Feminine Wiles: Creative Techniques for Writing Women's Features Stories That Sell

Reviewer's Bookwatch, March, 2005 by Betty Winslow

Feminine Wiles: Creative Techniques for Writing

Women's Features Stories That Sell

Donna Elizabeth Boetig

Quill Driver Books

c/o Word Dancer Press

1831 Industrial Way, Ste. 101, Sanger, CA 93657

http://www.quilldriverbooks.com/

1884956025 $14.95 184 p.

If you want to make it into the pages of magazines like Ladies' Home Journal or Woman's Day, Donna Elizabeth Boetig can show you the way. The cover of her book, Feminine Wiles, is as eye-catching as the covers of popular women's magazines, plastered with headlines that grab your attention and make you want to read what's inside, just like the newsstand magazine covers: Get Intimate With Your Readers. Why Gushing Doesn't Sell. Stark-Naked Interviews--Getting a Woman to Bare Her Soul. Inside, Boetig divides her information into four cleverly-titled sections that will move you from reading women's magazines to writing for them.

In the first section, The Chase, Boetig tells you how to come up with ideas and how to massage them to fit the magazine you want to sell them to. In addition, she gives you tips on how to write attention-getting query letters, how to do a good interview, how to get permission to tell someone's story, and how to use quotes appropriately and effectively.

The second section, (The Drama) demonstrates the use and importance of pictures and emotions to illustrate and add oomph to a story, while the third section, (The Main Event) gives several formulas and lists of steps for writing the actual meat of an article.

Finally, in The Bye Lines, Boetig demonstrates showing, not telling, fact-checking, marketing, and other end-of-the-process details. If being published in a big name women's magazine is one of your goals, reading Feminine Wiles will be a great jump-start. In fact, once you've finished, you'll be overflowing with ideas and possibilities. I find it so inspiring that it's one of the books I keep handy for days when I'm threatened with writer's block!