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On Document Types: Building a Business Plan

By Aaron Pogue on Monday, July 26, 2010

Yesterday I talked about my incredibly depressing sales pitch for the Consortium, which has somehow achieved a 100% conversion rate…. I can’t promise you those kind of results, but I do want to teach you how to build a business plan of your own.

Finding Firm Foundations

Last week I told you that my first step, any time I’m working with a brand new document type, is to find some good examples to use as models. I talked about asking friends or colleagues, and also about using Google to find them in the wild. I did both.

My friend Bruce studied Business Plans while pursuing his MBA, and he was able to provide me some great examples. Not just that, he taught me how to read them (and which bits really matter). That’s a huge help.

Speaking of the bits that count, I also told you last week that a document template consists of several key elements, and then I provided a big honkin’ list of them all. Once I had my sample documents, the first thing I did was create a new, blank one to work in.

I didn’t refer back to my list because I’ve recreated enough templates in my time that it’s second nature, but I did go through all of those elements as I scanned the samples and designed my own, brand new business plan document. Then, just out of idle curiosity, I opened up Word to check out the templates they already had.

Working in Word 2010, I was surprised to find a phenomenal business plan template already waiting for me. I had one all ready to go in my head, but after a few moments scanning the built-in one, I decided to use it instead.

Always be ready to take advantage of the tools you’ve got available.

Designing Your Content

The whole point of a template, I’ve said, is to save you time formatting so you can focus on the important work of writing. Using Word’s built-in template, it took me all of a minute to get my document built, and everything I’ve done since then has been content design.

So how do you design the content for a business plan? The same way you do the content for any other document: audience analysis and deliberate structure. Luckily, our sample documents help make that process faster, too, since they gives us a glimpse of the audiences their authors expected, and (as I mentioned) provide a consistent set of required headings organized the same way, again and again.

Here’s what I learned, from my review:

  • A business plan’s primary audience is potential investors. They’ll use the formally structured information it contains to evaluate the quality of the investment.
  • The document’s organization is almost entirely done for you. I looked through a dozen different sample business plans, and 90% of the structure repeats across every one of them. That means you know exactly what to put where, and readers know exactly where to find the answers to the questions that most interest them.
  • A business plan is all about answering questions. It’s a sales pitch, but more than that it’s a factual accounting of your ideas and mission. In other words, good technical writing will serve you far better here than creative writing would.
  • One of the major benefits of a business plan is helping you, the writer, figure out all the fine details of your business. That’s often a pleasant side-effect of good writing, but a business plan is designed specifically to force you to research the things you’re going to need to know, and think them through in an orderly and critical manner.

How to Write a Business Plan

That’s some handy advice and a pretty good application of last week’s articles, but I haven’t really told you much about what the end product should look like, have I? I should probably do that.

Okay, fine. Come back tomorrow, and I’ll tell you how to write a business plan. There will be plenty of details. I promise.

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On Document Types: A Sales Pitch

By Aaron Pogue on Sunday, July 25, 2010

If you’ve been paying attention this month, you can clearly see I’m building up to something. It’s a business model, a major social change, a grand vision. In other words, it’s a daydream and a penniless non-profit.

It’s a good daydream, though, and it attracts amazing people like moths to a flame. Seriously, I’ve watched it happen time and time again. I start talking about what I want to do, and brilliant people — busy people — rush to volunteer their time and expertise to help make it a reality. It’s amazing.

The problem is, it’s still a really new idea to me, so as I get volunteers, I’m having a hard time finding ways to explain to them exactly what we need to be doing now (and, for that matter, exactly what it is I want us doing long-term). That sort of communication is critical, though.

So I made a wave, and invited several of my first volunteers to it, including Carlos and Julie Velez. I started typing up an overview of my long-term vision, and then started getting into the nitty-gritty of how we’d get there from here (“here” being, essentially, nowhere at all). The more I wrote, the more I realized how much I was asking of all these incredibly busy people, knowing I wouldn’t be able to compensate them in any way (probably for years).

So, out of a compulsive honesty, before I made them read my big long description, I wanted to make sure they knew what they were getting into. I contacted them in chat, and said, “I’ve got a detailed description ready for you to read, but basically what I would like to ask of you is ridiculously long hours and a huge investment of energy that won’t guarantee any financial reward.”

Julie responded right away. “That’s a hell of a sales pitch! I’m in.”

Building a Business Plan

I’ve come up with a better sales pitch since then, and refined the big idea to make it considerably more promising. I’ll tell you all about it later this week, but first I’ve got a Tech Writing lecture to give, and since I did such a good job explaining the purpose of document types last week, I feel compelled to give you a concrete example.

So this week I’m going to talk about a very specific (and very valuable) kind of document: the business plan. Come back tomorrow, and I’ll walk you through the research process and show you how I learned how to build a business plan. You’ll probably get some sneak peeks at the weekend’s big reveal, too.

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

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On Patronage: How to Become a Master Artist

By Aaron Pogue on Saturday, July 24, 2010

All month I’ve been talking about how to get paid for your writing, and this week I’m talking about how things were done in the crude, primitive days of yore — such as, for instance, the astonishing beauty of the masterworks made in the high Renaissance.

That age of high artistry wasn’t an accident. It was the convergence of major social factors, public expectations, a funding method highly foreign to today’s business model, and (perhaps most importantly) a different idea of mastery.

On Craftsmanship and Mastery

Back then, it was standard in all professions to pursue a “master path.” Apprentices studied basics and helped with low-level work, until they were promoted to the rank of Journeyman — at which point they could perform all the major aspects of their craft with little or no oversight. The very best went on to learn the fine points and nuance, to face the biggest challenges and perfect new and superior methods. These paragons of perfect craftsmanship were the Masters.

The end of that path probably matches well with your understanding of master artists like Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci. That’s how blacksmiths learned their trade too, though. And barrel-makers, and weavers, and the people who drove oxcarts, and probably dog catchers, for that matter. Today, plumbers and electricians use a nearly identical method both for their training and their accreditation.

Humble Beginnings

And just as in all the other trades, new apprentices in the arts put in lots of tedious hours learning the rules and mechanics of their crafts. They’d often work in the studio of a master, learning not just the basics, but also their teacher’s specific style.

In fact, as apprentices learned to imitate that style, they often ended up creating works in the master’s name — Michelangelo’s apprentices painting scenes that we still know today as authentic Michelangelos, and Caravaggio’s making original Caravaggioes. That should give you a good idea of the rigor of their training, since the master’s reputation was on the line.

It should also give you an idea of the kind of recognition and respect for their unique artistic vision apprentices could look forward to (which is to say, none at all). It worked, though. A system just like that produced Michelangelo and Caravaggio, after all.

Declare Your School (Creative Writing Exercise)

The lovely Kelley, writing at a coffee shopSuch apprentices were said to be studying in the Michelangelo school or the Caravaggio school. Those weren’t places, just artistic styles, but even though a young artist was expected to develop his own style during his Journeyman years, it was understood that the style of his first master left an indelible impression.

Courtney talked Wednesday about playing the part of a master — and insisted vociferously that she’s really not — but if she’s good enough at what she does that some of you are ready to study her style, I’d say she’s there. I’m no more “done” than she is, but I’m ready to call myself a master writer. (I know I’ve got a handful of humble apprentices studying in my school.)

For my part, I dabbled in the Huddleston school (he was my high school Creative Writing teacher), and in Zelazny’s, and Dumas’s, but I studied for real in the Gipson school. She taught me how to create the illusion of realistic dialogue, how to work in scenes, how to write with discipline, and how to advance my craft. Always.

What about you? Who’s teaching you your style (even if it’s by teaching you their own)? Who’s looking over your shoulder as you practice in the basics, and who’s leading you to mastery? Declare your school, and do it proudly.

Then get back to work, building up your own name.

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

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On Patronage: Patrons, Artists, and the Public Renaissance

By Aaron Pogue on Friday, July 23, 2010

Yesterday I told the charming story of my opportunity to become a full-time artist on the charity of a noble patron. It was an arrangement built on bad information, but without it, you’d probably have one fewer writing advice blogs to help put you to sleep.

You certainly wouldn’t have this month’s creative writing series to think about, anyway. This entire discussion  (and, for that matter, much bigger things) sprang from a passing mention in an article at Ars Technica. The writer was talking about shortcomings in U. S. copyright law and said, “Of course there are alternatives — something like compulsory licenses or a new patronage model — but for now, copyright is the law of the land.”

That casual aside took me right back to that conversation with Kris, and then it got my mind rolling. If I were going to try to build an arrangement that could support me as a writer, knowing everything I know now, how would I go about it? How could we as a society make it happen? What would a new patronage model look like?

Before we can really guess, we’ve got to understand the old patronage model.

Room and Board

As Bryce pointed out in the comments last week, Michelangelo — a superstar artists if ever there was one — often had trouble finding room and board under the patronage system. Bryce sounded like he knew what he was talking about, but I wasn’t terribly familiar with Michelangelo’s story. So I asked Trish about it, since she’s an art history student.

“Oh yeah!” she said. “He almost died several times, and he always had trouble keeping a studio.” In terms of financial stability, that’s…well, it’s not worse than the fate most of today’s aspiring artists can expect to get from their creativity, but it’s not better either.

His situation was special, though. For his own reasons, Michelangelo didn’t want to work for the Catholic church or for the Medicis. I can certainly respect that — copyright certainly didn’t create the concept of the starving artist, going hungry for the sake of his integrity. But for many other artists, including names as famous as Michelangelo’s, steady and reliable patronage allowed them to live in relative comfort, with access to the resources (chief among them time) needed to perfect their craft and produce their great works.

In short, it was much of what I’ve wanted to do with my retirement ever since I was twelve years old. Patrons paid artists to be artists.

Supporting the Artists to Support the Arts

Of course, the notoriously cut-throat and ambitious Medicis weren’t supporting these artists out of a spirit of generosity. They were competing with the Catholic church and other noble families for public sentiment. The common folk expected access to art, and the family that funded a David or a Winged Victory could gain great prestige. A patron who recognized the talent of an aspiring young artist and supported him through the long path to mastery could gain even more.

In every case, though — no matter the purpose — the method of supporting these artists was to provide a stable and reliable livelihood for them while they worked. We make much of those famous artists who died before their art ever found a huge market, but we tend to forget that most of those artists were already well-rewarded for the creation of the art — for the time they spent imagining and studying and practicing, not to mention the time they spent executing the work, revising, polishing, and perfecting it.

In other words, by the time a work was published, it was already fully-funded. That’s a far cry from the way we approach it today, when it’s common for musicians to end up indentured to labels for life because albums don’t earn out. It’s common for any major motion picture to wind up in extensive litigation between the pe0ple who made it, because it didn’t earn enough profit at the box office.

How to Become a Master Artist

A new patronage would change a lot about the business model of art as we know it today. I’ll talk about that more next week, but we’ve still got another lesson to learn from art history, first.

Come back tomorrow to discuss how the Renaissance masters learned their craft, and how you as a writer can become a master artist.

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On Patronage: Kris Austin

By Aaron Pogue on Thursday, July 22, 2010

When I got to college, I kept surprising my peers by introducing myself as a writer. It wasn’t, “I’m an English Major,” or “I’m going to be a writer someday.” Whether it was at a freshman mixer or just to someone I met in the dorm common room, I said the same thing.

Hi. My name’s Aaron Pogue. I’m a writer.

There’s a worthwhile lecture to be made about the importance of knowing you’re a writer and making sure the people around you know it, too. I’ll save that one for another day, though.

This week I want to talk about becoming a master artist — and the people who help you make it happen. I met a lot of people like that during my time at college, but I have to give special distinction to one among them: my good friend Kris Austin.

From the very start, Kris and I were on the periphery of each other’s social circle, but it took us a while to actually connect. I was really only friends with my classmates in the Honors program (and only friends with them because we were required to socialize), and Kris wasn’t in that group. His fiancee Nicki was, though, and two of his three roommates, so I kept bumping into him.

Things changed when Trish and I got married halfway through our second semester, though. We moved out of the dorms, I gained a…well, a curfew of sorts, and it suddenly got a lot more challenging to keep up the casual relationships with some of my single friends in Honors.

So we started looking for couples friends, and Kris and Nicki were at the top of the list. That’s how, after two semesters of close encounters, I finally got around to making my standard introduction to him. “Hey. I’m Aaron. I’m a writer.”

He was fascinated. He was an I.T. major, not a creative type, but he was really interested in my career choice. He spent an hour and a half asking questions that let me talk about my favorite topic: writing. By the end of that, we were friends.

And, of course, during the course of the discussion the question of money came up — and with it, a lot of the issues we’ve been talking about here for the last few weeks. He asked me what a writing degree paid, and I said, “Well, until I hit it big, about thirty thousand a year.” (I was woefully uninformed about the earnings potential in business writing, but then, at the time I didn’t have any interest in doing business writing.)

He whistled and said, “Wow. I.T. pays way better than that!” Then he thought for a moment and said, “Tell you what. Nicki and I could live really comfortably on sixty thousand a year, so as soon as I’m making ninety thousand, I’ll hire you for the thirty and you can just focus on your writing.”

That left me speechless. He’d never read a word of my stuff — he barely knew me — but he was ready to commit a fortune to support my art.

Patrons, Artists, and the Public Renaissance

Of course, we were kids then. We had no idea how much it really costs to live comfortably, especially with kids of our own to feed and (ugh) multiple mortgages. I couldn’t make my family live on thirty thousand today even if Kris could afford to pay it.

Even so, the offer was an incredible gesture. I realized years ago that I’d never be able to take him up on it, but even since then, just knowing that he was prepared to make the offer back then has been a huge motivation to me. It has kept me writing when I was ready to give up, and it has spurred me to get better when I was ready to be complacent.

That’s the value of sponsorship, of patronage, of someone stepping up and saying, “I’ll pay you to create art. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing.” It’s an incredibly valuable exchange, and it’s high time we, as a culture, brought it back.

It won’t be easy, but I’ve got some ideas. Come back tomorrow for a look at the roles of patrons and artists in the public renaissance.

Photo credit Nicki Austin.

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What I Learned about Writing this Week…from Being an Expert

By Courtney Cantrell on Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Apprentice, Journeyman…Master?

Okay. The first thing you should know is that I do not consider myself an expert in writing. Yes, I’ve had education, training, and experience. Yes, I’ve been doing this for two decades. But no, that does not make me what I consider an expert. Why? Because there is still so much education, training, and experience for me to acquire in my craft.

I’m no expert — I’m a student. An apprentice. A Padawan. I’m the young grasshopper who’s desperately trying to figure out why I’m waxing a car windshield that isn’t there.

And I love it. I love to learn, and I pray I might never stop. I never want to think that I Have Arrived and can now rest on my proverbial laurels. If I ever reach that point, I shall die of boredom — for what adventure is there, if we are not continually facing challenges and absorbing new information?

So. I am a student, not an expert. But what fascinates me is that other people think I’m an expert. They read what I write, they see my writing as prolific, and they conclude that I have achieved a level of skill beyond that of a beginner. These people actually believe that I know what I’m doing! How weird is that?! I am flabbergasted. Apparently, I put on a really good show. *grin*

Good enough, anyway, that I get how-to questions from writer friends from time to time. I answer as best I can, drawing upon whatever resources I can. Sometimes, the resource is my own experience. Sometimes, it’s something another writer (whom I consider to be expert) has said. And yes, it’s flattering when a fellow word-smith asks me which tool to bring to the forge. But mostly, I appreciate the question because it challenges me.

Questions bring me to the forge, where I stand too-near the flames and risk getting singed, all in the name of attempting — yet again! — to purify my craft in the crucible. Were I an “expert,” I hope I would still appreciate and treasure the challenge. As a student, I cherish the opportunity to try putting into words something I have learned — and thereby glean more from it than I did in the first learning.

The Question

So when a friend of mine asked me what he should do about his writer’s block, I thrilled at the chance to help out a fellow writer while re-teaching myself a very needed lesson. My answer to his query went something like this:

Courtney’s Cure for Writer’s Block

1. Grab Inner Editor by scruff of neck.
2. Drag him down to the darkest depths of the deepest mental dungeon.
3. Lock him behind the most solid steel door available.
4. Break the key off in the lock.
5. Skip light-heartedly back up the mental stairs.
6. Write, write, write…
7. …and write anything, even if it’s just stream-of-consciousness stuff that has nothing to do with your current project, without thinking about it, without changing anything, without correcting anything, without stopping, for at least 20 minutes.
8. Take a break and go do something completely unrelated to writing.
9. Wash, rinse, repeat.

That all sounds very tongue-in-cheek, but it really does work. The point is to give yourself the freedom to write anything and everything, without stopping to think if it’s “good enough” or not. It’s all about getting past the intimidating, blank white space you’re trying to fill — be it paper or word processor screen.

Do not let yourself verbalize the question “Is it good enough?”

Never read something you’ve just written and think to yourself, “This isn’t good enough. This stinks.”

Of course it doesn’t smell good. It’s a fresh kill — the blood’s still dripping. What right have you to criticize? You’ve gotta finish the butchering — because yes, sometimes writing is exactly like slaughtering something that simply will not die (which is strange, because at the same time, writing is exactly like bringing something to life). And you’ve gotta drag the dripping thing to the stew pot, dump it in, and let the whole mess simmer for awhile. What you pull out will be Draft Two.

Whatever you do, don’t formulate the sentence “This isn’t as good as _______________’s.” That thought will turn your delicious fresh kill into carrion that only buzzards will pick over.

No Buzzards

Nope, I’m not an expert. I’m just an apprentice who wants to learn more and more and more…

…or maybe I’m a journeyman, who knows enough already to grab her lightsaber and whack off buzzard heads whenever she encounter them. There is yet something to salvage in that piece of uncarved meat! Let’s see what a little anti-writer’s-block seasoning will do.

And that’s WILAWriTWe!

Photo credit Julie V. Photography.

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On Document Templates: Searching for Sample Docs

By Aaron Pogue on Tuesday, July 20, 2010

This week I’m talking about how we turn plain copy into effective documents. As I said yesterday, the key to it all is understanding the elements of a document template.

When it comes to professional writing, I start nearly every project with access to the appropriate template for the document type I need to build, and then I just write some copy to fill it. Sometimes, though, I’ve got to build my own template.

Whether you have a template or not, if you’re working with a document type that’s new to you, your best shot at ending up with an effective document is to find some good models to imitate. The process of finding those samples is pretty basic research, but probably worth a review.

Find a Friend

As a professional Tech Writer, I’ve got it easy. If I need a sample for a document type I haven’t encountered before, I can go to my supervisor or either of the two Tech Writer colleagues in my cubicle row, and ask if they’ve got one handy. Even when they don’t, I can check our publishing team’s website for hundreds of published documents in every format we produce.

I end up on the other end of that, too, both with colleagues and with friends. When someone I know needs to write a business letter or format a resume, I’m often the first place they go to get advice. And the first thing I do is give them a good sample of what it should look like.

If you’re a student, ask your professor. Find a paper that got good grades and model yours after that. There’s a huge different between copying organization and style, and plagiarizing content.

Search the Web

Of course, the world’s great archive now is the internet, and if you can’t find a friend or mentor who’s written the document you need, I guarantee you can find someone on the internet who has. The challenge these is finding (and recognizing) a good one.

That’s where yesterday’s lesson comes in (and, for that matter, everything else I say around here). When you know which pieces make up a template, you can look at half a dozen different samples of the same document type, and compare and contrast to reverse-engineer the template behind them all.

If five out of six use the exact same set of section headings, you should probably include those sections in your document, too. If most of them have a cover page, you should build a cover page with most of the same information.

And where they’re different, you get to use your best judgment. Decide which ones are most effective at communicating their messages, and design your own document to match that style.

As I said before, there’s a big difference between copying content and copying organization and style. In the end, as long as you’re not going to run afoul of copyright law or plagiarism rules, it’s worth remembering the immortal words of my high school creative writing teacher:

A good writer is always ready to steal anything that isn’t nailed down.

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On Document Templates: Finding Firm Foundations

By Aaron Pogue on Monday, July 19, 2010

Yesterday I told the story of the photo frame template I built, and the wall that made me sad. I can’t claim I designed that image, because except for the backdrop I used, I followed someone else’s detailed, step-by-step instructions to make it.

The part that matters, though, was never the frame. What matters in that image is the detailed map of a nonexistent island chain. The frame just gives it context.

Working with Document Templates

It’s a big source of confusion (and misplaced frustration) for a lot of new Tech Writers, but Tech Writers don’t spend too much time writing. We spend most of our time searching for, learning about, and building up these frames.

This isn’t the first time I’ve talked to you about document templates. I’ve mostly talked before about how they save time and how to customize the moving parts in different writing programs, but this week I want to talk about how we choose the right template and figure out what to make those moving parts look like.

The Moving Parts

There are several key elements that go into any document template. The details change from one to the next, but this one set of pieces is essentially the definition of every document type.

  • Page size and layout. Is it a standard 8 1/2 x 11 or is it cut to match the other paperbacks on your bookshelf? Are the pages oriented portrait or landscape? Or are they square?
  • Text columnation. Is the text in one column? Two with a dividing line down the middle? Is one column reserved for special information, or is it just a broken page flow? How is the space on the page divided among the page’s columns? (That last question matters even if it’s single column, because that determines the page’s margins.)
  • Heading format, frequency, and hierarchy. Does your document need any headings beside the title? Does it have multiple volumes? Does it have chapters? Do you need to break chapters up into sections? Are there predetermined sections that should always be included? Where do those need to be?
  • Heading and paragraph styles. Once you’ve nailed down your heading hierarchy, how do you clearly convey it to the reader? Do you have multiple font sizes for the different ranks of heading? Do you use different formatting (like bold, italics, and underline) to differentiate them, or just whitespace?
  • Required metadata and optional metadata. What information about the document (not the document’s contents, but the document itself) does your reader need? What’s recommended, and what’s critical to make the document work? Should your reader provide any (or all) of these items? (For each of them, a good template tells you what information is needed, where to put it, and how to format it.)
    • Document title
    • Subject line
    • Executive summary or abstract
    • Revision number
    • Author’s name
    • Author’s address, phone number, email address, etc.
    • Recipient’s name
    • Recipient’s address, phone number, email address, etc.
    • Publisher’s name
    • Publisher’s address, phone number, email address, etc.
    • Date the document was written
    • Date the document was signed
    • Date the document was published
    • Copyright statement
    • Trademark information
  • Document structure. How should your document be organized? Does it need any of the following, and if so, what should they look like?
    • Front matter — whether it’s a Title Page, Copyright Page, Foreword, and Table of Contents, or just a one-inch letterhead — is usually a container for much of the document metadata mentioned above.
    • Body text is mostly governed by choices you made above, especially with heading hierarchy and styles. This is also where the bulk of your original content will go.
    • End matter often includes additional references (internal or external), and sometimes repeats critical metadata, but it almost never introduces new material.

By deciding which of these pieces to include and which to leave out, and establishing how to style each of them, you can shape a single bit of text into something that is immediately visually recognizable as a n0vel chapter or an epic poem, a business letter or a project status report, a blog post or a movie script.

Searching for Sample Docs

So now you’ve got a big long list of pieces, but how do you use that information? Well, if you’re a careful reader, you could go through that list and some of the posts I’ve published in the last month, and build a detailed template for Julie’s blogstory style (even though as a document type that’s basically just a name I made up).

You could do the same thing if you read somewhere that you need to write a query letter, and you’ve never heard of a query letter before. Or if you need to prepare a formal project report or a request for funding. If you have access to a document template, it often just looks like a half-written document, but if you know what it’s trying to define (that list above), then you know how to interpret the placeholder titles and the one-sentence chapters.

And there are certainly times when there is a standard way to prepare a document, but there’s not really any way to find a formal template. In that case, the best way to figure out how to write your document is to find two or three good sample documents, and reverse-engineer the template definition.

If you come back tomorrow, I’ll tell you how to find good samples and discover a new document template.

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On Document Templates: The Wall that Made Me Sad

By Aaron Pogue on Sunday, July 18, 2010

Welcome back to Unstressed Syllables, my blog full of writing advice where you get lots of practice reading. I get lots of practice writing here, though (which is one of the reasons I’ve been telling you for so long that you should start a writer’s blog).

I get practice with lots of other stuff, too — social networking, business building, generating sales copy, and designing illustrative graphics. That last, really, is the most demanding for me.

It’s demanding because the internet is such a visual medium. A blog needs some illustrations to break up the text column. Lucky for me, I know Julie V.

Even with that incredible resource at my beck and call, I still end up on my own from time to time — like when I need an illustration for a story set in my fantasy world. A couple times I’ve used the frontmatter map I drew and colored back in college, but if it’s sharing a page with any of Julie’s photos, it looks painfully plain.

So when it came time, about a month ago, to go back to that same image again, I decided to dress it up. I did some research, found a tutorial on Google, and then opened the image in Photoshop and got to work.

I built a picture frame to wrap around the image, then put together a nearly-transparent glass texture to lay on top of it. At that point it looked pretty impressive, but it lacked a visual context.

The tutorial went on with a dozen more steps to build a fake wall behind the image, but I had a different idea. With Trish’s help I cleared off the mantle over our fireplace, snapped a photo, and then used that as my backdrop.

(If you didn’t click the article link above, you can see the finished product here.)

It wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. I spent some time examining it with a critical eye, though, and after a while Trish finally said, “Well? What do you think?”

I said, “It makes me sad.”

She tilted her head, frowned, and said, “Why?”

I looked from the photo on my monitor to the blank wall above our fireplace and said with a sigh, “It’s not real.”

Finding Firm Foundations

Real or not, it was exactly what I needed — an empty frame creating a much more powerful effect out of whatever random image I happened to drop beneath it. I put in several hours making that illustration for one blog post, but in the process I not only learned how, I also built my own copy of a frame template I can use again and again and again.

As writers, we use document templates in precisely the same way. That’s what I want to talk about this week, so come back tomorrow for a close look at how to find (or build) good templates for a new document type.

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On the Public Domain: How to Use Free Art in Your Writing

By Aaron Pogue on Saturday, July 17, 2010

Yesterday I talked about the value of free art. And in the context of our ongoing discussion about copyright, I’m sure you’ve got some questions about the earning potential of free art, but you’re going to have to hold onto those questions for another week or two.

For now, I want to talk about the value of free art to you as an artist. Specifically, I want to give you some tips on using the public domain in your writing.

Illustration

Let me address the easy stuff first. By far the most common use of public domain art in new creative works is illustrative.

You see this every time you pick up a novel in Barnes and Noble and find a classic painting staring up at you as cover art. Those classics have tremendous marketing value because they’re so well-known, and they’re free. You know the accounting execs love that.

Of course, if you’re a blogger (and you should be), you’re probably already in the habit of using “free” photos to enhance your posts’ visual appeal. One of the best sources for these images is Flickr, which has made Creative Commons a surprisingly widespread phenomenon.

Now, Creative Commons isn’t the same thing as public domain. It places restrictions, withholding commercial rights or requiring an often unwieldy attribution, but it’s a type of free art, and it serves to remind us just how powerful access to art can be — for other artists, as well as for the public.

And that access extends to art in other media, too. There’s a wealth of music in the public domain, archival video footage that has proven hugely beneficial to documentary filmmakers, and — let us not forget — all the great classics of literature.

You can use textual illustrations in your writing every bit as much as photographs, excerpting sections of classic texts as anchor points within your stories, or spicing up a character by having him quote fifteenth century lyrics at random.

Back in that first post on copyright, when I talked about winning a writing contest to become lead writer for a videogame, I mentioned that my winning piece directly recreated the plot of an old Arthurian legend. If you’re well-read, that can be one of the best ways to use public domain prose in your writing: borrowing archaic material to breathe new life into it.

Derivative Work

When you get to that point, you’re rarely making a direct copy of the text, but one major aspect of copyright law is the protection of “derivative works” — so if I create a compelling universe with a compelling cast of characters, copyright law gives me the opportunity to sue anyone else who tries to write a sequel.

There is a Fair Use exception for “transformative works” because, in the eyes of the law, copyright is meant to encourage precisely that production of new art. But, as I’ve said before, the problem with Fair Use is that it’s incredibly vague — it can be a legal defense, but you’re going to have to risk going to court to figure out if your new satiric take on Batman is a transformative work that’ll earn you a fortune in merchandising rights…or if it’s a derivative that’ll cost you $300,000 and a possible prison sentence.

You can avoid all that worry by building your work on a foundation in the public domain. Batman and Mickey Mouse may be off-limits, but Robin Hood and the White Rabbit are fair game.

Let’s Get Derivative (Creative Writing Exercise)

The lovely Kelley, writing at a coffee shopI’m currently working on a project that’s a scene-for-scene remake of Ivanhoe, set in a classic sci-fi future and packed with enough action-adventure to make Michael Bay blush.

It’s a viable project, too. The story is compelling, the characters are engaging, and the set pieces could easily make good material for a big budget summer blockbuster.

Not only that…but it’s new. I’m not writing a single new plot element, but the story is an entirely new thing. I’ve invested real creative effort in the conversion, in finding the points that will best resonate with modern audiences, and I’m telling it all in a language more familiar to today’s readers than the clumsy “English” that old dude wrote in.

Try it for yourself. Pick a favorite classic, maybe a Bible story or a fairy tale (Moses and the Brothers Grimm are all well past life-plus-seventy at this point), and imagine how you’d make it into something your own.

It’s a fun exercise, but it’s also been the source of some incredible literature over time. One of the classics you might consider borrowing from is Milton’s Paradise Lost (one of my favorite fantasy author’s, Roger Zelazny, used that heavily as a source for The Chronicles of Amber), but that poem was itself a retelling of the Genesis story. Half of Shakespeare’s works were already popular stories before he put them in plays (and the other half were recorded history).

What story would you rewrite? Do you already have one in mind? Tell me about it in the comments. I promise not to steal it. I don’t have the time. As soon as I’m done with Ivanhoe I’ve got a modernization of The Aeneid lined up, and then I need to start doing my research on The Three Musketeers and Robin Hood. And that’s not even counting the 22 books still unwritten in my long-running sci-fi cop drama romance series based on the story of Martin Luther and the Ninety-Five theses….

The public domain is a treasure trove for writers, and it’s free for the taking. Spend some time getting to know it.

Image credit Julie V. All links to Amazon products in this article (mainly book titles) are affiliate links.

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