Official blog of Clark's Blogging for Journalists class, Mass Communication department

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Blog writing--show, don't tell


Clark's Advice
       Know the reader

       Grab his attention

       Make it interesting

       Short sentences, paragraphs

       Organize with reader in mind

       Write to express, not impress

       Tell a story

       Have fun

       If I wrote my story without notes, what would it say?

       Concise structure

       Goes for drama

       Specific details

       Quotes

       Paints pictures

       Varies sentence strength

       Paragraph control

       Conversational

       If the reader took a test, what do I want him to remember?



How does your blog writing measure up?
Read Show, Don't Tell, and comment below something you learned that will improve your writing.

15 comments:

  1. I really liked the idea of painting an image with words. Sometimes I feel like I'm just writing to get it on the page without putting thought into how it sounds.

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  2. The way I could improve mine is being more descriptive. I don't believe that I do a great job of painting a picture with my words.

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  3. I felt like I don't use power words enough to grab the reader's attention. I could definitely improve the language and jargon I use in my blog to make it more interesting for the reader.

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  4. Something I learned that will improve my writing is to write to one reader instead of trying to write to a mass of readers. If you try to accommodate everyone in your writing you will end up losing readers.

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  5. I really like that there is a list of power words. I need to improve on the choice of words. My struggle is trying to figure out what is too simple.

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  6. I really liked the part when he talked about getting people interested and grabbing their attention in order to get them to read your blog and one of his main points was to have catchy headlines. I want to really improve on this and start thinking of really cool and catchy headlines that will grab more readers!

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  7. I need to improve my writing when it comes to painting a picture. I think I get so caught up in writing a post that I don't sit back and think about what mental image my story or post is giving off to readers.

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  8. I like when the article said " write for one person." I've noticed when I write, I write to the masses because I want a lot of people to read it. Making it a little more personable might help bring the bigger audience.

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  9. I think I could work on my headlines. Currently they are okay but they could be much better. After I read that section, I thought back and realized how true that is! So many times I find myself reading a blog and just scrolling through quickly until I see something that sounds interesting to me. So I definitely will work on grabbing attention!

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  10. I think I need to put more focus on the words I use and work on painting a better, more descriptive picture for my audience that will entice them and draw them in.

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  11. I need to work out creating engaging titles. I think others are more likely to read a post if they title catches their attention.

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  12. I'm not very good at explaining in detail what I am blogging about and plan on making better use of pictures and fonts to better my story.

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  13. This article brought up the point of audience. I learned that I don't have a clear-cut audience. In class, an audience was mentioned as people who are like who we are as a blogger, but not many people are like me. I don't mean that to sound conceited or that I'm special. I mean it in that my blog is not focused. I know plenty of people who share aspects of myself, and I'm wondering if I may need to angle my writing to those people.

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  14. This article made me realize that I don't have a main point to my blog. Yeah, it's filled with positive little nuggets of wisdom, but it doesn't have something that connects each post. I think it has given me an idea in the direction I want to take my blog.

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  15. I think that my blog is close to meeting all these requirements. And I have to credit all of this to Humans of New York. I am using that blog as an example and guideline as to how my blog should be. I still think that my formatting could have a lot of improvement!

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