Snappy Poker

Creativity is one of the most important keys to success in any business.

If you want to succeed in any business, you have to be more creative and pragmatic.

Below are a few internet business secrets on how to generate new product ideas:

1. Solve an existing problem for people. There are thousands of problems in the world. Create a product that can provide a solution to one of those problems.

2. Find out what’s the current hot trend. You can find out what the new trends are by watching T.V, reading magazines and surfing the net. Just create a product that’s related to the current hot trend.

3. Improve a product that is already on the market. You see products at home, in ads, at stores etc. Just take a product that’s already out there and improve it.

4. Create a new niche for a current product. You can set yourself apart from your competition by creating a niche. Your product could be faster, bigger, smaller, or quicker than you competitor’s product.

5. Add on to an existing product. You could package your current product with other related products. For example, you could package a football with a team jersey and football cards.

6. Reincarnate an older product. Maybe you have a book that’s out of print and is no longer being sold. You could change the title, design a new front cover, and bring some of the old content up to date.

7. Ask your current customers. You could contact some of your existing customers by phone or e-mail and ask them what kind of new products they would like to see on the market.

8. Combine two or more products together to create a new one. For example, you could take a brief case and add a thermos compartment inside to keep a drink hot or cold.

9. Survey the people who visit your web site. You could post a survey or questionnaire on your web site. Ask visitors what kind of products they would like to see on the market.

10. You could create a new market for your existing product. For example, if you’re selling plastic bottles to a pop company, you could turn around and sell those bottles to a fruit drink company.

May these internet business secrets help you to make a lot of money.

Warmly,

I-key Benney, CEO

As the number one fitness machines available, treadmills are very popular at fitness locations and as home exercise equipment. Most consumers like to read treadmill reviews before they make a purchase in order to get the best value for their money. You may see many brands and models of treadmills advertised on television, but the advertisement may not be entirely accurate. Everything works well on TV, but often doesn’t perform in the same way when you have it at home. The same is true of treadmills, which is why reading treadmill reviews is important.

The best treadmill reviews are consumer reviews. Treadmills have many attractive features and the more expensive the model, the more features you can expect it to have. Through the treadmill reviews written by consumers that have used the machines you gain valuable information as to whether or not these features actually work. For example, if you are a first-time treadmill user, who would you want to pay thousands of dollars for a machine that you may tire of in a few months? Home treadmill reviews give you the names of the best treadmills in a particular price range and will tell you which ones are best for beginners.

According to the latest home treadmill reviews, the Healthrider Treadmills are the most popular because of their innovative features. The same company also manufactures Nordic Track, Reebok, and Weslo, as well as other popular brands. The HealthRider treadmill reviews will show you that this is a reasonably priced piece of fitness equipment and that it also carries a quality warranty on the motor. However, these treadmill reviews also go into details about specific models telling you which ones to avoid. For example, according to home treadmill reviews, the Healthrider S500X! is not a good buy because of the small motor.

With consumer reviews, treadmills have to live up to their reputation. If you buy a treadmill that doesn’t work properly and you don’t receive good service from the manufacturer, you will certainly want to write a review warning others to avoid this model. Consumers are not the only ones who read these reviews as companies regularly review them to see where they can make improvements to the products. Posting treadmill reviews online is one way to get a manufacture’s attention, especially if all your other efforts have failed.

Treadmill reviews are good places to find some independent treadmill information.

Find out more about Treadmills Reviews as well as Cheap Treadmills used treadmills, and treadmill maintenance at Peters website, Terrific Treadmills

I don’t know how many books, articles, manuals and scripts have been written on that topic. But, I am sure that now there is one more. So why do I dare to write another one? Because I have to contribute a different perspective. I found that all these “how-to” writings about speaking focus on 2 basic things:

1. How to overcome the fear of speaking in public

2. How to write and deliver great speeches.

Both attempts focus around techniques. They are well intended receipts, cook-book like laundry lists of ingredients and more or less good description on how to put all that stuff together to come up with an edible meal.

Yet, if you want to be a cook you don’t start with reading receipts but with developing a love for your area of expertise.

Think about it, have you ever heard about someone that was exceptional in his area without deeply loving what she does? I haven’t. If you want to be successful and a top professional in whatever you chosen to become your profession you need to have a deep love for the subject or you eventually will fail.

Without passion for what you do the pain of learning and repeating the required skills eventually will become paramount and stop you before you achieve the heights of true professionalism.

So, this is not an article for someone that wants to learn how to prepare fast food, but for those that might have a hidden desire to become great speakers.

If you want to become good at speaking, you need to have a desire to become good and a passion for your subject matter. No technique ever can replace that. It is a prerequisite and techniques are the ways you do it.

There are a lot of myths around speaking and even more around the techniques.
Stage fright is a one of the favorite topics for techniques that mostly have been given birth at a writer’s desk rather than being the essence of experience. What is stage fright anyway?

Stage fright is nothing more and nothing less than insecurity.

If you feel insecure, you start fearing. If you feel unconfident, you start fearing. If you believe you will fail – if you still have the concept of failure in your mind – you start fearing.

Nothing special with stage fright though. And because stage fright is just another fear, the cure is the same as for any other fear.

Get confident, get passionate, built self-esteem.

How do you get confident? Know your outcome and have a plan to go from where you are to where you want to be.

Translated to a speech that means, know what you want the audience to learn, have a good knowledge about the topic you are going to talk about and have a clear, precise map (your script) about where to start, where to end and what to say in between.

If you have these basics in place, your confidence will be as high as possible and you managed to eliminate the first reason for stage fright, lack of confidence.

Ok, but how can I get passionate about my topic you might ask? Well, if your topic doesn’t excite you how can you belief it might excite someone else?

Unless you find something exciting about your topic you won’t convey your message anyway. Bottom-line is, if you don’t have to share something exciting don’t share it, don’t deliver a speech on it.

The good news is that there is something exciting in every topic. Just look long enough, change the perspective, increase the frame, be curious and you will find something you can become passionate about.

Now, we are confident and passionate but still there is one major reason for stage fright left.

Little self-esteem.

This is a hard one, isn’t it? How to raise self-esteem?

Agreed this is not as easy as getting confident and passionate. But, managing this part is much more rewarding, as it will impact your whole being.

If you belief that you are mediocre or worse unworthy you have to change that belief. If you have the belief those others are better and that being better means worth more than you, you have to change that belief.

If you don’t, you will depend on what you think the others might think about you and be sure this thought is not very appealing. Not because the others might think bad things about you, most don’t even care enough about you to have second thoughts anyway, but because you tend to think others think little of you. It is you that produces your thoughts.

This is not an article about changing limiting belief systems, but unless you develop a healthy self respect and the idea that you have something to say, you will not have a remedy for stage fright.

There are several concepts or beliefs that raise self esteem. Some of them are:

•I am as important as any other human being but not more.

•I have more experience in what I talk about than anyone else in the audience. (Which is always true even if there are subject matter experts in the audience, because you wrote the speech not them)?

•There is no failure only feedback.

•If someone else can do it, I can do it too given I use the resources and develop the skills that someone used.

•I am a passionate and powerful person

• No one in this world is above or beneath me

• I have to contribute something to others

Once you have high enough self esteem and a well prepared speech on a subject matter you feel confident about, you will not have stage fright anymore.

But, please don’t misinterpret excitement with stage fright. Every time I give a speech, I am totally energized. My body starts producing adrenalin and I am really excited.

I used to misinterpret that with stage fright because some of the feelings, in my stomach for example, seem similar but this is pure excitement. This feeling will get lesser once you start your speech most of the time (unfortunately).

Once you are on stage and start your speech your full focus must be on delivering your message.

Here comes another problem with techniques. Some will tell you have to constantly monitor your audience. If you take that advice and you are a junior speaker you are going to go through hell during your speech.

Why? Because as a starter you have enough to do to focus on your speech itself, to focus on you being congruent and powerful, passionate and excited.

If you focus on the guy in the first row that yawns every two minutes I can ensure you that your self-esteem is going to deteriorate even if you think you are pretty good.

Don’t focus on your audience, focus on your message. With repetition and increasing experience you will start getting more flexibility on acting with your audience, but for the inexperienced speaker the advice to focus on the audience is pure venom. Sometimes I even tend to think it was invented by a great speaker to prevent competition.

If you can focus on something else than your speech, focus on two other things:

1. Your voice

2. Your posture

This is really important. Never, and I mean never, mumble or talk in a way that is not clear and articulated. If what you have to say is worth saying it, it is worth saying it out loud.

You do not annoy others by speaking out loud. They are here to listen to you not to talk to their neighbor. So make sure they listen to you by speaking instead of mumbling.

Again there are advises like change your tonality etc. These are good advices for someone that has already some experience. For the starter there is only one thing important about your voice. IT MUST BE HEARD.

And here is my very last advice. Stand strong. Stand as if you had something important to say. At least this is what you do. You you say something important. Keep your head up. Don’t look down to your feet, belief me they will not walk away without taking you with them.

If you can’t stand to look into the audience yet, look at least at the fire exit signs above the doors. This way you make sure that your audience thinks you look at them and not at your shoes and you have your head in a posture that supports confidence.

And one last thing about posture. Raise your shoulders. Don’t let them slack. Head down, shoulders down is a posture that leads most of us into unpleasant feelings, better known as depression. Try it, look down, and let your shoulders fall down do you feel energized or at least a little bored? If you do it long enough you will not only feel a little bored but depressive.

Now do it the other way around, raise your head, look up, raise your shoulders and, if you like to really feel different, smile. Now how does this feel? While in that posture try to get bored without any physical change. No shoulders slacking, not stopping to smile, head stays up. Can you get depressed in that posture or even a little bored? No you can’t. If you don’t belief me try it by yourself. It works.

If you mange to follow these 7 advises, you can be sure your speeches will be good. And by good I mean they will be better than 99% of the speeches given. This is pretty good I believe.

Don’t expect to deliver speeches of the caliber Dr. Martin Luther King or J.F. Kennedy used to give, but starting with these 7 steps will ensure your speeches will be a success.

And maybe, who knows, maybe you become as passionate and determined to giving speeches to make it to the top .09% of speakers that change big chunks

This article may published freely only in its whole including all appendices.

© 2005 by Norbert Haag

Online Business Coach

http://www.onlinebusinesscoach.com

Norbert Haag is a business consultant, entrepreneur and sought after speaker for more than 20 years. His company – Online Business Coach http://www.onlinebusinesscoach.com – provides information and services for online businesses, small business owners and freelancers.

You can reach Norbert at nhaag@onlinebusinesscoach.com.

When you wake up on exam day, one of two things is going to happen. Well, yes, you’re going to pass or fail. But what I’m thinking of comes before that, and has a lot to do with how you perform on exam day.

You’re either going to have a tremendous feeling of anticipation or the dreaded feeling of being nervous about it.

Anticipation is a great thing to feel on exam day. You’re driving to the exam center, excited about the exam. You’re much like a football player, slapping another player on the helmet or the shoulder pads before the game starts. (Warning: Don’t try this on the exam proctor.) You know there’s a challenge ahead, but you’re looking forward to it. In your mind, you’re already victorious you’re at the testing center only to make it official.

Conversely, there’s nothing worse than being nervous or feeling unprepared before the exam. I’ve driven up to an exam center and seen exam candidates doing some last-minute cramming in their car. Sadly for them, if there’s something you were unprepared for at 8 AM on exam day, you’re still going to be unprepared when you go into the test center, no matter what you read in the car at the last minute. You don’t see football players studying their playbook on the sideline before the game starts.

It’s all about preparation. I regularly tell my students and customers that you don’t pass a Cisco exam (or any other vendor exam) the day you take it. You pass when you turn the TV off for weeks before the exam to study you pass when you spend time and money to attend a class or buy a book or training video you pass when you give up a weekend to get some hands-on experience. That’s when you pass. The exam score you get is simply feedback on your exam preparation.

There’s a great saying “Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance”. That describes to a “T” what your strategy to pass the exam must include. Put the time in well before exam day and you’ll reap the rewards on the big day. If you’re just planting the seeds of knowledge in your car the morning of the exam, don’t expect much of a harvest.

Chris Bryant

CCIE #12933

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage (www.thebryantadvantage.com), home of free CCNA and CCNP tutorials, The Ultimate CCNA Study Package, and Ultimate CCNP Study Packages. Video courses and training, binary and subnetting help, and corporate training are also available.

For a FREE copy of his latest e-books, “How To Pass The CCNA” or “How To Pass The CCNP”, send a request to chris@thebryantadvantage.com today !

It appears that most webmasters have come from the world of advertising. Their website content emphasizes “marketing and promotion”. Just to prove my point, do a Google search on “marketing promotion”. As I write, Google comes up with “about 5,910,000″ entries. Gosh imagine the good fortune of a listing on page one! Of course, the number of entries for “marketing promotion” gets shadowed by “sex” which provides you with “about 192,000,000″. It’s not money and sex; it’s sex and money.

Prominent webmasters like Jim Daniels, Cory Rudll,and Kevin Bidwell(one of my favorites) et.al teach you Internet success strategies. Of course, they all started way back in ‘96 (that’s 1996) or so when teaching such concepts made them successful because aspiring webmasters wanted the information. Someone asked me recently if Cory Rudll’s two volume manual collects dust on my desk. Chagrined, I acknowledge, “sitting just to the right of my keyboard” (been there for two years). Then I think of all the other manuals, ebooks purchased to vault my Internet marketing skills.

What then gets you the income so many claim to make? You’ve read the ads, “so and so made $55,000 in one month” and this was their slowest month. Or, affiliate maven makes $463,000 a year marketing affiliate programs. Each of these testimonials appear attached to some alluring ebook which you must have to succeed. Well, hold off. Maybe you just don’t need to enter that credit card number.

Here are 5 considerations to ponder before thinking about income from your website.

Purpose: Never gave much credence to business plans; however, you can’t get from my house to Boston without a map. Whether you write it down (which is best) or create pictures in your mind, there must be a map. A strategy which defines what steps you take. Strategies begin with brainstorming. Sit down, put a blank paper on your desk, grasp your pen, and write. Write anything that comes to mind relevant to your purpose. Write the not so relevant ideas too; who knows they might turn out to be the most important expression of your brainstorming. A number of routes will get you to Boston from my house: some direct and boring, some scenic and slow. Who cares what way you get there. Herman Drost’s article, http://www.echievements.com/articles/2507, “8 Steps to Creating a Simple Business Plan….” provides a “how to” outline.

Persistence: No matter what the hype reads, this takes persistence. Perhaps the only emotion that separates the successful from the no so successful comes down to persistence. Calvin Coolidge’s (1872 – 1933) viewpoint may be worth memorizing. “Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. Kevin Sinclair’s article, http://www.echievements.com/articles/2508, “Persistence – The Magic Key To Success” inspires you to continue. Also, if you’ve never read Russell Conwell’s “Acres of Diamonds”, it’s a classic worth reading.

Preparation: “There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure,” says Colin Powell. Well, historians will assess the current geopolitical “learning from failure”. However, every endeavor requires preparation. Ever watch a chef work? Every summer I work a weekend at a camp which serves 250 men seven meals. Doesn’t sound like much until I observed the chef arrives to work at 3AM. I would get there at 4:15AM in order to dice, chop, stir, and pour in preparation for the next meal. When meals get served, few understand the amount of “prep work” that preceded the meal. No one sees you doing it; it just has to be done. Judy Collins provides clear guidelines on “Ten Steps To Prepare Yourself for Online Marketing” http://www.echievements.com/articles/2509.

Probabilities: As this article is written, the banter of presidential poll interpretation continues. Everyone has an opinion, and every pole a changing nuance. However, reading polls provides some lessons on reading the probabilities of website traffic. Most of us read the primary poll results rather than referring to the “internal tracking polls”. Same may hold true when reading website traffic: we look at the number of visits without reading the “internal tracking”. Travis Reeder provides detailed explanations and reasons for digging deeper into the numbers in his article, http://entrepreneurs.about.com/cs/marketing/a/visitortracking.htm “How (and Why) to Read Your Web Statistics and Analytics” If you do not track visitors, I recommend http://awstats.sourceforge.net/ AWstats. “AWStats is a free powerful and featureful (sic) tool that generates advanced web, ftp or mail server statistics, graphically.” “A reasonable probability is the only certainty,” writes E.W. Howe. So what probabilities do you have for succeeding and how do you measure them?

Personality: Ever converse with someone knowing that person was not “there”? Many websites give the same impression. What does this webmaster think? What matters to them? What message do they want conveyed? One source of information for news and other resources is Yahoo. Yahoo allows you to personalize your page using my.yahoo.com. I think it takes more effort to insert your personality into your work, to evidence your opinions and world view on a website. Every website page represents you implicitly or explicitly. What matters to you should be evident on your website, and your website should represent your values. Little seems to be written about this subject. Terri Seymour’s article, http://www.echievements.com/articles/1296 “The Power of Personality” provides some further insights. Bob Baker’s book, Poor Richard’s Branding Yourself Online provides substantive help. Oscar Wilde’s observation that “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation” deserves a webmaster’s attention.

As with all enterprise, Internet endeavors involve you with something that does not happen overnight. As with all worthy efforts, it requires a purpose clearly defined, a persistence resolutely affirmed, and a daily preparation involving your complete personality. You must remain passionately focused on the belief that you add value to this incredible enterprise known as the Internet.

About The Author

Ray Randall serves clients as a registered investment advisor with his firm, Ethos Advisory Services, Essex, Massachusetts http://www.ethosadvisory.com. He has wide experience within the financial services industry, writes a weekly newsletter for Ethos Advisory Services, and coordinates the developments at Echievements . Ray holds a Masters Degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Hamilton, MA. You may email him or call (877-895-3756).

rayrandall@echievements.com

Many modern gamers have seen the slogan “offshore sports betting”, but many may not be completely confident of what that stands for exactly. A foreign gambling internet site inherently operates exterior to the control of a distinct country instead it can mean an on-line sports betting website that has the bulk of their main servers in a state in which internet based sports gambling is not presently outlawed. So the brief story is then, it is a betting internet site which runs extraneous of the power of the area of the gambler. Computer accessible betting web sites are now modulated through the agency of 3 administrations. These are OSGA (the Offshore Gaming Association), IGC (Interactive Gaming Council) and finally the Fidelity Trust Gaming Association (the FTGA).

The Offshore Gaming Association are a self-controlling institution which regulates the modern overseas sports gaming industry, they strive to also afford sports gamblers the means to easily identify trust-worthy websites to play games of chance on, without stress. It labors to look after consumer’s rights, also they don’t levy any particaption expenses.

The association is a professional and impartial third party company who give non-biased impressions, advised by customer feedback, nonpartisan research, phone discussions, insider advice and to impart inside news.

The IGC are a not-for-profit administration. The council was set up to provide a forum for interested individuals to address pertinent issues also to improve mutual matters in the worldwide online gambling profession, in an effort to establish scrupulous not to mention sound trade codes and practises that raise consumer certainty in world wide web based wagering merchandise and utilities, and to function as the offshore gaming trade’s global procedure advocate and it also offers an info base of operations.

The IGC have developed a name for promoting reliability, good behavior and also plausibility via its tough code of conduct, also its appeal to honorable businesses. The IGC regularises offshore gaming by means of using a particular 10-point set of standards and in addition bills sports gambling business enterprises a license fee to feature the council’s logo. Unfulfilled gamblers may, should they wish, recount their conflicts to the IGC.

The Fidelity Trust Gaming Association has been founded in an attempt to create a standard which will upgrade the procedures of web based gaming internet sites. The IGC trust that by affiliating with partners of honorable reputation, they are able to perfect a union of the most sportsmanlike and professional overseas gambling operations internationally.

These are governing bodies who oversee the transactions of on-line sports gambling and which should through time function to ease a lot of the trepidation experienced by skeptics. Web based sports gaming internet sites are absolutely secure, now that private details shouldn’t be needed and in addition the payouts and the gaming odds should be equivalent to your usual Vegas-style sports wager. They lower traveling, but nonetheless keep the spirit of a Vegas-style betting site, only now you are enabled to gamble in your home.

online sport betting tip

Fitness can be tough to achieve, and many people think that you must make drastic changes in order to see results from your fitness program.

The truth is that you don’t have to radically alter your lifestyle to see a change in your weight or health; sometimes a simple change can have a big impact! Here are some simple tips that can make a big difference in your own health!

1. Can the soda.

This one is tough for me personally, but its results can be amazing! Eliminating (or at least reducing) the amount of soda or pop you drink can make an enormous difference in your waistline in just a week! Sodas are full of sugar and calories, and are practically worthless nutritionally. Drinking more than one a day adds some serious calories to your daily intake, and can result in multiple pounds on your body. Cutting out your daily soda saves you more than 87,000 calories over a year’s time – that’s equal to over twenty-five pounds! Try a simple experiment: do not drink soda for one week (7 days) and weigh yourself at the beginning and end of the week. You’ll be surprised at the change you can see and feel.

2. Add more fiber to your diet.

Fiber in your diet fills you up faster and actually expands in your stomach to literally fill the empty space far better than other kinds of food. Eating plenty of fiber will keep your appetite under control as well as maintaining a healthy GI tract at the same time. A variety of vegetables and breads are good sources of fiber, so there are many options to choose from.

3. Get more sleep.

Despite eight hours remaining the gold standard for sleeping hours, few adults actually sleep that much during the night; most average around five or six hours. The lack of sleep doesn’t just make you drowsy during the day; it can also make you prone to cravings, irritable, and even cause you to gain weight. Studies have shown that failure to get adequate sleep suppresses the production of leptin, a peptide that tells the body to burn calories. Getting just another hour of sleep helps correct sleep debt and can make you feel better almost instantly.

4. Drink plenty of water…

Your body is more than half water, so replenish it! Water is one of the most powerful allies in the battle against excess weight. When you are dehydrated, your body sends signals to the brain that get misinterpreted as hunger pangs. Drinking enough water throughout the day keeps you satisfied and can ward off unpleasant issues like decreased energy, constipation and slowed mental reactions. A good general guideline is to drink eight 8-oz. glasses of water throughout the day, but pay attention to your body’s needs. Drink more water if you feel your body needs it.

5. …Eat your calories.

Don’t allow yourself to be fooled into drinking your daily calories through soda, beer and wine. These beverages rack up the calories in a fast and furious way, and are full of sugars that make you crave even more. Satisfy your hunger and the emotional need to eat by choosing nutrient-rich food with a minimum of preservatives and you’ll save yourself from empty calories.

6. Take 10,000 steps every day.

Recent studies show that most people estimate their number of steps per day to be ten thousand or more. In actuality, that number is more likely in the 3,000 – 4,000 range. Challenge yourself by buying a pedometer and wearing during an average day. Check the total number of steps at the end of the day – anything less than 5,000 needs improvement! Ten thousand steps are roughly equal to four miles of walking. Make it your goal to take ten thousand steps every day and keep working until you get there. This simple change can help you burn calories and fat as you take care of everyday chores, so keep stepping and watch your pedometer count up those steps! Consider taking the stairs instead of the elevator, or walking to lunch instead of driving to add more steps to your day.

Trying these very basic changes that won’t cost you a lot of time, effort or money, but they can give you noticeable results in a short period of time. Incorporate these changes with your daily exercise program and give the new you a smile in the mirror!

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Copyright 2005, easyfitnessinfo.com. All rights reserved. Always consult your physician before beginning any exercise or fitness program. This article may be freely distributed as long as it is not edited in any way.

Nowadays very many people prefer to purchase their swimwear online; shopping online is an easy & fitting way to shop in the freedom of your own sitting room. Find designer lingerie and swimwear brands from around the world at Becheeky, visit the website.

It’s imperative to ensure whilst procuring swimwear on the World Wide Web that it defiantly fits you right. When you acquire swimwear on the Internet always make certain that the shop supplies a helpful quality sizing diagram that provides all of the measurements you need. With the assistance of a sizing chart one can make sure to obtain a swimsuit or bikini that fits precisely, as a result reducing the need to swap for another size. By and large most of the swimwear stores do not allow an exchange of goods so it is typically always better to pick a retail store where exchanges are permitted. Many retail shops will allow the returns of swimwear if the tags and the original packaging are also returned along with it.

Swimwear is an expected part of the summertime; despite this a vast majority of full-figured females feel intimidated at the thought of shopping for swimsuits & bikinis that fit right. These women even contemplate about wearing caftans by the swimming pool or at the beach instead of looking unattractive. Designers and shopkeepers have recognized the fashion problems of the overweight woman, and are at last featuring a wide mixture of stylish bathing suit designs in XL sizes, and the best place to find such swimwear is to buy swimwear on the Internet.

After cracking hundreds of screenplays sent into the BlueCat Screenplay Competition, the same problems in the execution of the story and script continue to emerge. Here is a general overview of these persistent issues.

Do you realize what you’re saying?? In the theatre, they read plays aloud over and over in the process of script development, and one of the reasons they do this is to hear the dialogue. When I hear dialogue in my head, it might sound very good, but then when I hear a person actually speak it, I often have an impulse to jump in front of a bus. And over and over and over and over, when I read screenplay entries to BlueCat, I am immediately dismayed when the characters start speaking. Excellent everything else, awful dialogue. And I often wonder if the writer has actually heard the lines they have written for their characters out loud. Either read the whole thing aloud to yourself, or even better, get a group of your friends to read it. You do not need professional actors to evaluate dialogue. Just people excited to help. Videotape it. I have videotaped readings, and then sat down and worked out an entire rewrite off the tape, addressing every single line that bothered me. Which leads me to another thing.

Ha. It’s hard to pass a screenplay on to industry contacts if an unfunny joke is sitting in the middle of page two. It’s highly difficult if there’s twelve by page five. You might have a payoff in your third act that would break my heart, but if your jokes are poor, the heart of your audience will be shot, probably resentful, and your work will be recycled. Please try your humor out. If your beats aren’t funny to some people, rewrite. Trust a truly hilarious bit is coming. Think of the patience you need to muster through this writing process as courage, because it is.

If you find you are not funny, write a script that is not funny. Many, many great scripts are not funny, as we all know.

Mispellings. Do you think the development people in Los Angeles, basically the smartest people in the film industry, will not be annoyed and continue to read your script when you have misspelled three words in the first five pages? Perhaps. How do you feel when you’re reading something and you find misspelled words? How does your attitude shift towards the author? Exactly. If you don’t think many scripts have this problem, start a screenwriting competition.

OKAY, WE GOT IT! Try to limit your scene description. When a person opens your script, how many INCHES of action slug are they looking at on page one? Is there anyway you can convey what you want us to SEE with less words? I always go back and CUT CUT CUT to prevent my screenplay from fatiguing my reader with excess words as they try to listen for my story. Do we need to know what necklace someone is wearing? We all understand making motion pictures is collaborative. I strive to let the art department and the costumer and the prop master and so on DO THEIR JOB by not making their decisions in the screenplay, because I have little passion for it and don’t do it well. They will make their own choices, and most likely better ones, so why bother? Always use fewer words to say the same thing.

It’s not show and tell, it’s show not tell. I constantly find myself being told something by the screenplay the viewer of the film will not be aware of. Screenplays are not literature. They are words assembled to describe what motion pictures will play out on the screen. Telling us a character is a jealous person is passive and dull. Showing a character in an act of jealousy is more effective and essentially cinematic. Let the words and actions of your characters carry your story. This is not easy. You want the actor or director to understand what you want and what you mean. Allow the description of physical actions and the recording of spoken words reveal the narrative to the filmmakers. The script will read faster and offers the reader a richer opportunity to imagine and discover.

The Joy of Making Things Up. I really cherish the idea, that as a writer, I can make things up. If I want the guy to say something, all I have to do is type it. But I have to fight against creating characters and interactions amongst characters derived from movies I have watched and television I have seen. I often find myself writing a scene only to realize I’m not drawing from my imagination or my own life experience or my observations of people, I’m drawing from the millions of hours of observing actors play human beings on television and in movie theaters. And because I’m writing a “MOVIE,” it is even more difficult, because I’m fighting against a subconscious or unconscious observation that this is “how people act in movies.” Stop yourself and ask, would this happen on planet Earth? Do I know how people from Miami really speak? What would a person actually say if they had a gun in their face? Can you possibly imagine what could happen? This is your opportunity to be truly imaginative. Answer your own expectations of original work. A mature writer develops a strong capacity to recognize and reject the false.

Ouch. Forced exposition. This is when a brother tells a sister on page two that he will be attending a school which dad wouldn’t pay for because he bought a farm that the whole family will be moving to tomorrow because he found that the city was a really bad place to live in after mom was really scared because of that mugging thing that happened after they came back from the sister’s graduation from high school. When characters engage in an unbelievable conversation about matters in which they would be familiar with, or when they proclaim something completely out of nowhere simply to inform the audience of key facts crucial to their understanding of the movie, you have a problem. This awkward exposition will not be seen as genuine human behavior and will detach your audience from the emotional current of your story. Exposition is necessary and difficult to execute. Be careful how you offer information crucial to your story at the start of your screenplay. This is a common problem in early drafts. Exposition needs to be seamless and graceful.

Format. You know what? Go get a script and copy what you think it looks like and you’ll be fine. Trust me. Spec scripts are sitting on desks all over Hollywood and their format is not consistent at all. Getting crazy about format sells screenwriting software. I use two tab settings and copied stuff from a book and not one person in the film industry has ever said a thing to me in ten years. But if your script looks like a book, or a poem, or a magazine article, your screenplay format is wrong. Just make it look a little like a movie script, and if it kicks ass, guess what.

So do you.

Article URL address: www.bluecatscreenplay.com/About/advice.php

About the Author Winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance Film Festival for LOVE LIZA, Gordy Hoffman has wrote and directed three digital shorts for Fox Searchlight. Made his feature directorial debut with his script, A COAT OF SNOW,world premiering at 2005 Locarno Intl Film Festival. Also founder of BlueCat Screenplay Competition, which provides written screenplay analysis on every entry.Gordy acts as a script consultant for screenwriters, offering personalized feedback, www.screenplaynotes.com.

Copyright © 2006 BlueCat Screenplay Competition

‘Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.’ Henry James.

What are the most beautiful words in the English language? The answer to this subjective question will obviously vary from person to person depending, as it does, on the meaning, the sound, the context, and the connotation of the word or words in question.

‘Words strain,

Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,

Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,

Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,

Will not stay still.’

T.S. Eliot, ‘Four Quartets’

And yet if you scan the works of the most fastidious and discerning writers you will find certain words that are almost universally accepted as ‘beautiful’.

‘You can stroke people with words.’ F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘The Crack-Up’

Here is Part 1 of my list of ‘beautiful’ words. Are there any words you would remove from or add to this list? Let me know what you think.

autumn

beloved

blandishments

blossom

butterfly

cadence

caress

carol

champagne

chime

crimson

crystal

darling

dawn

delicious

delight

desolate

dream

dulcet

dusk

echo

eglantine

enchant

eternal

ethereal

glistening

goblet

golden

gossamer

harmony

harvest

idyllic

languid

languorous

laughter

love

lullaby

lustrous

magic

Email your suggestions for ‘The Most Beautiful Words in The English Language’ to: assignmentsplus1@aol.com

Gerard McLoughlin is the author of ‘15 hours To A Powerful English Vocabulary’.

To view this course, please visit http://www.assignmentsplus.com/vocabularycourse1.html