Stanzas and Lines

I have been reading quite a few writers' works here on Vocal. One prominent thing is the constant visual of line after line after line, with no page breaks, line breaks, stanzas, or the like. If there is not a tutorial on how to write on Vocal and use their tools, there should be one. A couple of things are hard to find and see.

The Truth of the Matter

One is an entire story or poem in any format. I am a reader and a writer, and I will just pass it by when I see it. The reader needs to know where to take a breath, where the topic shifts in a paragraph, or when a different person is speaking.

That being said, a single, continuous mountain of a paragraph can, more often than not, be split into a more visually appealing one. Think about when you pick up a book to read. Is it all one long paragraph without end? Would you even stop to read it if it was? No, me neither.

I am not sure why everyone is double-spacing every line. The font Vocal uses is very clear and large enough for most people to read. If anyone cannot see it, they've probably already adjusted the font on their device to their preference.

I am willing to bet that if you fix that simple issue, many more people will read your work.

Location, Location, Location

Another thing I have noticed is that few people know how to use title case or understand how a title affects how Google crawls your piece.

Free online tools can convert anything you need into the correct title case. All you do is plug the text into the box they provide and hit convert. The title must always be in title case, but I don't think many of you realize the subtitle does too.

What gets capitalized and how matters. Once you know it, it's easy to remember when and where to capitalize the word "the" and when not to. All the title case sites will explain that and more.

A subtitle is not a sentence to get the ball rolling. It is a very brief summation of the topic they are about to engage in. It's a learned skill, and you get better and better at it as you continue to write them and learn to abbreviate a thought.

The Neverending Stanza

Poetry has stanzas. Even prose poems have breaks. I read a great poem today, but halfway through, I grew annoyed and completely bored by its lack of form. I never finished it. I moved on.

Here is a tip for poets who haven't figured out how to traverse the distance between lines. Vocal's page editor isn't poetry-friendly, per se. So here it is.

Thing One:

Everything seems to have stalled
As if growth and life have halted
Drooping faces prefer to stay indoors
Grooming has also stopped
Who would want to step out to be melted?

Thing Two:

Everything seems to have stalled

As if growth and life have halted

Drooping faces prefer to stay indoors

Grooming has also stopped

Who would want to step out to be melted?

Notice the difference? Which is more appealing for poetry? The first, correct? I agree. Here's how to do it, step by step. You can do it as you write if you write here from the start, or you can edit what you paste from your Pages, Word, or another writing program.

Here are the first couple of lines: Place your cursor before the A in As, then press delete or backspace.

Everything seems to have stalled

As if growth and life have halted

Drooping faces prefer to stay indoors

This is what you will see.

Everything seems to have stalledAs if growth and life have halted

Drooping faces prefer to stay indoors

Next:

Leaving the cursor there, you hold the Shift key and hit Return, and this is what happens. It's simple.

Everything seems to have stalled
As if growth and life have halted

Drooping faces prefer to stay indoors

While you are writing a poem live in Vocal,
You can also hit Shift and Return, and you do this.
If you choose not to, you will see the next line

show up the usual way, like this.

One More Thing

Stories, essays, and most written work are not written with one sentence per line. I see one-line sentences all day long. Paragraphs are good things. They group related ideas together and separate them from different topics or thoughts. Paragraphs are transitional sections that help a piece make sense.

Think of it this way. Without paragraphs, imagine reading an entire book without taking a breath or stopping. Imagine reading on and on and on, without a break. That is what it looks and feels like when an article is not formatted correctly.

The constant one-line paragraphs don't make it easier to read. They make it harder to read and stomach. They make a story look unpolished. They make the writer seem inexperienced, as if they needed to fill a 1000-word essay in school and chose to write very big and use very, very, very, very to add fluff.

Don't get me wrong, we have all done it when we were young and were ordered to write some god-awful book report we didn't want to. But that was then, and this is now. We have grown up.

Look, I hope this helps some of you. I made some of these same mistakes last year when I began writing, but a kind woman took the time to school me on format, and I cannot thank her enough. I hope her suggestions to me help you.

The Necessary Google Monster

Some of us want to make something of our writing. We want to take it places and have it take us. That means we need Google. Like it or not, the beast is what drives outside readers inside.

We have all done it: Google this or that. What happens? Google crawls billions of written works and searches for keywords. But there's a catch. It will not look at a title if it is a mile long. It searches the first 40-50 characters for the content someone has just queried. That includes punctuation and spaces.

This doesn't give you much space to stake your claim on its attention, so it will pull your work onto that person's first page of the search results. Use your words and characters wisely.

Google also looks at the first couple of sentences of a story. All of this happens in a flash. If someone wants to read about peaches and they Google peaches, and your hook doesn't mention the topic, then guess what? You go to the back of the line, or at least the second, third, or later pages of the results list.

The hook is the part that catches the reader's eye and makes them want to keep reading. It's the attention grabber. It's akin to seeing something hot and wanting to see him or her turn around. You stay because you want to see what they look like. It's the first impression. Make it good.

I am here if anyone wants more info. I am always willing to help another writer succeed. If not me, then why not them? Every little lesson brings us closer to the goal. I hope you reach yours.