Teachings,+Writing+Teachings

=Writing Teachings= (By Sam)(ael) (Return to Teachings) Writing Teachings Writing teachings is an art. Often you are passing on some skill or understanding so you must incorporate the 'Writing Skills' section into this somewhere. This section focuses primarily upon how to write a good Teaching of any kind. Below are assembled several points to make sure are in your teaching and then a few extra parts that can really make a dull teaching interesting.

__**Clarity**__: Often simplicity is the best thing to go with. Use short and clear sentances to make a short and clearly logical point. Practice explaining things so that even a child can understand what you are talking about.

__**Grammer and Spelling**__: When writing a teaching you should use spell check whenever you can and avoid using emoticons, appreviations, and slang of any kind.

__**Logical Course**__: Your argument, point, or subject should have an introduction to the topic, some information at the center explaining or proving a claim or subject and some wrap-up before you come to your conclusion. Sometimes when you close you should do it with a question that causes reflection. All Teachings should have some basic structure like this. It should feel to the reader like counting from 1-4 instead of trying to remember 4231.

__**Fact**__: Finding facts can be tricky. You actually have to have good sources and know what you are talking about to pull it off, but if you get some facts that help make your point and you use them in a way that helps to impress your point upon the reader or educate them by providing some real numbers behind the concepts you are detailing your teaching will carry better all around.

Extras __**Emotion**__: Emotion is important. Every word you use can change the way reading the teaching feels. There is such a thing as aggressive writing and pacific writing. Poetry is full of graceful writers weaving sweet words into stories and charming expressions of ideas. You can use your words and ideas to communicate hatred, fear, interest, excitement, or even joy through your teachings and if the writing is good then the reader will feel what you wrote as they learn what you are teaching. These techniques are good for emotional teachings like on the values of hatred as a sith passion, or joy for the great 'whatever' after death that waits for the righteous. Be sure you are subtle about how you communicate your emotions. Being too strong is uncomfortable and draining for readers so you want to draw their emotions in and then take them on a ride. This is a great way to follow up an attention getter.

__**Stories**__: Stories can be the life or death of a teaching. If you tell a pointless story or the story barely correlates to your main point it can wreck the whole teaching. If you provide a short story that doesn't go too far into the details that aren't part of the lesson and the story is tasteful and INTERESTING it can help the reader understand and relate. There is something magical about the ancient art of telling stories. People have grouped around camp fires for thousands of years to trade stories about all kinds of things. Something about the imagination creating stories also makes your imagination lean closer even for a bad story. That is how most TV shows sell. Imagine what a good story can do for an important lesson. Two things to watch out for with stories is stories that are not pretty brief, and stories that don't have a moral and interesting content.

__**Experiences**__: Sharing your own experiences is the same as telling stories but if anything your own experiences are much more dangerous. It can make you seem self centered or be a bad story to tell even if it meant a lot to you personally. However... A Good personal experience can bring the moral home to another person's heart in ways a normal story cannot. This is especially true for a verbal presentation. Something about the way your eyes light up when you talk about something amazing you discovered makes the story ten times as good.

__**Jokes**__: Jokes can be a great way to open a speech or a talk but they can be very unprofessional. You should not use a Joke to open most teachings but there is a rare chance in the rare topic to pull it off and actually succeed in providing a valuable moral safely.

__**Demonstrations**__: Again, like a story a demonstration is a great way to teach people. When I talk about atheism and how I disagree that life just miraculously started in some puddle at the beginning of time I take a shoe, untie it, put it in a plastic bag and give it to someone I am talking to. I tell them to shake the bag up and down. They do. Then I ask them whether of not that shoe would ever get tied back into a perfect knot if they shook that bag forever. When they say no I explain that life is a much more complex thing that a pair of shoelaces getting tied and I tell them firmly that I believe God designed and created us.

__**Allegories**__: Allegories are an excellent way of teaching. Jesus Christ taught in parables which were stories about one thing that most common people understood (like farming, wine making, being a shepheard, or going to a wedding) that could help you understand and learn about other things that you didn't understand. Allegories are amazing tools of instruction because they can teach a whole group of people at the same time. A Lawer, a begger, and a priest could all leave Jesus' Lessons with increased knowledge and understanding even though the three were on entirely different levels of education and spiritual understanding. Allegories are stories that have simularities to what you are teaching. For examples you sould Study Jesus' parables found in the king James Bible.

These are my suggestions and my advice. I humbly submit them to you to help in the construction of your own teachings and any mode of text communication.

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