8 Rules for Telling Stories on Your Blog
This is a guest post by Jennifer Fulwiler.
For those of us who have diary-style blogs in which we offer readers a glimpse into our daily lives, there are times when we find that we have to write a long post in order to convey a story. However, it can be hard to find tips for creating long blog posts since a cardinal rule of writing for the web is to keep it short.
Web readers do occasionally read posts like this if they’re done well. I believe that the key to getting visitors to thoroughly read a long story is that it first must be scannable. When a reader comes across your blog and sees a long post she is going to take no more than a couple of seconds to ask herself, “Is it worth my time to read this?” Here’s how to show her that the answer is yes:
1. Start with a bang
Writing a story for the web is different than writing a story for print publication. Web readers have much shorter attention spans and will quickly move on if a post doesn’t immediately capture their attention. Before you go into any background details or set the stage for your story, begin with one or two bold, concise sentences that will grab readers’ attention.
2. Identify your take
Sometimes when we sit down to write stories or personal reflections we forget to pause for a moment and ask, “What’s my take?” In other words, why are you writing this? Take a moment to identify no more than two or three salient aspects of your story that you want to make sure readers understand, and structure your piece around those elements.
3. Highlight dialogue
Dialogue is a great way to break up your story and quickly convey the personalities of the people involved — even if the “dialogue” is simply something you thought to yourself. Include snippets of conversation whenever possible, and be sure to start a new paragraph whenever you switch speakers.
4. Include section headers
If your story is more than a few hundred words long and there’s no way to condense it, break it into mini “chapters” by including bolded titles for each main section of the story.
5. Use breakout sentences
“Breakout sentences” — single-sentence paragraphs — are a great way to make your story more scannable. Identify one or two turning points in your tale, and write an attention-getting sentence as its own paragraph to mark this point in the story. (For example: “When I saw the test results, I knew my life would never be the same again.”)
6. Vary paragraph size
A long story that consists of paragraphs of similar sizes looks monotonous. Don’t be afraid to have an occasional long paragraph if you need it to complete an idea, but try to follow it with a shorter paragraph or perhaps a breakout sentence (see #5).
7. Go for authenticity over perfection
Keep in mind that this is not a term paper and you’re not writing for your high school English teacher. Your readers are more likely to read an imperfect story that is exploding with sincerity and energy than a perfect story that dryly conforms to all the proper rules of grammar and sentence structure. Many of the most popular diary-style bloggers interject their tales of everyday life with things like all-caps exclamations and incomplete sentences, and their readers love it.
8. Cut, then cut some more
Re-read your story and edit ruthlessly. Think about your take that you identified in #2, and with every single sentence ask yourself: “Would it detract from the piece or weaken my point if I cut this?” If the answer is no, delete it.
As the rapidly increasing popularity of personal, slice-of-life blogs shows, there is a place in the blog world for longer posts that convey personal stories. By following these eight rules you’ll find that you have no trouble gaining a readership of people who are delighted to hear your tales.
Jennifer Fulwiler is a writer and web developer whose websites have been mentioned in Slate, USA Today and National Lampoon. Her current project is ConversionDiary.com</a, a blog diary in which she chronicles her experiences with religion.
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Lack of Ideas? You’ve Got to Be Kidding!
This is a guest post by Alan Johnson, the author of The Online Business Handbook.
One of the most common things bloggers complain about is their lack of ideas. You hear all about how excited they were during their first week as bloggers, only to realize that things stand quite a bit differently once they start losing momentum.
Is that the case as far as you are concerned, are you using lack of ideas as an excuse? Well, guess what: there is no such thing! Show me one person who says that he or she doesn’t have great ideas and I’ll show you a misguided individual.
Symptom, Not Disease
Most folks see the fact that they seem to be running out of ideas as a disease, but that is definitely not the case. Yes, it may seem that you are having trouble being creative, but that’s not a disease, it is a symptom which came as a result of the actual disease: an ineffective approach when it comes to managing your ideas.
If you think that you can just stare at a blank piece of paper or at a blank computer screen and simply give the command “I want a great idea now” then you are in for quite an unpleasant reality check. That’s not the way we humans are built, we are not machines.
You may, at a certain point, have more than a few excellent ideas worth implementing, only to find yourself in a less than creative mood a few hours later. That being stated, managing them accordingly is definitely a must if you are serious about avoiding potentially unpleasant situations.
Be Prepared, Write in Advance
Don’t let great ideas go to waste, take advantage of them. Having a great idea, not writing it down and forgetting about it is just plain foolish. From pen and paper to all sorts of complicated gadgets, you have more than a few tools at your disposal to help you maximize results when it comes to managing ideas.
Whenever you have what you consider to be an idea with potential, write it down somewhere. No matter how great your memory is, you will, without a doubt, end up forgetting about more than a few of them if you don’t develop this habit.
Also, act accordingly when you feel creative. As a blogger, writing articles in advance is one of the healthiest habits you could possibly have. There will be times when you will see your personal productivity level skyrocket, just as there will be times when it will seem that you can?t get anything done.
Maximize results when feeling creative in order to be prepared for the times when things will stand differently. If you choose to take things one day at a time, you will definitely be facing quite a few unpleasant issues and end up seeing writing as a chore. You should never let something like that happen, that?s not what blogging is all about.
Prevent, Don’t Wait for The Symptoms
As I’m sure you have realized by now, lack of ideas is nothing more than a fake problem bloggers end up using as an excuse. If you manage your ideas accordingly and try your best in order to make sure that the good ones don’t go to waste, you will definitely look back and laugh when thinking about how you used to complain about the fact that you are not able to come up with anything worthwhile.
Be prepared for when you have great ideas, write your articles in advance, do whatever you can in order to avoid this symptom. Are you still living in denial or are you ready to take action?
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Challange: Put On Your Blogging Blinders
Bloggers are distracted by all sorts of things. We worry about gaining subscribers, increasing traffic, improving rankings, generating income and building links, just to name a few. It also doesn’t help that the vast majority of bloggers do so on a part-time basis with a very limited number of hours to dedicate each week to the blog. What would happen if we could dedicate ourselves to simply producing the best content that we’re capable of? My guess is that significant results would follow. How much do these other things distract us from reaching our potential?
My challenge to you, and to myself, is not to obsess over these details. Dedicate yourself to spending the next month focusing on writing the best content you can possibly create, and interacting with the comments on your posts. Whenever you have some free time to work on some element of your blog, choose to spend that time on content development.
The content creation process doesn’t only involve sitting down at the computer and typing a post to be published immediately. Make an effort to spend more time brainstorming for post ideas. Unique and interesting ideas are critical for building a blog that stands out in a particular niche. Also schedule time to research posts that require some additional effort. This is one that I struggle with. I keep a list of post ideas, some require a good bit of research and some don’t. I usually wind up writing the posts that don’t need research and saving the others for later. As a result, I think the posts are often not what they could be. When I schedule the time to do the research, I usually wind up with some of my better blog posts.
Things that may need to be scaled back
If you are dedicating yourself to creating better content, some other blogging-related activities may need to take a reduced role, at least temporarily. This doesn’t have to be a permanent change, and it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t spend any time on these activities. They all have significance, but if you use your time on these activities with moderation, you’ll have more time for content development.
You may find that you can free up some time by spending less on:
- Use of social media sites
- Stat checking
- Emailing, IM’ing, and RSS feed reading
- Surfing
- Tweaking your theme or design
My plan to create better content
I’ve taken a little bit of time to think about what I can do to free up some more time and make my content a higher quality over the next month. These are only my thoughts, but they may also help you. Feel free to share your plan with all of us in the comments. In fact, please do so.
Dedicated time for email - Right now I keep my email open almost all of the time. It’s nice to see messages as they come in, but I know I could save some time by only checking it at certain points during the day.
Daily “to do” lists - Some days in the past I have used a to do list for my blogging efforts, and not surprisingly, I always seemed to get more accomplished on those days. Every day before I start working, or the night before, I’ll create a list for the day. I did this today and when I finish this post I will have finished everything I set out to do.
Put off new projects - I have a few ideas for new projects that I would like to start immediately. However, I’m going to put those on hold and focusing on building a more successful primary blog first. Too many projects at one time will prevent me from doing well with any of them. At some point in the future I’ll move on these ideas.
Weekly brainstorming - I’m usually pretty good about leaving time for brainstorming post ideas, but I have never really set aside time for it. I’ll dedicate one hour each week (not necessarily all at once) to nothing but brainstorming for the best possible article ideas.
Allocated time for research - As I mentioned earlier, I often put off good ideas for posts because they require more leg work than I’m willing to do. I’m going to dedicate 2 hours per week to any type of research that needs to be done that week for a post.
No goals for subscribers - I typically set personal goals for gaining new subscribers each month. Sometimes I hit the goals, but usually I don’t (I like to set the bar at the high end of my limits). This month I’m not worried about subscriber growth, I’m only concentrating on content development. I have no idea if this is a good or bad decision, but it seems like it might help. Generally goals are good, but this one seems to be too much of a focus for me at times.
Conclusion
Don’t worry about your stats or your subscriber count for a month. Focus on writing the best content possible and I think you’ll see improvements in these areas. Again, this doesn’t have to be a permanent change, but I challenge you to make your blog posts your absolute priority for one month.
What are your thoughts? Are you up for the challenge? What will you change?
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5 Steps to Write Effective Articles in Less Time
This is a guest post by Ramkarthik. You can read more of his tips on blogging and making money online on Blogging Tune.
Do you sit in front of computer for a long time to create a single blog post or article? Does it take too much thinking for you to come up with an effective article? If your answer was ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you should continue to read the post. Whether you are a blogger or a freelance writer or an article marketer, you need to write effective articles quickly. If you are doing one of those as a full time job, you must really use your time properly and try to write more articles in less time. Here are few things you should do when you sit to write an article or blog post.
1. Close Every Other Application
Ever installed any software? Few of them ask you to close other applications when installing it. The same should be followed when you sit to write an article. Close the chat client first. This is probably the one which eats up most of your time. Next, close your email client. Don’t have any other application open, other than your writing software. You should not open any of the applications when you are writing the article. You can open your browser when you want to look for some reference, but close it again as soon as you are done. Don’t check your blog traffic stats, AdSense earnings or anything else as well.
2. Do Research Before Writing
It is always better to do a little research before writing the article. This will help you to write an effective article. The quality of the article will show clearly that you have researched. Almost every blog post that hits the front page of social bookmarking sites is well researched and structured. By doing research, you also make your article longer and in depth.
3. Prepare a Schedule
Preparing a schedule will help you in saving time. Set a time for each and everything you do for the article. You can allocate 30 minutes or whatever you are comfortable with, for writing the article itself. Set 5 minutes for selecting an image. Also have 10-15 minutes for collecting references and coming up with a catchy headline. Within an hour, you should be able to create some top notch content.
4. Proof Read At Least Once
This is very important and most people skip this due to lack of time (or patience). This will prove to be costly when you are writing for some other person or for a client. Once you finish writing the post, read it once. If you have written many articles and don’t have time to proof read all of them, hire a person to do the work for you.
5. Do the Editing Till You Are Satisfied
Once you have completed writing the article, do the formatting works. Place the image at the right place. Give credit to the image author if needed. Preview the article. If it is what you wanted, publish the article. If not, continue with your editing and formatting. Add quotes to the post to make it more effective. Tie any loose ends.
Writing quality articles in short time is not an easy task, but if you prepare yourself and use a structured process you will be cranking paragraphs like there is no tomorrow!
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9 Steps to Better Blog Post Ideas
Content is king. We’ve all heard that a million times and most of us have seen first hand that the content truly will make or break a blog. One of the single most powerful influences on the quality of blog content is the originality of ideas. A talented author can develop a well-written article, but if it covers a topic that’s been beaten to death it won’t make much of an impact. Likewise, an average writer can create a wildly successful blog post with the right idea.
Too many bloggers rush into writing the post and the importance of idea generation gets overlooked. Improving your idea generation skills is one of the most effective things you can do to improve your results.
Here are 9 Steps to Generating Better Ideas:
1. Make Time for It
Make idea generation one of your priorities, and recognize its influence on your success. Just like you need to set aside time for writing blog posts, you also need to designate time for developing ideas for posts. There are plenty of activities with your blog that can consume your time, but don’t do so at the expense of working on new ideas. Without leaving time for it, you’ll find yourself sitting at the computer searching for a topic to write about, and the results will suffer.
2. Have a Brainstorming Session
Rather than trying to come up with one post idea at a time as you need them, sit down and crank out as many ideas as you can. Write down all of your ideas. Many of them will not turn into anything usable, but that’s ok. Get your creative energy flowing and you’ll find yourself having more than enough great ideas to develop. Several months ago I wrote an article on brainstorming techniques for bloggers.
3. Use Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is a method of brainstorming that helps you to visualize your ideas and to build on them with other related ideas. This method can really help you to develop ideas for posts on particular subjects and topics as you can visualize all of the different aspects and you see the possibilities for useful blog posts. Darren wrote an excellent guide to mind mapping a few months ago at ProBlogger.
4. Outline Posts Before Writing Them
If you are typing your posts with little or no direction you will have disjointed articles that are less productive than they could be. I find it to be very helpful to outline every post before I actually write the content. This may require some research, depending on the topic, but it will make the writing process easier. It also helps you to identify ideas that really don’t develop into quality posts. From the outline you should have a pretty good idea of how well you can develop the post, and you’ll know pretty quickly when an idea isn’t worth the time of trying to write the full post. This way you will be spending your writing time on ideas with better potential.
5. Keep a Journal
Although it is extremely helpful to have specific time for brainstorming, you’ll still have some ideas that hit you at random times. In these situations if you do not have a journal or notebook for jotting down ideas you’ll probably forget more of them than you will remember. My notebook is one of my most valuable possessions. It has more ideas and outlines than I’ll ever have time to write. Sure, some of them are pretty bad, but whenever I need a post or whenever I have time to sit down and type, there’s always something of quality there waiting for me.
6. Take Your Ideas and Plan a Posting Schedule
I find it to be very helpful to plan out my posts a week in advance. Every weekend I’ll look through the ideas that I have been working on, and I’ll select the ones that I am going to finalize and publish during the upcoming week. This helps me to avoid last minute posts that don’t have much of a point except to get something published.
7. Don’t Publish Something Unless You Are Happy With It
If you finish a post and you feel that it doesn’t live up to your standards of quality, either keep working to improve it or just get rid of it. It’s never fun to give up on an idea that you’ve spent some time on, but that is better than publishing something that could lower your readers’ opinions of your blog.
8. Improve Your Title Writing Skills
Some bloggers start the process of writing a post by first coming up with an attention-grabbing title and then working from there to develop the content. While this may not always work, it is a different method that can help to give your writing process a spark.
The titles of your blog posts will have a huge impact on how many people actually read what you’ve written. If you’re going to spend your time researching, writing a post, and proofreading it, why just publish it with the first title that comes to mind? Coming up with the best title usually takes a few attempts, but it will be well worth your time. See Daniel’s post 3 Rules for Writing Effective Titles for a little bit of help.
9. Analyze Your Results
Part of creating posts that attract attention is knowing what types of content have worked well for you in the past. Most bloggers check their stats regularly, but often times this is not done with much detail. Have you ever gone back over several months’ worth of stats and really analyzed what types of posts consistently drew the most traffic and comments, and which other types of posts and subjects drew very little interest? When I took a more detailed look at the stats from my own blog I saw some interesting trends that I hadn’t noticed before, and that knowledge has helped me to produce ideas for posts that perform well.
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