50 Pieces of Stephen Kings Greatest Writing Advice - Freewrite Store

50 Pieces of Stephen Kings Greatest Writing Advice - Freewrite Store Over his decades-spanning career, Stephen King has written an astounding 54 novels that have sold over 350 million copies. His work has been adapted into films, miniseries, television shows, comic books, video games, and more. It is no wonder Stephen King's writing advice is so frequently sought after. King has the unique ability to make readers feel every emotion on the spectrum: love, joy, rage, terror, disappointment, and sorrow. When he talks about writing, aspiring authors should sit up and pay attention. As writers, we want to make people cry, laugh, and wipe their sweaty palms on their shirts so they can better grip their books. Stephen King has mastered this. Though he’s an incredibly gifted writer, King shed blood, sweat, and tears to get where he is today, and was gracious enough to share his advice in his book,  On Writing- a must-read for aspiring and established authors - as well as multiple interviews and appearances throughout the years. His advice is the no-bullshit version of all those rejection letters writers receive, probably because King got a truckload himself.  As he put it, â€Å"By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.† In his own words, here is Stephen King's greatest writing advice: On Getting Started  1. The Scariest Moment  2. Starting Out in the Industry  3. Writing Short Stories On the Writing Process  4. The Best Advice He Ever Got  5. Avoiding Distractions  6. Starting the Day Writing  7. The Process  8. Write Like Yourself  9. Go Where the Story Leads You  10. Make Stories About People  11. Break Up Thoughts  12. Kill Your Darlings  13. Avoid Too Much Backstory  14. The Purpose of Symbolism On Grammar and Parts of Speech  15. Don’t Sweat the Grammar  16. Passive Sentences  17. Sentence Fragments  18. Avoid Adverbs  19. Grammar is Simple  20. Two Types of Verbs On Description  21. Don’t Over-Describe  22. Keep It Simple  23. A Learned Skill  24. Again, Don’t Over-Describe On Reading  25. Read A Lot  26. Duplicating the Effect of Good Writing  27. The Purpose of Book Genres  28. Technology and the ‘Death’ of Books  29. The Importance of Literacy  30. Good People On Inspiration  31. Amateurs Vs. Professionals  32. On New Ideas  33. Love it  34. Fulfillment  35. Perseverance  36. Take Risks!  37. Getting Happy  38. A Way Back to Life  30. Your Job is to Show Up  40. A Support System  41. Talent Renders Rehearsal Meaningless  42. Don’t Wait for the Muse On Editing  43. Rewrite  44. Finding Cultural and Thematic Implications  45. Reality in Fiction  46. Doors On Telling the Truth  47. Rudeness  48. Bad Writing  49. Don’t Let Others Shame You  50. The Most Important Things Are the Hardest to Say On Getting Started 1. The Scariest Moment "The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better." 2. Starting Out in the Industry "You don't always have to take the editor's advice. Sometimes the way you see it is the way it should be. I assume that every writer was a lot smarter and a lot craftier than I was. That turned out not to be the truth." 3. Writing Short Stories "The novel is a quagmire that a lot of younger writers stumble into before they’re ready to go there. I started with short stories when I was 18, sold my first one when I was about 20 and produced nothing much but – well I wrote a couple of novels but they were not accepted and a lot of them were so bad that I didn’t even bother to revise them, but the short stories were making money and I got very comfortable in that format. And I’ve never wanted to leave it completely behind." On The Writing Process 4. The Best Advice He Ever Got "It boils down to what Satchel Paige said: 'Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.' There will be people who like what you do and people who don’t. But if they’re picking over the last thing and you’re working on the next thing, that’s all yours." 5. Avoiding Distractions "It's pure habit. I write from probably 7:30 till noon most days. I kind of fall into a trance. It's important to remember that it isn't the big thing in life. The big thing in life is being there if you're needed for family or if there's an emergency or something. But you have to cut out the unimportant background chatter. That means no Twitter. That means not going to  Huffington Post  to see what Kim Kardashian is up to. There's a time for that – for me, it's usually before I go to bed. I find myself sitting hypnotized and looking at videos of funny dogs, that kind of thing." 6. Starting the Day Writing "I wake up. I eat breakfast. I walk about three and a half miles. I come back, I go out to my little office, where I've got a manuscript, and the last page that I was happy with is on top. I read that, and it's like getting on a taxiway. I'm able to go through and revise it and put myself –  click  Ã¢â‚¬â€œ back into that world, whatever it is. I don't spend the day writing. I'll maybe write fresh copy for two hours, and then I'll go back and revise some of it and print what I like and then turn it off." 7. The Process "For me the fun of writing novels isn’t in the finished product, which I don’t care about. There’s a guy over there looking at all the books on my shelf and to me those are like dead skin. They’re things that are done, but I love the process." 8. Write Like Yourself "I love D.H. Lawrence. And James Dickey's poetry, Émile Zola, Steinbeck... Fitzgerald, not so much. Hemingway, not at all. Hemingway sucks, basically. If people like that, terrific. But if I set out to write that way, what would've come out would've been hollow and lifeless because it wasn't me." 9. Go Where the Story Leads You "When I started [Salem’s Lot] I thought to myself, 'Well, this will be the opposite of Dracula where the good guys win and in this book the good guys are gonna lose and everybody’s gonna become a vampire at the end of the book.' And that didn’t happen. Because you go where the book leads you." 10. Make Stories About People "I think the best stories always end up being about the people rather than the event, which is to say character-driven." 11. Break Up Thoughts "You might also notice how much simpler the thought is to understand when it's broken up into two thoughts. This makes matter easier for the reader, and the reader must always be your main concern; without Constant Reader, you are just a voice quacking in the void." 12. Kill Your Darlings "Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings." 13. Avoid Too Much Backstory "The most important things to remember about backstory are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting." 14. The Purpose of Symbolism "Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity." On Grammar and Parts of Speech 15. Don’t Sweat the Grammar "The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story." 16. Passive Sentences "Two pages of the passive voice- just about any business document ever written, in other words, not to mention reams of bad fiction- make me want to scream. It’s weak, it’s circuitous, and it’s frequently tortuous, as well. How about this: 'My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayna was begun.' Oh, man- who farted, right? A simpler way to express this ideasweeter and more forceful, as wellmight be this: 'My romance with Shayna began with our first kiss. I'll never forget it.' I'm not in love with this because it uses with twice in four words, but at least we're out of that awful passive voice." 17. Sentence Fragments "Must  you write complete sentences each time, every time? Perish the thought. If your work consists only of fragments and floating clauses, the Grammar Police aren’t going to come and take you away. Even William Strunk, that Mussolini of rhetoric, recognized the delicious pliability of language. 'It is an old observation,' he writes, 'that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric.' Yet he goes on to add this thought, which I urge you to consider: 'Unless he is certain of doing well, [the writer] will probably do best to follow the rules.'" 18. Avoid Adverbs "The other piece of advice I want to give you before moving on to the next level of the toolbox is this:  The adverb is not your friend. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind. With the passive voice, the writer usually expresses fear of not being taken seriously; it is the voice of little boys wearing shoe polish mustaches and little girls clumping around in Mommy’s high heels. With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn’t expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting the point or the picture across." 19. Grammar is Simple "One who does grasp the rudiments of grammar find a comforting simplicity at its heart, where there need only be nouns, the words that name, and verbs, the words that act." 20. Two Types of Verbs "Verbs come in two types, active and passive. With an active verb, the subject of the sentence is doing something. With a passive verb, something is being done to the subject of the sentence. The subject is just letting it happen. You should avoid the passive voice." On Description 21. Don’t Over-Describe "In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling." 22. Keep It Simple "One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones." 23. A Learned Skill "Good description is a learned skill, one of the prime reasons why you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It’s not just a question of how-to, you see; it’s also a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing." 24. Again, Don’t Over-Describe "I’m not particularly keen on writing which exhaustively describes the physical characteristics of the people in the story and what they’re wearing... I can always get a J. Crew catalogue... so spare me, if you please, the hero’s 'sharply intelligent blue eyes' and 'outthrust, determined chin.'" On Reading 25. Read A Lot "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut." 26. Duplicating the Effect of Good Writing "You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you." 27. The Purpose of Book Genres "As far as I’m concerned, genre was created by bookstores so that people who were casual readers could say, 'Well, I want to read romances.' 'Well, right over there, that’s where romances are.' The thing about genre is, so many people are like little kids who say, 'I can’t eat this food because it’s touching this other thing.'" 28. Technology and the ‘Death’ of Books "The book is not the important part. The book is the delivery system. The important part is the story and the talent." 29. The Importance of Literacy "Reading is more than a door opener to a better job. It’s cool, it’s a kick, it’s a buzz. Plain old fun. Non-readers live just one single life. It may be a good one, it may be a great one, but a reader can live thousands. Sometimes when the right book falls into the right pair of hands, it lights a fire that leads to others." 30. Good People "You know what I like? When I go into someone’s house and ask to use the bathroom and see a bunch of books beside the commode. When I see that, I know I’m with my peeps, you know what I’m sayin’? People who read on the toilet, as far as I’m concerned, good people." On Inspiration 31. Amateurs vs. Professionals "Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work." 32. On New Ideas "Particularly in the Horror genre there are only three or four good ideas and we’ve all done them before. And it’s really – okay, I mean like, how many times in your life have you eaten eggs? But there’s always a new way to fix eggs and, you know, I look at it that way. You can always find a new way to do it. I think there are as many ideas as there are probing talented minds to explore those ideas." 33. Love it "I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever." 34. Fulfillment "I’ve written because it fulfilled me. Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side – I did it for the buzz... You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair – the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page. " 35. Perseverance "Stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure." 36. Take Risks! "Try any goddamn thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it." 37. Getting Happy "Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy." 38. A Way Back to Life "Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life." 39. Your Job is to Show Up "Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up." 40. A Support System "It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around." 41. Talent Renders Rehearsal Meaningless "Talent renders the whole idea of rehearsal meaningless; when you find something at which you are talented, you do it (whatever it is) until your fingers bleed or your eyes are ready to fall out of your head. Even when no one is listening (or reading or watching), every outing is a bravura performance, because you as the creator are happy. Perhaps even ecstatic." 42. Don’t Wait for the Muse "Don't wait for the muse. As I've said, he's a hardheaded guy who's not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn't the Ouija board or the spirit-world we're talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon. Or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up." On Editing 43. Rewrite "I cannot emphasize the importance of rewriting." 44. Finding Cultural and Thematic Implications "In terms of work, once I sit down to write and I’m in the story, all that falls away. I’m not thinking about cultural implications, I’m not thinking about genre, I’m not thinking about any of those things that have to do with what critics would talk about when they analyze fiction - all those things go away. But they only go away in the first draft. And then you put stuff away. When you come back to it, you read it and you say, these are the important things, this is where lightning struck for me. Those are almost always things that are cultural and thematic, and I just try and highlight those." 45. Reality in Fiction "You can never bend reality to serve the fiction. You have to bend the fiction to serve reality when you find those things out." 46. Doors "Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open." On Telling the Truth 47. Rudeness "If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway." 48. Bad Writing "Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do―to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street." 49. Don’t Let Others Shame You "I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all." 50. The Most Important Things Are the Hardest to Say "The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings – words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out." BONUS:          More Resources: "The Last Word: Stephen King on Trump, Writing, Why Selfies Are Evil" - Rolling Stone   "The Blue-Collar King: An Interview with Stephen King" - LA Review of Books "Stephen King, The Art of Fiction" - The Paris Review "Stephen King talks about his writing process" - Bangor Daily News And most importantly, On Writing by Stephen King.

The Coup d'tat of 18 Brumaire Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The Coup d'tat of 18 Brumaire - Essay Example This is due to his great skill during wars and his help during the French revolution. He also contributed to imperial democracy which was widespread in Europe during the French revolution. Since his childhood, he trained and served as an artillery officer in France. Born of a noble Italian, he became famous too fast that he was soon included in the French army. To his success, he led to the success of an invasion in the Italian peninsula. After his leadership and military tactics, he became staged leading to his name as the First Consul. He staged a coup d'etat in 1799 but it did not work in the overthrow of the then present government (Bader 25). Napoleon also led the French to Napoleonic wars in the 19th century. The wars involved all the major leaders and states in Europe. The war took long but in most of the cases, Napoleon helped his army to conquer new states. In his wars, Napoleon worn most of the wars in Europe through improvising on war strategies while were advanced as comp ared to his enemies. Through his wars and victories, he was able to maintain the French as a sphere of influence. Formation of alliances with allies during the wars helped increase his manpower that served the army. Invasion of Russia in 1812 and the peninsular war marked Napoleon’s turning points fortunes and successes. During the Grande Armee, his reputation was badly damaged such that it was not recovered in future. He was later defeated by the Sixth Coalition in 1813. This consecutive attracts led to his exile to Elba. He then decided to get into war again but lost. This led to his return to power and war and was defeated in 1815 at the battle of Waterloo. He found out that he was not ready for most of the French wars due to his deterioration in war tactics. He decided to continue living in confinement at a British island named Saint Helena. After his failed war attempts he gave up and late died of a stomach cancer. However, this information was only available he royal me mbers. Some of scholars and researchers speculate that he was targeted by his enemies in war and was issued with arsenic poison to help terminate his life and leadership in the French military. Napoleon Bonaparte and the Coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire It was a first French consul that aided to terminate the French revolution. The coup was led by Napoleon Bonaparte since he has exposure to advances military and leadership tactics. He also had a great influence to the French where he was able to convince physically fit men to join the army. This led to the creation of a strong army that did not fear any enemy during wars. Some scholars argue that he had charismatic type of leadership style that helps him to obtain a large population of followers. Since he was bright and gifted in tactical situations, he was able to organize the coup of 18 Brumaire without knowledge of the other leaders on 9th November 1799 (Englund 22). The coup had several impacts such as overthrowing the Directory and r eplaced it with the French Consulate which was widespread at the moment. Karl Max in his studies was able to name the coup as the ‘Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon’ which was derived from the 1851 coup by the nephew of Napoleon. However, Napoleon had come up with other coups to come up with the Brumaire coup. General Jean Victor Marie Moreau was an ally to Napoleon and he helped in the coup (Englund 22). Coup of 18 Brumaire and its contributions to the general course of the French revolution The coup led to the crushing of the Directory. However,

Essay Chosen organisation IKEA Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Chosen organisation IKEA - Essay Example But, the strategy of IKEA is to target middle class families on global level with variety in designs, quality and price. Companies like Sears, JC-Penny, Flanigan and Raymour are competitors to IKEA in the USA. Competitors in Europe include companies like John Lewis, Argos, B&Q and TESCO. Apart from furniture, the extensive range of products of IKEA includes lighting, textiles & rugs, Kitchenware, flooring, storage furniture, beds and mattresses tools and hardware. The IKEA Concept is based on offering a wide range of well designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them as mentioned in the website of Inter IKEA Systems B.V. --------------------------------- 1. The Local, Ikea hit by strikes in France, 14 February 2010, http://www.thelocal.se/24980/20100214/ (accessed April 19, 2005). The IKEA Concept guides the way IKEA products are designed, manufactured, transported, sold and assembled. 2 IKEA's business stra tegy hinges on sustainability and environmental design. The sustainability programs of IKEA envisage social, environmental and economic issues. Internal Environment Strengths and weaknesses of a company are mostly related to internal aspects. The internal environment of IKEA in terms of competitive advantage, market position and financial resources, is by and large conducive for a sustainable growth. Competitive advantage of a company arises out of several factors and the business plan which is very difficult to duplicate and the absence alternate products available cheaply enable IKEA to exploit the opportunities effectively and overcome the external threats. IKEA has established name for itself with designs, quality and competitive pricing in the markets world over. The company has been successful in leveraging its core competency in furnishing to a complete range of related or associated products ranging from flooring to lighting in its business by taking advantage of the externa l environment. Value creation and value addition has been a constant endeavor of the company through continuous introduction of new designs for keeping its position ahead of the competition. . Intangible resources are more difficult for the competitors to understand and replicate the models for catching up with a company in competition. Constant innovation is possible only when the invisible and intangible resources of the company are superior. For instance, special collection of home furnishings using recyclable or unusual materials is a novel idea in tune with the environmental awareness among the public. ------------------------------ 2. Inter IKEA Systems B.V., The IKEA Concept, http://franchisor.ikea.com/showContent.asp?swfId=concept2 (accessed April 19, 2011). The other special features internal environment in the case of IKEA are Modernized plants, global network for distribution, expansion in line with the globalization, balanced and efficient business model, innovative mark eting strategies, cost structure and organizational culture. For example, the relentless cost cutting exercises undertaken by IKEA has been one of the main factors which catapulted the company to its

Monster by Sanyika Shakur Essay Example for Free

Monster by Sanyika Shakur Essay The book Monster by Sanyika Shakur is the story of one gang member’s life of crime growing up in a crime ridden neighbourhood outside Los Angeles. Then known as Kody Scott but given the name Monster by his fellow gang members because of his vicious and ruthless acts of violence, Shakur relates a life of crime that started at adolescence and escalated quickly. He relates to the reader that the only feelings of belonging and family that he truly experienced were in the family created by his fellow thugs through a life of shootouts and gangbanging. In the book, Shakur expresses memories of his mother’s only reactions to his crimes being disapproval and detachment, rather than concern or love. There is little evidence of order or community in Shakur’s experiences either in his time on the street or during his periods of incarceration. The novel Monster and the life of Sanyika Shakur paint a picture of a life ruled by the concepts of the social disorganization theory. The social disorganization theory, formulated by Burgess, Shaw and McKay, proposes that delinquency and crime are the results of communal institutions like family, church, school and local government fail and stop being active structures within a community. These communal institutions enforce social responsibility, care and concern for the community and positive behaviour within the community. When these institutions degrade and stop playing active roles in the lives of the citizens of a community, the organization and social responsibility of the community is lost and crime and negative behaviour can spread in their place. The memory of Kody’s graduation at the beginning of Monster is an example of the prevalence of social disorganization in Shakur’s life. He relates how, at the age of 12, his graduation from grade school is treated as a family event and attended by all his siblings, an aunt and an uncle. But as soon as the graduation ceremony ends and the family returns home it disintegrates, with the other authority figures leaving and Kody being yelled at by his mother to clean up his room. There is no praise, no positive reinforcement, just yelling and orders. As a result Kody flees for the place that he feels he will get that acceptance, love and sense of accomplishment – the hangout of a local gang member. It is in this early experience that it can be seen how the life of a gang member, in young Kody’s eyes, will meet his needs far better than living the life of a civilian and working a regular job, as he describes the clothes of one gang member he emulates as, â€Å"Things our parents could not afford to give us† (Shakur 6). He has been given no reinforcement from his family unit, a family where there is seemingly little or no structure, so he finds that structure and reinforcement, along with the promise of better things, in gang life. Later, after being released from prison, Shakur reflects on his neighbourhood that he grew up in and recognizes its shortcomings: â€Å"I couldn’t believe the drabness of the city. Burned-out buildings and vacant houses took up whole blocks. Gas stations and liquor stores owned by Koreans were on every corner. Mexican merchants hung on corners, hawking oranges like dope. The obvious things that had been there all along I never saw differently† (Shakur 360). This illustration paints a picture of a neighbourhood that is rife with the characteristics of a socially disorganized environment. Shakur mentions no schools, no churches, no public parks or recreational sources of positive enforcement. The things that stand out to him are liquor stores and Mexican fruit sellers. There are burned-out buildings and vacant houses, representative of the void where positive reinforcement and social responsibility is blatantly absent in his community. As a result, these streets that now cause him to feel depressed are the same ones that led him to a life of crime and murder. The things that are absent from the streets that Shakur sees were also absent from his life. He never mentions school again after that early graduation memory except to say that he never went back, and there is no mention of church at all by him or his family. The concept of faith is so foreign to him that he does not understand it when the Muslim leaders in prison try to explain faith to him. There is no evidence of social responsibility in the neighbourhood that Shakur describes, only poverty and businesses like liquor stores that provide sources of negative distraction from life and responsibility instead of encouraging improvement or positive behaviour. One of the elements of gang life that appealed to Shakur was the structure provided by the organization of gang sets. He states, â€Å"All attempts at new ideas are not successful. Sets fail, much like businesses. Much work goes into establishing a set. With the success of a set comes universal recognition† (Shakur 81). This description indicates that Shakur’s way of thinking and personality would have benefited from a more positive source of structure and organization, such as in church, school or a community work program. In this illustration Shakur explains that successfully organizing a gang set garners recognition and respect, the ultimate goal. But the gang members he’s organizing with have not been taught how to organize themselves for a positive goal, like a school athletic team or a church choir or study group. In the absence of that positive reinforcement their organizational skills turn to forming a successful set that will have adequate numbers and sufficient weapons to launch an attack on gang rivals. The social network that should have existed within the community as a source of strength and positive reinforcement was replaced by a social network within the gang community, spreading violence and drug use throughout a community weakened by lack of leadership and socially positive structures. There is a sense of apathy portrayed in the neighbourhood that Shakur grew up gangbanging in that allowed the social disorganization to spread. He describes occasions in which he and fellow gang members would follow rivals into local businesses to assault them and business owners would simply step out of the way. This is another scenario in which positive behaviour could have been reinforced. The local businesses do not represent a traditional social structure like a school or a church, but a group of local businesses banding together to stop gang violence on their premises and to enforce the law against crime and encourage local youth towards more positive pursuits would have produced the same effect. Instead, other citizens turn a blind eye to the theft and violence that occurs on their property out of fear or apathy. This attitude allows the disorganization to occur just as the failing of the communal institutions does. Shakur’s experiences in the multiple prisons in which he is incarcerated also provide evidence of a lack of structure or positive reinforcement. Shakur repeatedly gives examples of prison guards that mistreat and beat African American inmates because they are African American or because they are gang members. When discussing the juxtaposition of the environment he grew up in with the prison environment he explains that much of the disorganization and violence in prison stemmed from, â€Å"the fact that most of us grew up in eighty percent New Afrikan community policed – or occupied – by an eighty five percent American pig force that is clearly antagonistic to any male in the community, displaying this antagonism at every opportunity by any means necessary with all the brute force and sadistic imagination they can muster†(Shakur 223-24). In a socially organized society law enforcement would be another structure that would reinforce positive behaviour within the community and help to encourage a sense of community responsibility. Here, Shakur describes a police force where the opposite is true. Instead of encouraging positive action the police antagonize citizens, especially those that are male, and use brute force and unnecessary violence to enforce the law, while taking advantage of their position of authority over the citizens. Instead of using their authority to be role models within the community and protect the people from crime by discouraging it, the police that Shakur grew up with on his Los Angeles streets abused their power and took advantage of their authority to wrongfully accuse Shakur and his community. This represents a clear departure from the social structure necessary for social organization, and a degradation that could have definitely resulted in the presence of social disorganization instead. The structures of authority within the gang world relate Shakur’s need for reinforcement and organization that he didn’t find in his social community. During his stay in prison he describes plays for power in which an inmate member of one gang would physically assault or publicly humiliate an inmate member of another gang as a means of establishing dominance for himself over the other inmate and for his gang set over the other gang set. Again, this is an example of the lack of social structure, both out in the community and within the confines of the prison, resulting in a social structure and community spreading in the criminal world and encouraging negative behaviour and crime. It is in this prison system that functions as a microcosm of social disorganization that Shakur discovered the New Afrikan Independence Movement, which is presented as a contrast to the unstructured, violent, socially disorganized world that Shakur has known. Again, he feels a sense of belonging in the structure and positive reinforcement of his attitude. He learns to take pride in his heritage and where he is from instead of reacting out of anger and ignorance at the police and other members of society that he feels degrade him. In the movement Shakur explains that he learned that his behaviour was directly related to the environment he was in and the reinforcement he was given, and that the only way to create a positive environment for himself and his people was to create one. In himself, Shakur develops his own social organization. He describes how he left the gang community while in prison and expresses surprise that there was not more resistance. It makes sense that after a life in the gang world where any opposition or threat to the authority and structure of the gang was met with anger, violence, and potentially death, that Shakur would be apprehensive about announcing his decision to turn his back on gang life and his surprise at the calm reaction. Shakur also changes his life outside of prison, instructing his friends to not address him using the N-word and refusing the cocaine they bring him. The reactions of his friends and family to his new attitude and outlook on life illustrate the reinforcement of social disorganization. His gang member friends try to give him money and drugs right away so that he can delve right back into a life of illegal activity and crime. His mother displays a detached, almost unemotional attitude that indicates that she doesn’t think it’s possible for him to avoid returning to the gangbanging life he knew and make a new life for himself. In her reaction, his mother displays all the characteristics of a socially disorganized community in her inability to offer positive reinforcement or organizational help or structure. It is only through Shakur’s will and new sense of purpose that he escapes the socially disorganized world he lived in for one that is organized with the structure and positive reinforcement he needs to succeed. Works Cited Shakur, Sanyika. Monster. New York: Grove Press, 1993.

The Three Major Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology Essay -- Sociolo

Introduction Sociologists develop theories to explain and analyze society at different levels and from different perspectives. Sociologists study everything from the micro level of analysis of small social patterns to the â€Å"big picture† which is the macro level of analysis of large social patterns. Sociologists employ three major theoretical perspectives in sociology today. They are the structural-functionalist perspective, the conflict perspective, and the symbolic interactionism. The structural-functionalist perspective is done at a macro level and its focus is on the relationships between the parts of society. The Conflict perspective is done at a macro level and its main focus is on how the wealthy controls the poor and weak. Symbolic Interactionism is done at a micro and it focuses on the use of symbols and face to face interactions. Structural-Functionalist Perspective The structural-functionalist perspective looks at society as a complex system composed of various parts much like a living organism. Each aspect of society contributes to society's functioning as a whole. Social institutions play a key role in keeping a society stable. All societies need certain things to survive (Newman 2010). Auguste Comte (Newman 2010) pointed out the need to keep society unified as many traditions were diminishing. He created the term sociology. Auguste Comte suggests that sociology is the product of a three-stage development. Talcott Parson (Parsons 1951) sees society as a collection of systems within systems Parson determined that each individual has expectations of the other's action and reaction to his own behaviour, and that these expectations would be derived from the accepted norms and values of th... ...analyzing a social issue because neither of the perspectives solely addresses all the possibly circumstances of an issue. Works Cited Durkheim, Emile. 1915. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: A Study in Religious Sociology. Translated by Joseph Ward Swain. New York: Macmillan. Goffman, E. 1959. The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, NY: Double Day Parsons, Talcott. 1951. The Social System. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Newman, David N.2010. Sociology: exploring the architecture of everyday life. Mead, G. H. 1934. Mind, self and society and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Merton, Robert K. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press. Mills, C. W. 1956. The power elite. New York Oxford University Press. Weber, M. 1947. The theory of social and economic organization. New York: Free Press.

The Department’s Management is Sound

Obviously, this kind of situation shows lack of strategies in the financial management area of the department. It may be possible that the department is able to provide themselves all the resources they need, thus allowing them to provide satisfactory service that their department is expected to provide. However, beyond the department†s activities of supplying themselves with sufficient resources, there may exist an inability to monitor and effectively handle their financial resources. Therefore, causing the department to go over its budget. Another problem that may exist in the department causing the over budget problem is its inability to evaluate and consider the advantages and disadvantages of every action that they take. For instance, activities such as hiring of new employees may be seen by the department to be constructive for the different projects that it handles. However, considering the cost of hiring new employees may be overlooked by the department†s management. Inability to decide on what is the best solution to take or inability to find alternative solutions for a problem may be another characteristic of the department that causes over budget problem. The success in managing a department does not only depend and cannot be measured only on how a department is able to perform its duties to a company. Instead, the measurement of a real successful management are the efficiency and accuracy of the strategies used to become successful. For instance, allocating sufficient employees to a project may be helpful to a project. It may also be effective because of enough manpower to complete a project. However, is it accurate and efficient for the company†s expense? A drawback of too much employees† idle time may exist. This results to the department spending money for employees† unproductive hours.

Various Policies Of The Us Government Toward Native...

History 17B Midterm #1 Zack Jodry History 17B Professor Pritchard March 10th, 2015 Jodry 2 Part One: Explain the various policies of the US government toward Native American tribes, 1870-1890. Give concrete examples of these policies and various tribal responses to US government actions. America’s Gilded Age. A time where in the span of 20 years, a major amount of progress has made its way to our young nation. The Statue of Liberty made its debut on October 1886, Railroads became a new way of economic power and transportation of goods, and almost everyone moved out west to seek new lives with the hopes of fortune in mind. However, with America expanding and renovating itself after the end†¦show more content†¦It was the beginning of the end not only for the homes of the natives, but their lifestyles would be changed too. â€Å"The federal government pressed forward with its assault on Indian culture. The Bureau of Indian Affairs established boarding schools where Indian children, removed from the â€Å"negative† influences of their parents and tribes, were dressed in non-Indian clothes, given new names, and educated in white ways.† Life would become increasingly difficult for our original settlers. But it was either conform to the †Å"American† society or worse be removed completely. In 1887, The Dawes Act was issued by President Grover Cleveland in hopes of dividing every Indian land and selling it into smaller forms offering their own private property which was then auctioned off by white Americans. â€Å"Indians who accepted the farms and â€Å"adopted the habits of civilized life† would become full fledged American citizens.† Many Indian men, women, and children had to leave their previous lives behind in order to have some sort of freedom. This meant cutting their hair short, wearing non traditional tribal clothing, and practicing christianity. However, few Indians were respected as American citizens because many of them couldn’t give up