Program: Writers Club Boot Camp, 3rd Edition
Date: 21st Oct, 2018.
Facilitator: Pastor Ogochukwu
The Writers Club 2018 Boot Camp was borne out of the need for members of Writers Club of Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministries Headquarters Youth Church to be well grounded in the craft of writing; to know the pros and cons of writing and to make sure each member becomes a better writer.
According to Pastor Ogochukwu, the ABCs of a good writer are:
Acceptance: As a writer you need to accept and recognise your gift as a writer. This is the first step towards becoming a good writer.
Believe in yourself: A good writer must believe in his/her ability to put out good content to his/her targeted audience
Creativity: Creativity is one of the important skills a writer must have. The beauty of writing is there is no end to how creative you can be.
Depth: A good writer needs to be deeply rooted in the word of God.
Example: Use examples, be it real life situations or fiction which people can easily relate to; to drive and capture the attention of your targeted audience.
Figures of Speech: A good writer must be able to use the figures of speech effectively. It tends to spice up your writing and also it helps you as a writer to drive home the point you want to make to your targeted audience. It also helps to avoid unnecessary repetition of words which makes articles cluttered.
God: For a person to be a good writer, he/she must have a cordial relationship with God in order to make positive impact.
Holy Spirit: A good writer who wants to make positive impact must get inspiration from the Holy Spirit because He is the key to successful writing – 1 Corinthians 2:11.
Innovative and Interesting: A good writer must be innovative by getting new ideas, not following just a particular path; like putting his/her audience in suspense by starting an article with what the audience thought will be written at the end thereby giving the audience no chance to predict what comes from you. This will make you stand out as a writer.
Jesus centered: A good writer centers his/her writing around Jesus no matter the genre of writing – fiction, non-fiction, sci-fi, poem etc. It still comes back to Jesus.
Knowledge: A good writer must have deep knowledge on the subject on what he/she is writing on, so it can be convincing to the targeted audience. This gives the writer an edge.
Lesson: As a good writer, in any of your work be it articles, poems, script writing etc., there must be at least one or two lessons your audience can learn after reading your literary work. It must not be void of lessons that people can learn from.
Message: A good writer must have a message he/she is passing to the readers about what he/she want the audience to understand about the writing; making the audience see through the eyes he is also seeing.
The beauty of writing is there is no end to how creative you can be
Novel: It must be new and original; the writing should not be copied.
Open mindedness: A writer must be able to explore new ideas not constricting him/herself to a specific rule. For instance, a writer who majors on writing sports. Such a writer should be able to move from that comfort zone of writing on sports to writing on politics, lifestyle etc.
Question: A good writer should be able to quiz his/her writing. He/she should be able to act as a critic to his/her work.
Reasonable: A good writer must be able to write articles that are reasonable, which appeal to the audience.
Short and sharp: A good writer should be able to write short and sharp articles in which the message is well understood, because there are some audiences that like to read concise articles. In order for them not to lose interest in your writing, it must not be long reads.
Understandable: Your articles must be understandable, your audience must be able to know the type of message you want to pass to them in the simplest form.
Voice of God: A good writer must be able to hear the voice of God, to know when God is speaking.
Wide: A writer must be able to read and write wide, meaning he/she must be knowledgeable on all issues etc.
A writer must be able to explore new ideas not constricting him/herself to a specific rule.
X-ray: The quality of an article determines the state of mind of the writer, the writer might be writing on an article which has to do with radicalism or how Christ loved His Church. From the article, one can know the state of mind of the writer.
Youthful: Your article must be youthful, something the youth can also relate with.
Zeal: Your zeal for writing must make you do extraordinary things for God.
In conclusion, all these qualities that have been pointed out has shown that it is not just enough to write, you need to possess the above mentioned qualities in order to be a successful writer and make positive impact.