Stowe Boyd and Halley Suitt: The Art and Science of Blog Writing (from: Blogosphere News: Blog News from Bloggers, for Bloggers)
http://www.blogospherenews.com/archives/2005/01/24/stowe-boyd-and-halley-suitt-the-art-and-science-of-blog-writing/ | Comments
This is going to be great. Two great writers talking about writing. Let it roll…
Halley’s tips and points:
- Stories…good posts are good stories. Write a good story
- Truth…you need to be truthful.
- Passion…if you don’t write with passion nobody will care. Take a stand.
- Things of this world…be real, pictures, no abstract language
- Brevity…Twelve posts over twelve paragraphs
- Freshness…the amount and frequency. More stuff each day.
- Voice…Have a voice. Halley “People joke that I sound like my blog” Right on! Be real.
Halley holds up Mena Trott’s blog Mena’s Corner as a great example of a great blog writer as well as Biz Stone of Google. Halley said that the more she writes, the better she writes and man I can agree with that! If you want to blog well, blog a lot. Just write, write, write.
Stowe Boyd, True Voice. “put yourself in first person, in front of the story”. Again, be passionate. Have an opinion and express it…
Blogging is a social media… the conversations that go on, the interactions that are important. The social aspect is critical to developing good blog writing. It is the conversation, the comments that help you refine, refresh and improve your writing. It’s you and your audience. [Man…that’s heavy].
Read, then write…Okay I started out this way. I broke all the rules. I started blogging before I really read any blog. But now with 340+ feeds…I have to read to have anything to actually write about.
Authenticity & Authority…keep writing what you know and learn more
Draw a line…have your line. Have your limits and know when something is important and stand firm.
Scribble, scribble, scribble…write and write and write a lot.
On editing posts…unless you’re fixing something like a bad image or the like, don’t edit. Yeah, that’s hard, but yeah. Keep it. I update a post, but keep the old and just say updated or something. But keep the original. Follow up posts are good. And yeah we all have typos and spelling errors. That just makes it more real doesn’t it?
Aggregators…Halley doesn’t use them Stowe does. Boy do I. I am trying to develop more and more the skills and brain focus to be a gister. The large funnel coming down to a few tidbits.
The conversation on aggregating and editing, correcting, and linking back to the original source. The conversation, the dialog. This is the key. This is the power of blogging, the power of the medium.
Humour, having the sense of humour is maybe that special ingredient that pulls it all together. Halley writes her funniest, sexiest stuff for Monday mornings. Boy do I have something to look forward to next week!
And the last bit of advice…know when not to publish…so you maybe that flame war doesn’t become flame Armageddon.
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