same wavelength. Chemistry can be obvious. Banter can be a fun way to express chemistry. What wasn’t obvious in this story, was that one of the spies would be killed by his own organization. What wasn’t obvious was how this would shape the other spy, who became the main villain of later works. If you make the narrative obvious I want you to then surprise the reader. Because you yourself will get bored. That’s why you see a lot of fanfics get dropped after three chapters- the writer has it all planned out how something will happen, and this plan becomes boring, but they don’t try to change the plot to make it more exciting. Throw in a wrench. Shoot someone. Spice it up my dudes. 

     We titled this chapter Please Stop Using Emily Rudd because one, we see Emily Rudd, as well as other girls who will be in an imgur album at the end of this chapter, way too often as the main OCs in fanfiction, and two, they represent a saturation and an insecurity in the market of main characters. We as writers don’t need to rely on these girls, and we actually keyhole and limit ourselves when we stick to stereotypical goth/emo girls (ex: Eugenia Cooney, Aly Antorcha, and Taylor Momsen face claims), or pale girl with dark hair and green eyes (Emily Rudd) same thing different descriptor for Nina Dobrev, or that red haired girl with green eyes who I couldn’t find a name for but she’s in almost every Harry Potter and/or Weasley sibling fanfic so you know who I’m talking about. 

     These girls should not be the standard of OCs. On top of that, not every OC has to be “strikingly beautiful” some of these OCs are like, 11-12 at the start of the fanfic. It’s ok to not describe how pretty they are. On top of that, not all of the world looks “strikingly beautiful” and that shouldn’t be a character descriptor. When one fanfiction I read had the love interest describe the OC as, “nothing to look at,” they contrasted everything else I’d read before because they made the beauty in that character not about what she looked like but her actions and who she was as a person. She became more beautiful as the fanfiction went on because of her personality, and by the end of it, it made sense that the love interest fell in love with her because he loved her as a person, not as an object. That’s what it boils down to. These girls don’t have to be pretty thin models and celebrities to be good face claims. Spending less time on the appearance, and more time on the personality makes for a character more beautiful and more believable than if you used some model. Don’t feed the manic pixie dream girl trend. 

     Moving on. Your character should not fill a hole or replace a member of the cast. They should bring a new perspective and add, not take conflict from the original work. For example, if you are writing Harry Potter fanfic, the character should not be composed of all the attitude Harry and Ron didn’t get in the movies. If you write Sherlock fanfiction, the character should not be the voice of reason to apologize for Sherlock’s antics while still doing the same things as him. In my own Psycho-Pass fanfiction, my character should not be a manifestation of Shogo Makishima’s soul. All these things do are fill holes in the story without adding to the narrative. If they were removed the story wouldn’t know they’re gone. If you can add conflict or alternative plots to the narrative, making the characters and the cast go through something they didn’t go through otherwise, you make the OC matter more. There used to be a beautiful Harry Potter fanfic that got deleted, where the OC went on full fledged adventures without the cast. She did her own thing, hanging out in the Harry Potter universe. This fanfic worked because the OC was the star of her own narrative. She wasn’t hanging on to Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Draco. They did their thing, and she did hers. It made for a great fanfic that I’m very sad to have seen the end of. Try and give your character something to do that doesn’t involve the cast. Think of it like fanfiction’s version of the Bechdel Test: Can your OC go through a chapter of fanfiction without relying on the cast. 

     Let’s revisit our darling, dearest, dead, Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Ravenway. Using what we’ve discussed in the previous paragraphs, I am going to attempt to fix the introduction given by our dear Enoby in Chapter One of My Immortal. Pray for me. 

     By Year 7 at Hogwarts, I had given up on the uniform. I’ve been at this school for too long to keep wearing the same damn thing, and as soon as I’m done I can bow out of button-ups and itchy sweaters. Professor McGonagall had a fit when I walked in last year with purple and red streaks in my hair. I smile as I imagine her face when she sees my miniskirt and corset. I sloughed in front of my mirror, carefully winging out my eyeliner and dabbling my lids with red eyeshadow. I popped on a black lip, blew myself a kiss, and felt stupid for doing so. 

     McGonagall didn’t even let me make the Great Hall. She marched me back, and forced me to change into the school uniform. I added pink fishnets and combat boots, and rolled my skirt up before heading back down to the Great Hall. My classmates gave me a wide berth. As I walked past a cluster of Slytherins I could hear them whisper. 

     “Fangy bitch.”

     “Say that again?” I said setting my sights on them. “Do you really want to insult me now? I haven’t even had breakfast yet, though I could make an exception.” They scurried off. I flipped them the bird as they went, and carried on downstairs. Remus Lupin was the best thing to ever happen to this school. Yeah, he was a werewolf, but I felt a little less alone. At least there was more than one monster running around here. 

     Next week we will be discussing names. Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way will make a return, as well as some other names that are uncomfortable and cringy to read. This is your warning now, that in 2 weeks we will have our first exam for Fanfiction 101. I did say in the introduction that there would be an exam, and it’s on its way. We will give you more information next week when we see you to discuss Nameberry.com. 

     Supplemental Instruction: The aforementioned imgur album of overused face claims and OCs. Think of this like a newly minted banned book list. 

https://imgur.com/gallery/SpIGZhF

[kennethherrerablog]

Job Seekers: Here’s a Step-by-Step Guide on How to Write a Good Resume

Hiring practices may have changed a bit in the past few years, but one thing has stayed the same: Resumes are a must during a job hunt, and a quality one is a very big deal for job seekers.

These sacred documents represent the whole of your working life. They’re your first introduction to prospective employers and can make or break your chances of getting a job.

If you’re wondering how to write a resume, there are some important details to keep in mind. Use this blueprint to create a great resume that gets you noticed.

Choose Your Format

First off, decide whether you are applying for a job that requires a CV (curriculum vitae) versus a resume. Don’t know the difference? Here’s a quick rundown.

Resume or CV?

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about resumes, but what about CVs — and what’s the difference? In short, quite a bit.

Your Curriculum Vitae

You can throw out many of the do’s, don’ts and tips we’ve mentioned when it comes to crafting a CV. This is a static document — as in you won’t be changing it up across industries as you would with a resume — that should cover your work and educational history in excruciating detail.

“Your CV only changes as your accomplishments grow,” said Loren Margolis, CEO of Training & Leadership Success. “Whereas, your resume should be modified often and tailored for each company and job to which you apply.”

You might associate CVs with academics — not very flashy, but chock-full of information. They can include everything from research and teaching experience, references to book chapters, memberships in professional organizations and conference-speaking engagements.

They can generally be as long as necessary to cover your professional career. And really, if you’re reading this, there’s a 99% chance you’ll write a resume for your job rather than a CV.

Start Formatting

Free online resume templates that let you fill in the blanks are an option, but you get what you pay for — which is to say, not much.

Artists, graphic designers and other visually creative professionals may want to use their resume to highlight their creative talents. In that vein, there are services, such as VisualCV, that create a custom template for you to work from — and recruiters won’t find it among Microsoft Word’s.

Otherwise, keep things simple.

Hiring managers are interested in your skills and experience, not fancy fonts or formatting. Use a standard font like Arial or Tahoma, and keep the layout simple with lots of white space and margins no larger than one inch.

In one of the most popular posts of all time on the jobs subreddit, Colin McIntosh, a former recruiter and current CEO at bedding company Sheets & Giggles, provided a simple template that should help you get started.

“I knew people were hungry for good free formats, so I expected it to be maybe the top post of the day, but I never expected this type of reception,” said McIntosh. “A year later, I still get emails and PMs every single day about that post, and it really recreated my favorite feeling from when I was a recruiter  — helping other people land dream jobs.”

Create Your Content

Staring at a blank Word document can be daunting. Getting started is sometimes the hardest part, but we’ve got you covered.

Start With a Brainstorming Session

The best way to get those creative juices flowing is by asking yourself a series of questions about your accomplishments, said Jessica Hernandez, founder of Great Resumes Fast.These include:

What are you most proud of in your professional career?

How did you add value — efficiency, cost-savings or just happiness — to the companies at which you previously worked?

Take notes on each of these questions for each of those positions you previously held. This will give you a starting point once you’re ready to put pen to paper (er, fingertips to keyboard.)

“If you can answer those questions under each job you’ve held, you’re going to get a lot of meat on your resume,” Hernandez said.

“You can also ask others what they think about you,” she said.

And make sure you can explain in plain English what you actually did at each previous job; clarity is king for recruiters. Try to shy away from wishy-washy, jargon-laden phrases like “added synergy.”

As you’re taking notes, keep each description and accomplishment short, roughly a line. Margolis said recruiters will spend as little as six seconds reading your resume.

Reach Out

Don’t be shy. Make a connection at the company where you plan to apply to get a general idea about what the firm is looking for in that particular job. The best way to do this is through LinkedIn, said Margolis.

This will help you customize your resume as you apply for jobs across industries. Plus, you can get an idea of what keywords to include throughout your resume. (We’ll get to those later.)

Get Started

Once you have all your notes handy, a nifty template to work from and a 48-ounce cup of coffee, you’re ready to get started.

Your resume should contain several important components. But keep in mind there is disagreement in the HR and recruiting world about what to include and exclude. We’ll give you a rundown of all the components, and you can decide.

One very important thing to remember: You should keep this document to one page, McIntosh said. Remember, recruiters are going to give you less than 10 seconds to make an impression with your resume.

Contact Information

Feature your name and contact information at the top of the page.

Start with your name, followed by your phone number and email address. If you have a LinkedIn profile or professional online portfolio, be sure to include that as well.

But wait! This is an area you can use a little hack to avoid any unconscious bias that recruiters may have. Use you first initial instead of your full first name and it should help overcome any potential gender bias that could come out when a recruiter is scanning your resume.

Still, you’ll want to use your full name when emailing with a human resources manager or applying online.

Also, if this is a position in a new city, you might want to leave off your current address or include a note that you are planning to move to the city in which the job is located. That way, you can avoid being passed over due to an employer worried about covering moving expenses.

Objective

We’re going to tell you how to write a resume objective, but know this first: There is some debate in the resume-writing and HR world about whether you need an objective at the top of the document.

McIntosh said to skip it and get right to your accomplishments and job descriptions.

But, if that connection you made over LinkedIn advises you to use an objective, make it short.

Write a paragraph — two or three sentences at most — highlighting the type of work you’re looking for. Be sure to mention skills and talents that make you perfect for the job. This goes at the top of the document, usually separated by a line.

Work Experience

List your current job (if applicable) first, followed by all previous jobs in reverse chronological order.

Each job should include:

Name and address of the company where you worked

Your job title

Dates of employment

Your job responsibilities*

Your accomplishments in the position

See those bullet points above? They should be all over your resume. Use them for your accomplishments, job descriptions and the education and skills sections, described below. They’ll help recruiters scan your resume quickly.

If you have no work experience, don’t leave this section blank or eliminate it. McIntosh suggested listing your position during any downtime as an independent consultant, under which you explain in a bullet point that you needed some flexibility for personal matters.

“No one will ask about the personal matters, and you can just hand wave it away as ‘some family items that needed to be sorted out’ if they do,” he said in a follow-up Reddit post.

Additionally, you can use the section to highlight skills you’ve developed during college or while doing volunteer work.

“Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the skills you list on your resume need to be the direct result of a previous professional position. As long as you can successfully demonstrate those abilities, go ahead and list them. It really doesn’t matter where you learned them,” recommends The Everygirl’s Kat Boogaard.

Education

In this section, include any community colleges, universities, trade schools or technical colleges you’ve attended. Begin with your most recent school and work backwards.

For each school, be sure to provide:

The name, city and state of the school

Any degrees or certifications you received

Recruiters we spoke to highlighted another trend in resume-writing to overcome any age-related bias: Leave off the graduation dates.

“Protect yourself, and do not put graduation dates on your resume,” Hernandez said. “It’s pointless to do so.”

Note: If your degree is in progress, add the expected date of completion to let prospective employers know you’re still working on it.

Honors and Community Experience

This section captures extracurricular activities that don’t fit into the previous sections. For example:

Academic or work-related awards

Membership in clubs or organizations like Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts, 4-H or debate club

Volunteer community service

Greek life leadership

Additional Skills

Here’s where to highlight skills and talents that set you apart from other job seekers, including:

Fluency in more than one language

Typing speed

Experience in specific software

Experience with public speaking

List the programs and skills without any qualifiers, such as “proficient,” “experienced” or “skilled in.”

Personal Interests

McIntosh recommends including a section in which you list your personal interests, such as:

Hobbies

Favorite TV shows or movies

Favorite books or authors

This will give something with which you can connect with your recruiter, provided they have the same interests.

A Word About Keywords

Now that you have the basic format of the resume down, let’s talk about keywords — or how robots will likely be responsible for your employment future (sort of.)

Many companies ask job candidates to apply online and upload resumes to their website. Resumes are often electronically scanned for particular keywords to quickly weed out unqualified applicants.

“Your resume keywords should include specific job requirements, including your skills, competencies, relevant credentials and previous positions and employers,” says career expert Alison Doyle. “Essentially, keywords should be words that, at a glance, will show the hiring manager that you are a good fit for the job.”

To help you find the keywords relevant to a position you’re pursuing, print out a copy of the job description. Then highlight the words or phrases you see pop up several times throughout the document. Finally, circle the ones you have in common and sprinkle them throughout your resume.

Do’s and Don’ts While Writing Your Resume

As we keep saying, recruiters give you 10 or fewer seconds when scanning your resume and deciding whether to start the interview process. Here are some quick do’s and don’t while writing your resume.

Do!

Keep it to one page. Margolis said that rule is a bit outdated and you can likely get away with 1 1/2 pages, but striving to keep your resume brief will help you tease out your most impressive accomplishments.

Include hyperlinks to your online resume or portfolio. This used to be a big no-no, but with modern PDFs, you can easily link to other personal information. This will help keep your actual resume short as well.

Always use PDFs when emailing your resume. It’s universal, and there’s nothing that will get your resume trashed faster than sending a document that’s incompatible with a recruiter’s computer.

Include as much white space as possible. Make your resume easy on the eyes and simple for HR professionals to quickly scan.

Use action verbs such as “built” or “launched.”

Don’t!

Don’t use an inappropriate or outdated email address. Said McIntosh: “Delete your Hotmail with extreme prejudice.”

Don’t overdo it with keywords. As you sprinkle keywords throughout your resume, be sure they don’t make the content sound stilted or awkward. Look for ways to work them in naturally; don’t force it.

Don’t use a fancy font. Stick to the basics. McIntosh said he’s on a Garamond kick lately.

Don’t blast your resume out indiscriminately. Make sure you tweak it based on the position you’re applying for — and remember to reach out over LinkedIn, if possible.

Don’t use personal pronouns like “I” or “me.” Basically, Margolis said, you need to write like a caveman and leave the pronouns out.

Oh, and remember to check out our 31 awesome tips to make your resume shine.

Final Touches

Once you’ve created your resume, it’s not ready to hand to a hiring manager until you do these three things:

1. Proofread Your Work

It’s not enough to simply run your resume through a spellchecker because they don’t always catch every mistake.

Print a copy of your resume, then read through it slowly several times to make sure it’s error-free. Blow up the font to help catch every problem.

2. Show It to a Friend

Share your resume with someone you trust to get some honest feedback on how it looks. Have the person read it to you out loud to take in the content in a new way.

3. Convert It to a PDF

Write your resume in whatever software application works best for you, but convert it to a PDF file before you send it to a hiring manager. If your word processing software doesn’t include a conversion feature, there are plenty of free online services to choose from.

PDF file formats are almost universally preferred during the hiring process, and they protect your resume’s content from being accidentally altered once it leaves your hands.

Once your resume is ready for prime time, write up a cover letter (they’re more important than you think) and start sending it to job prospects.

Happy job hunting!

Alex Mahadevan is a data journalist at The Penny Hoarder. Lisa McGreevy contributed to this post.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

Job Seekers: Here’s a Step-by-Step Guide on How to Write a Good Resume published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

[zipgrowth]

Micro-Writing is Having a Macro Impact on Identity Development

Students in my freshman English class have incredible stories to tell, but they aren't always eager to share them.

A quick scan of the room makes it easy to understand why. One student, Johnny, is a talented artist but reads and writes well below grade level. His catchphrase is “Oh, writing isn’t my thing.” Johnny’s discussion partner David moved to the U.S. two years ago and has been developing his English language skills over time, but is repeating the course after struggling through it last year—and his confidence is shattered. Seated behind them is Sara, who has attended four schools in the past two years and hasn’t established relationships at our school yet. Her partner Jasmine, has a college-level vocabulary, but gets bored quickly and often tunes out.

Building a classroom community in which all students feel valued and respected, and creating a learning space where everyone feels safe openly sharing their stories will take a lot of work. We need low-stakes, shareable writing assignments to break the ice, so I use micro-writing exercises as often as possible.

Many different types of teachers use micro-writing in their classrooms to build a diverse range of skills and to check for understanding. A math teacher might ask students to describe the difference between mean and median in one sentence, while a science teacher might ask students observe a diagram of the water table and describe how it would look during a drought in less than 20 words. These assignments are efficient and have many academic benefits. They’re also easy to share, and when students start talking to one another about what they write, the value of micro-writing goes beyond academics, addressing social and emotional needs like self-perception and confidence.

In my classes, micro-writing assignments help students develop and strengthen their identities. In a room full of reluctant writers, I can sense tangible fear of a blank page even after I assure my students that their papers won’t be graded. Many of them believe they can’t write a “good” essay and they are hesitant to even try—but everyone can write one great sentence, and a sentence is where it all starts.

When I begin a micro-writing activity, I intentionally send signals to students that it’s not about quantity. Recently, I gave them sticky notes instead of notebook paper, assigned a 10-word limit and asked them to write a sentence about someone they consider a hero. We’re preparing to read Homer’s Odyssey, and I wanted them to consider the characteristics of modern-day heroes so that later, we can discuss how Odysseus measures up. A few minutes later I asked students to share their answers with a partner, then I read my own sentence aloud to the whole group and invited others to do the same.

After an awkward pause, a few kids began to share—all of them named their parents and none of them offered an explanation. Then Johnny, who is often distracted and struggles to finish his assignments, raised his hand.

“My grandma’s a hero because she does what my mom can’t: raise me.”

It was a powerful sentence and it resonated with his peers. A few classmates followed his lead, mentioning their own grandparents and siblings, and sharing details big and small about their personal heroes. It turned out that a lot of people in the room were being raised by someone other than their mom or dad.

The connections that emerge as students share their writing are key to building community. This particular moment provided evidence of Johnny’s ability to make meaningful connections, demonstrate vulnerability and show leadership in front of his peers, just by sharing what he wrote.

We had a good discussion that day, but what happened during that class period isn’t always how it goes. Sharing can take many different forms. Students can post their answers in assigned locations in the room and reveal their opinions and experiences without saying a word. They can also share their thoughts and comment on their peers’ work online using a bulletin board app like Padlet.

No matter the medium or sharing strategy, it’s essential that micro-writing assignments are quick, focused on improvement (not mastery) and easy to celebrate. Three of my favorites are:

No matter the medium or sharing strategy, it’s essential that micro-writing assignments are quick, focused on improvement (not mastery) and easy to celebrate.

Six Word Compositions: There’s something magical about about telling a story in six words. It’s enough to ensure students say something meaningful, yet short enough that everyone can do it in a few minutes. I’m able to offer support to students who get stuck like reminding them that they only need to make one point or helping them verbalize an answer and then transcribing it on paper. I can challenge my advanced students by carving out time for feedback and revisions so they can add more details or manipulate the tone. This fall, my freshmen wrote six words about how their first day of school was going, then posted it on the board underneath a thumbs up, down or in the middle icon.

3-2-1s: Micro-writing doesn’t have to focus on sentences and paragraphs. Lists are great tools to help students summarize, analyze and evaluate information on the fly. As a warm-up, my class recently wrote down three things they didn’t do over the weekend, two people they trust and one difficult decision they’ve made at some point in their lives. We circled up and shared one of the things we didn’t do over the weekend as a starting point to help check for understanding and students get comfortable speaking to an audience before diving into the more difficult topics (students had the option to “pass” when it got to more personal elements of the list).

Sentence Starters: Sometimes finishing someone else’s sentence is easier than starting your own. Providing a sentence starter that students can end with their own words can jumpstart reluctant writers. One way I use them is to help students respond to dialogue between characters in a book. After we read a chapter, we revisit an important passage and respond to prompts like “This makes me think about ______________.” Once students fill in the blank, they can share their responses silently by trading papers, reading their partner’s sentence and then finishing another prompt like “I like that my partner ________________.” We often trade papers several times and progress to more open-ended prompts It’s a great way to get them to re-read parts of a text and to respond to their classmate’s writing. When students get their own papers back they read the responses to their first sentence and often recognize common experiences and ideas.

Creating a classroom community where students feel comfortable enough to share their stories, even when they know their storytelling and writing skills are still developing, takes work. There isn’t one singular strategy that makes it happen, but micro-writing can play a large role, and not just from a social-emotional standpoint. It can lead to academic gains, too. What begins as a few words can grow into a few sentences, then a paragraph, and eventually multiple paragraphs or pages. And as each student's stamina and confidence grows, and they find their voice, I often see improvement in style, organization, tone, grammar and punctuation.

While I love to see this kind of growth in writing, the most powerful part of short, frequent, shareable micro-writing assignments is that they can support identity development, help all levels of writers build a sense of belonging and help teachers and students create strong classroom communities.

Micro-Writing is Having a Macro Impact on Identity Development published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness