Johannes Mabapa Foundation

25/08/2025

Johannes Mabapa Foundation has got this ground-breaking development for you!

📔📖📖📖📖📔

Taking his repository of creative arts to the world wrapped in a unique style, Johannes Mabapa, author of "Tomorrow," cordially invites comments as to an eye-catching charcoal-hot title to be given to his publishing company in the pipeline.

A prospective publishing company's title should be chosen from the following strawberry-sweet titles:

1.Dynamic Publishers.
2.Golden Age Publishers.
3.Ditau Bathong Publishers
4.Lions Publishing House.

Please help me pick one!

21/06/2024

Plausibility

Plausibility is a crucial element a story must possess. Not all genres should be plausible in their narratives. Stories with a realistic narrative ought to be plausible at all costs. The plot should not be weaved with reckless oversight regarding elements that should develop it to what it should achieve.

The problem for most authors occurs when the plot consists of some technical elements, such as when one of the characters is a doctor, police officer, teacher, etc. Characters who are depicted as members of a particular organisation or institution with its organisational policy or code of ethics should behave in a way that readers find unquestionably plausible, that is, what they do is believable when judged against their natural or conventional environment. For example, doctors don't necessarily rely on circumstantial evidence regarding if one is suffering from a particular condition; a diagnosis should determine the cause even when the doctor has a lot of experience in the profession and can just tell without proper medical investigation. Likewise, the police are in forensics, ballistics, etc.

One more example is a natural environment. Who must expect dew or frost in a glorious sunshine? "He was found totally frozen in the cold, shivering" — make sure that "frozen" here is figurative for "feeling very cold," otherwise you will be lying. A literally frozen person (even when not dead) cannot shiver. At freezing point, he might already have developed a condition characteristic of an illness. Shivering is the result of the forces of heat and coldness colliding, and the body responds to coldness by producing heat to counter the body's core temperature drop. Dropping a love letter to your lover at a high altitude from an aircraft cannot cannot let it reach her or him directly as it will be carried away by a concentrated force of air; it may even fall hundreds of miles away depending on the altitude.

The human anatomy: "Soon after undergoing a hand surgery in which her tendons were fixed, she rushed to participate in her favourite sport of tennis." Wait! An operation should be followed by a time of recovery, normally with physiotherapy and/or occupational therapy sealing the process.

There are many implausibility errors authors and writers commit. What cannot readily be disqualified as implausible is a situation in which one says they have enjoyed a freezing part of summer and later experienced a warm part of winter during a holiday (in places like South Africa). This is not surrealistic; it is just real. It is possible.

05/04/2024

05/04/2024

Possible ways to recover from the writer's block:

There's nothing that frustrates, demotivates, and exasperates a writer more than finding himself or herself trapped somewhere along his or her special assignment — writing. Nothing qualifies any writer with miraculous immediacy from the writer's block, but every problem has its own remedy.

You've just started writing a seemingly mind-blowing story dear to your heart. Sadly, somewhere in the course of your penning it you've just found yourself having lost the direction. Your muse is in its dead man's slumbers. What should you do?

1. Revisit your story's theme and review if from the perspective of someone else who cares more than you or who doesn't care as much as you do about it.
2. Modify or blend the technique in which your characters communicate, e.g, verbal communication, mental communication, emotional communication, and body language.
3. Try to make your characters more human in realistic ordinary circumstances if your chosen genre has room for it. Ordinary human beings think. They imagine the best and the worst in their lives. Daydreaming is one of their personal attributes.
4. Add a tone of simplicity somewhere to boost the theme without oversimplifying your creative elements. If he or she was just angry, never unnecessarily say that he or she was furious. There is a particular very noteworthy reason for any emotion to happen within its natural bounds without the need to be exaggerated.
5. Focus on conflict. Give the conflict aggravating and mitigating circumstances. Do not force a villain to be always villainous without break. Even a serial killer can have a good heart of an instant and give a safe lift to a hitchhiker by a roadside.
6. Exaggerate with humour intended. Don't lose its effect of plausibility. It's acceptable to say that their rapturous laughter in a Sandton's beer garden reached as far as Dubai. *Hyperbole.
7. Check if it's simply your limited vocabulary that prevents you from progressing smoothly. One of the concrete blocks that should build the wall of your writing is a particular diction. There are glosses that should make your work glitter; therefore, it's advisable that you have a dictionary or glossary while any kind of grammar books is recommended.
8. Take a break and read other books.

A humble reminder: my book "Tomorrow" still costs only R250, the delivery cost (courier) — nationwide — included. Call 079 321 6816 or 060 549 9556 (also WhatsApp).

An ebook thereof is available on Amazon:https://mybook.to/JMabapa_Tomorrow

To be published: Bana Ba Kgoši.

14/03/2024

Typefaces

You may have fallen in love with a particular typeface as an author. The typefaces, or fonts, are either serif or sans serif. In simple intelligible terms, a serif font is an embellished one with distinctive pointed ends, which readily engages a reader as each letter makes itself immediately recognisable. The other one, sans serif, is original in its form and is typically considered dull.

As a writer, take into consideration the typefaces in which your book must be printed; the finished product that your book should be must include, among other things, an engaging typeface. It is common opinion that decorated fonts have the capacity to engage the reader's mind.

While you are already aware as an author or a particular writer that you should clothe your work with a cover that is quite right for the subject matter in question, the typeface is equally important.

Johannes Mabapa is a published author.
Author of "Tomorrow," a detective-romance novel.
©️ Johannes Mabapa 2023
Mecs Publishing

To place your order for the engrossing copy of "Tomorrow," call/WhatsApp 060 549 9556. Alternatively, call 079 321 6816.

R250 a copy — includes delivery nationwide.

Books to be published soon by the same author: 1."Treasures On The Moon" - a science-fiction novel. 2."Bana Ba Kgoši" - a Sepedi royal novel.

27/10/2023

The five most important components of learning — for essay writers and writers in general, are:

1. Pay attention to detail. If you are given a heading or your muse gives you a subject as to what to write about, don't just pay casual attention to it. Widen your eyes of concentration. Sharpen your mind. If you have to write according to a given instruction, read the question (as aloud as it will suit how you want to hear it) and listen to its tone. Try to paraphrase (rearrange the question — that is, re-ask it in one more way that serves the same intended purpose for your relative or better understanding of it).

2. Avoid a sense of assumption to understand. Be sure if you really understand a task or a question put forward regarding it. A sense of misconception can lead you to becoming a bad achiever against your intentions. For example, something having done "purposely" and "purposefully" might readily appear as synonymous and interchangeable in the context of your understanding of them as a writer or student or both. (They don't mean one thing under any given circumstances). If you purposefully (with a deliberate sense that you want to achieve something) have the will to understand, you're being perspicacious in your approach to learning. But if you intend to ignore such an element, you are acting purposely — it's deliberate or intentional — not the result of accident or sheer lack of good luck.

3. Always do your work by yourself and let someone else guide you as to where you should improve. The story or the essay is yours; it's not your editor's. Editors and proofreaders come only after you have taken your rightful place proudly and courageously.

4. Revise as much as you can. Read what you have written and find out if it has the required ingredients to make sense to you. Enjoy it. It's not an unnecessary pride in yourself through self-judgement. It's understanding what you should expect philosophically as constructive feedback from your editor.

5. Strive your best to adopt and develop a vocabulary that has the comparative capacity to give your work a distinctive style. Aim for good grammar and work hard to achieve it. To achieve this, you should buy yourself (or borrow) writing guides. It's quite possible if you are an avid reader who doesn't get tired of devouring the printed word. In other words, be a writing reader.

21/10/2023

Consistency

As a writer, aim for consistency. What is consistency? It is to be consistent — keeping an unchanged pace, rhythm, manner, tone, etc. within which every part of your writing is taken forward. For example, if the first sentence in your first paragraph has a contraction such as "haven’t" for "have not," you must strive your best to maintain the same style throughout your writing.

Consistency is an integral part of writing. Other examples for consistency: your choice of the type of English, i.e., British English or American English. Your choice thereof will determine your immediate correct use of spellings for certain words. For example, it is inconsistent to write "favor," "valor, "color," and "encyclopedia" — American English (preferred to "favour," "valour," "colour," and "encyclopaedia" — British English), whereas somewhere else you go on to write "rumour," "favourite," "practise - (verb)" and "skilful" — British English (preferred to "rumor," "favorite," "practice - (verb — and noun too)," and "skillful" — American English). Consistency is very important. There are many other examples.

I believe that you have found this piece of advice very helpful!

(Thank you, Joe Nyirenda)

04/07/2023

At Johannes Mabapa Foundation, we are glad, at last, to announce that we will launch a monthly essay competition entitled "The Literary Polisher." The aim of the competition is to ignite literary excellence and inspire motivation through the literary art. Entrants are not going to be at liberty to enter regarding topics that are going to be. The administrator of the page will give a topic per essay under which contenders should write accordingly. The essays will sharply deviate from a raw prose to something of literary element; hence, "The Literary Polisher." Excerpts from already published stories (or unpublished) will also be accepted (with due respect to copyright laws).

Stay tuned as to what will be the prize and all!

29/05/2023

Vocabulary: a golden passport to influential writing.

If you have a story to tell, be it a short story, novelette, or novel, obviously it's a matter of words in your mind, right?

The more words you know and the more you can combine them to form meaningful sentences, the greater the joy and satisfaction of your intended audience.

Remember: your reader's time must be appreciated as an important asset. If you tell a story about winning and being triumphant, let them relate to the journey of the victory in question. Let them dance to the songs about being celebrated conquerors themselves. Never send back to boredom a reader that takes his or her time to read your work to escape boredom. Give them breathtaking reasons to find your stories amazingly new every time they re-read them. Who doesn't like his favourite pizza once more just because he or she has eaten it yesterday?

A writer that wants to be celebrated must be an omnivorous reader in search of magical ways to write in a way that enthrals the reader. Amass the golden words. Explore a wealth of collocations and apply it to your writing.

If your setting includes birds, sparrows for instance, be familiar with how they fly, the food they eat, how they sing, etc. You will have a nest and nestlings in mind. Your creativity may compel you to write about birds' environment from a birdwatcher's view or a trophy hunter's. You need to be in their habitat.

The more words you know, the more you will thirst for telling thought-provoking stories. Be a reading writer. Don't show your target audience that you don't have time to study.