Muse Guide

Writers tutorial entry; the justification of controversies

The justification of controversies 
The essence of this article is not to present a viable argument but to secure potent opinions as regard the topic of discuss, as either a writer or a wonderful reader of all creatively crafted write ups. In our stories, quite often, we are left with the option of finding an end to a mystery baffling our readers, solving puzzles and appropriating the story climax. The end result of which ever blend of these factors we incorporate into our stories is the creation of the sensation of uplifting the readers into our story realm. This would eventually create two categories of readers. 
   1) Those that are completely conversant with our story world and could perfectly continue a fan fiction on your story. 
   2) Those that are mildly or very lost and hence has questions to ask as regard your story realm. 
The first category of readers is not our concern in this article but the other. The ending of a story most times could be controversial enough for readers to expect a sequel which to the writer truly never exist. These kind of controversial endings, are they meant to be consciously created or rather just a reflection of the reader’s comprehension capabilities? 
This bring me back to the topic, the creation of controversies in a story, which were left unsolved. Is it a good attribution to any story or a flaw? If the controversy is as a result of the reader’s low comprehension ability, are we to be concerned about the existence of such readers while writing our various stories? 
The conscious creation of such controversy had been justified by renowned best-selling writers who claimed it is a compelling spell that drags certain readers to the story as their inadvertent meditations towards solving or justifying the  controversies with the writer will keep them ready to read to the end to confirm if they have actually outwitted the writer. 
However aren’t the same controversies without a competent resolve not enough to bore certain readers who love justice? They love to see every developments, twists, turns and conflicts resolved most judiciously before they could be satisfied with any write up. Are these set of people meant to be ignore? Isn’t a writer duty also to write what people would love to read? Isn’t a writer also meant to be able to express himself in his most natural compelling way (A writer’s voice)? If that were to be the case then, are unresolved controversies a positive to a story or a negative? 
Before I round up, I will lay an example of a petty argument between me and a fellow writer. We both were reviewing a story in which one of the dubious cast was struck dead as a result of nemesis for her deeds, however this sin was committed by two, but only one received judgement. She then claimed that her death was not justified by her deeds and that the writer was too shallow in trying to justify her death by hanging it on the neck of nemesis. She was right to an extent, however, I yet asked her a question; how will a writer justify that which he does not know? What if a reader even gets to know more than the writer if he had been adequately absolved into the story realm? What if? 
In conclusion, I’d love to hear the opinions of dear readers as regard this controversial aspect of creative writing. Should the premise of justifying controversies absolutely lie on the shoulder of the writer? Should it? I await your responses. Thank you for reading. 
Abd-afeez Abd-hamid
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Writers tutorial entry; the justification of controversies

The justification of controversies The essence of this article is not to present a viable argument but to secure potent opinions as regard ...

The poor's poor voices

Decided to pick up my rusty pen of poetry today: pardon me if my ink appears in grimy scribblings.
The poor's poor voices
I was to scour the world, 
A sojourn for a purpose of one, 
I was to change the world, 
With the capture of that one voice.
Our generation has been robed. 
A larceny beyond comprehension, 
The wicked giggle at the tension, 
Mediated by our various losses. 
So how shall they merry at the sight? 
Of men in disarray in tearful plights. 
How shall they survive? 
If the wicked yet milk them dry.
Justice had be dashed a titan blow, 
It's eyes oozes smelly fluid of sorrow. 
Only the tatty ones in rags seeks justice. 
Array they stayed in line as the wicked serve them injustice.
A mirror of demeanor separate the  rich from the poor. 
A tale of dishonor, upon the lips of the poor it sprung. 
They wish an end to the rich's spree of terror, 
Their heart they wish would earn succulent core.
Nothing changes yet, businesses maintained status quo, 
Heroes that should have helped have all sunk to rust. 
If only their is a fate that honours the poor. 
Upon destiny's ride it shall lead them to freedom.
Upon all the inequalities, 
Upon all the sufferings, 
A say would have been enough, 
A plead would have been fair, 
But who would have listened? 
Of what worth are voices, 
If they cannot tingle ears of worth?
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The poor's poor voices

Decided to pick up my rusty pen of poetry today: pardon me if my ink appears in grimy scribblings. The poor's poor voices I was to sco...

Let your dialogue do the talking

Dialogue tags are not the place to get creative if you want to draw your reader in. Leave that to the dialogue itself. 
I’ve never met a writer, whether working on an epic fantasy novel or a true-life account of a harrowing experience, who hasn’t wanted her reader to get completely lost in the words on the page. While there are many things that separate fact from fiction, there’s one thing that all writers ignore at their peril: a good, hard, honest self-edit. Let’s talk dialogue. Fiction writers learn quickly that there’s nothing as terrible as stiff, unrealistic dialogue to pull a reader out of the story. And while non-fiction writers can’t falsify direct quotes, there’s plenty they can do to ensure the flow is natural. The first place to start is by cutting out as many dialogue tags as you can. You want the reader to read right over those tags as if they’re not there. Dialogue tags exist for only one purpose: to identify for the reader who is speaking in your manuscript. That’s it. 
You want the focus on the dialogue itself. You don’t want readers to get distracted by the tag. This is one of the most common mistakes new writers make. They think words like asked or said are boring or repetitive, so they try to use more interesting alternatives. Trust me: dialogue tags are not the place to get fancy. Dialogue tags should melt into the background. Said and asked are all you need. Resist the urge to use queried instead of asked, or exclaimed instead of said. All those flourishes will do is tell readers you’re a newbie. If you’re writing creative non-fiction, you get to have some fun and create dialogue in your story. It doesn’t have to be verbatim, as long as it’s true to your telling of the story.There’s also the tendency to use the dreaded –ly adverb in your dialogue tag. Consider this: Dialogue tags are not the place to convey emotion – the dialogue itself should do that. If you think you need an adverb to convey emotion, your scene needs to be written so the character’s dialogue and actions more clearly express that emotion. It’s the difference between showing and telling. Here’s an example we use in AutoCrit when explaining the problem with adverbs in dialogue. 
“I’ve had enough,” Simon said angrily. This simply tells us that Simon is angry. But that emotion isn’t demonstrated through his actions or the dialogue itself. Remember what we said earlier about dialogue tags: Readers read right over them. Their only purpose is to tell the reader who is speaking. So if you want the reader to feel Simon’s anger, you have to show them through the dialogue itself. Here’s how you might do it: 
“You disgust me. This conversation is over,” Simon said. Here, Simon’s words are angry, so you don’t need to rely on the adverb angrily to convey that. The dialogue is stronger and the emotion is clear. You could also include some brief actions or descriptions to eliminate the adverb and convey the character’s emotion. For example: 
Simon shoved back his chair and slammed his fist on the table. “I’ve had enough,” he said, clenching his jaw. “This discussion is over.” 
The actions and description here help show how Simon feels, so we can easily eliminate the word angrily from that dialogue tag. Whether you’re writing fiction or non-fiction, you are telling a story. Dialogue is one of the most powerful elements in storytelling.
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Let your dialogue do the talking

Dialogue tags are not the place to get creative if you want to draw your reader in. Leave that to the dialogue itself. I’ve never met a wri...

5 mistakes gutarists make on pitch harmonics

Your lead guitar playing will sound totally badass once you learn to play clean, articulate and screaming pinch harmonics any time you want. When done right, this technique adds MASSIVE amounts of drama, passion and fire into your guitar licks. Likewise, pinch harmonics. 
incorrectly, making mistakes that make mastering this technique impossible. 
To start mastering pinch harmonics right now, watch the video below to see how I helped one of my students to go from struggling with this technique to playing it accurately in just minutes: 
Now that you’ve seen how simple pinch harmonics are to play, here are the most common mistakes guitar players make when trying to learn this technique and how to avoid them in your playing:
Mistake #1: Not Knowing The Right Place(s) On The Strings To Play Pinch Harmonics To play articulate pinch harmonics, you must know where to strike the string with the pick and you must hit the string in that spot every time. If you simply strike the string in a random place, you will likely hear a sloppy noise instead of a clear harmonic and you won’t be able to consistently produce clean sounding pinch harmonics any time you want. How to solve this problem: 
Invest time to find the sweet spots on your guitar where you can produce the harmonic most easily. To do this, practice playing the harmonic in many different places along the string (sliding the pick up or down) to find where it responds the best. Watch the video above to see this approach demonstrated. IMPORTANT: Make sure to pause for 1 second between each pick stroke to LISTEN if the harmonic came out clear and strong before making any adjustments. Your ears and mind must be focused when practicing this technique.
Mistake #2: Muting The Harmonic With The Thumb After It Is Played. 
After you play a pinch harmonic, the last thing you want is to kill it before it has a chance to sustain. Yet, this is exactly what happens to most guitar players as they follow the common (wrong advice) to "strike the string with the pick first and then touch the string with the thumb. Fact is, both the thumb and the pick need to strike the string at the exact same time to produce clear pinch harmonics. How to solve this problem: 
Practice playing a scale (any scale) with all downstrokes while holding the pick very close to the tip. This will train your thumb and pick to strike the string at the same time, which is key to making the harmonic come alive. This will also train your thumb to NOT touch the string after you picked it (giving harmonics a chance to scream). All this will help you to produce the harmonics more consistently. 
Mistake #3: Not Looking At Your Picking Hand. Most guitar players are so used to looking at their fretting hand while playing, that they completely forget to pay attention to (and look at) their picking hand when practicing pinch harmonics. By looking at the incorrect hand, you cannot identify what you are doing wrong and what needs to be fixed to finally master pinch harmonics. How to solve this problem: 
Stop looking at your fretting hand (when practicing pinch harmonics) and watch your picking hand instead. 
Mistake #4: Not Integrating Pinch Harmonics With Other Guitar Techniques Most guitarists become so focused on learning pinch harmonics in isolation, that they never practice applying this technique into guitar riffs and solos. This makes all the time you invested into mastering pinch harmonics virtually worthless…since you won’t be able to use the technique when it counts. To test how close you currently are to mastering all of the most important lead guitar techniques, take this free guitar technique assessment. How to solve this problem: 
Set aside a portion of your pinch harmonic practice time to practice them in musical contexts… even if you still haven't mastered them in isolation. For example, think of a cool riff you like and implement pinch harmonics into it. As your pinch harmonics get better in isolation, ALL of your guitar playing (where these harmonics are used) will start to sound better as well. Here is an example of how to practice integrating pinch harmonics together with a guitar riff: Hear it. 
Mistake #5: Having Poor Vibrato Without vibrato, your pinch harmonics will sound lifeless. Even though vibrato itself is a completely separate technique, you MUST master it and integrate it with pinch harmonics to make them sound truly badass. Vibrato helps the harmonic to sustain longer and have a more aggressive/screaming sound. Think of pinch harmonics like fire and vibrato like the fuel for it. Every time you light the fire, pour fuel over it and make the flame grow larger!How to solve this problem: Set aside 10-15 minutes per day to practice and train your vibrato, just as you would work on any other guitar playing skill. To learn how to use vibrato to play killer pinch harmonics, read this article about how to master guitar vibrato. 
Mistake #6: Not muting Unwanted String Noise In Your Guitar Playing Controlling unwanted string noise is important no matter what you play, but it is especially important when playing pinch harmonics. Any little sound in the background (that shouldn't be there) will destroy the entire pinch harmonic and the emotion you intend to create with it. How to solve this problem: 
Use a combination of techniques in both picking and fretting hands to mute all strings except the one you are playing. The most effective technique to use for achieving this goal is the thumb muting technique - using the picking hand's thumb to rest on the lower (in pitch strings) and mute them. This is a technique I teach all my online guitar students to master to help them learn to play lead guitar cleanly. To learn more about this (and other) techniques for muting string noise, read this article about stopping guitar string noise.
Now that you know how to avoid the most effective ways to practice pinch harmonics, realize that this technique is only a tiny element of all that goes into becoming a truly awesome lead guitar player. To learn what other areas of your lead guitar technique you must improve to fully reach your musical goals, take a few minutes to test yourself and find out how close you are to mastering electric lead guitar technique. 
This article is courtesy of Tom Hess.
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5 mistakes gutarists make on pitch harmonics

Your lead guitar playing will sound totally badass once you learn to play clean, articulate and screaming pinch harmonics any time you want....

Exploiting your POVs

Exploiting your POVs 
The POVs are often a great tool you can use to initiate special effects/concepts in a story. These effects often are realisable using the first POV which when given a strong character, (I mean its identity) could earn your story the most amazing outlook you could hold on to. Let’s look at a story that begin as this: 
“I was there, but you wouldn’t notice, I was meant to be ‘a nobody” at the party, however I became somebody before it ended. Since I was a nobody at the beginning, you don’t need to know me yet, let’s talk about Sandra as she was the one earning the spotlight at the beginning. Sandra sat at the eastern end of the living room. Guests were scattered all around the mansion where the party held. John walked up to Sandra, he sat in front of her whispered some words and they both stood up and headed for the dance floor seconds later. I stood at a corner watching, the party is becoming boring, I had come alone and hoped not to leave alone. Sandra and john had had their fill of dancing, so they returned to their sit……” 
I can’t possibly finish that story in this article, however I can report on the POV usage over there. The narrator was at that party, however she hasn’t revealed herself. She is creating a kind of mystery, in fact at some point you might seem she is lying, she could have been a cast she will introduce pretty soon, yet she wouldn’t claim the identity of the cast to sustain its mysterious atmosphere. Even I have been claiming she is a he, what if she is some kid. Definitely, our narrator could be anybody trying to manipulate us for the major part of the story until at such peak when the revelation of his identity would be most sensational. 
I had a short story series I started years back, titled the “Telescopes above the clouds” in the series certain gods of known attributions in certain regions would tell a story involving them and the people that serve them as they watch their affairs via their fictitious telescopes above the cloud. The narrator being a god sees what happened above those clouds, narrates them narrates his intervention or their intervention if he eventually sought the help of the other gods. The story had such epic feel as the god’s characters and setting should. Hence the atmosphere of the story was hence captivating enough. Here is an excerpts from one of the stories from the series. 
“Men, they will never stop amazing me with their disbeliefs. My name is Orunmila and if you should ask a Yoruba man who I am, he would ask you to ask the next Ifa priest you see. So that faithful afternoon the sun that glared across the dense forest that I peeped at was a real bother. Falade was there at the lighter entrance of the forest.  He was pointing to the dense undergrowth, just beneath a tall dongoyaro tree, ‘the lion shall appear from there’ he told them. They looked at where he pointed, it was barely lit, and the undergrowth only gets a fraction of the initial sunlight from above. Then beyond the denseness were further darkness, it was however not so dark further inward as the undergrowth faded; but see, nobody dared explore as falade’s mention of a lion was scary enough” 
Once in a while the god (Orunmila) brilliant thoughts breaks the narration in the story and it further created a unique mystique as the existence of the god seemed to run parallel with the happenings on earth. Probably I will share the full story one of these days and the effect the superb POV Identity had on the story would be so glaring. 
The 2nd POV and 3rd POV can be exploited too however a very strong identity, with a compelling voice should be used. 
Choosing your POV correctly can adequately push your story in a direction you yourself would find engaging as you write, however choosing a wrong POV and giving it a boring Identity can give your story a slow momentum and a leprosy of reach. Learn to exploit your POVs adequately and you can move mountains with your stories. 
Abd-afeez Abd-hamid
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Exploiting your POVs

Exploiting your POVs The POVs are often a great tool you can use to initiate special effects/concepts in a story. These effects often ar...

Muse Guide

Writers tutorial entry; the justification of controversies

The poor's poor voices

Let your dialogue do the talking

5 mistakes gutarists make on pitch harmonics

Exploiting your POVs

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