Wireless Network (no password required): BLOGHER #BlogHer11 Brought to you by The Write Brain |Essential Blog Content Development Workshop (Double-Slot)

Wireless Network (no password required): BLOGHER#BlogHer11

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The Write Brain |Essential Blog Content Development Workshop (Double-Slot)

1:15pm - 2pm

Britt Bravo, brittbravo.com

@bbravo

2:15pm - 3pm

Elizabeth Soutter, damomma.com

@damomma

3:15pm - 4pm

Julie Weckerlein, julieandmartin.com

@julies_tweets

#BH11content

RATE THIS SESSION! iPad and iPhone users: Rate this session in the BlogHer '11 mobile app!!


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“The Write Brain” Essential Blog Content Development Workshop

CREATION:CREATION:

Three Rules for Writing Great Blog Posts

Elizabeth B. Soutter


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The Rules

• Shorter is Better

• Organize Your Post

• Write for Your Audience


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Rule #1: Shorter is Better

• “I apologize for the length of this letter. I did not have time to make it shorter.”

– Mark Twain


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• “Writing is the process of figuring out what you think.”

– Me


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• Two ways to shorten your work:

– Play “word elimination;”

– Look for echoes.


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Rule #2: Organize Your Post

• The Four Boxes:*

–LEDE –NUTGRAPH–BODY–KICKER

* (Modified from Rick Bragg http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/chip-on-your-shoulder/3929/helping-writers-take-charge-five-tools-for-editors-5/)


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• LEDE (or “Lead”)– The hook, does not have to impart

information, does need to grab the reader.


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• NUTGRAPH– Places your feet in the story, gives the

reader notice as to what the piece will be about;

– Gives enough factual information that the story can now begin.


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– The NUTGRAPH must address:• The familiar reader, whom you are

forbidden to bore;• The new reader, whom you are forbidden to

confuse.


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• BODY– Tells the story– Although it is the bulk of the post, it is

not the entire post and must not take up too much space.


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• KICKER– Brings the reader back to the nutgraph

-- the promised point of the story;– Answers the question, “Why was this

worth the reader’s time?”


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The Boxes in Action: The Lede

“Beefalo. Rockumentary. Brangelina. Manwich. Blaxploitation. Cremains.”

-“My Father, The Body” August 27, 2007 Julie, A Little Pregnant


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The Boxes in Action: The Lede, Extended

“That last portmanteau, of course, denotes cremated human remains. Most of us call them ashes, more comfortable with a polite euphemism than the more accurate but harsher description, pulverized bone fragments. The funeral director settled for the middle ground, cremains, and was startled when I laughed. (It sounds like a brand name: Cremains™. I can only assume BoFrags didn't make it through the focus groups.) I spent the rest of our meeting tuning out his solicitous questions and thinking of other blends. Feminazi. Televangelist. Clamato! What can I say? I was grieving, y'all.”



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The Boxes in Action: The Nutgraph

“I am not sentimental about my father's remains. In fact, I am almost the opposite. The only part of his funeral service — Catholic, but not a mass — that truly offended me were the repeated reverences to the small wooden box that houses his ashes. So implacably do I believe that he's gone that seeing people bow to a few pounds of dust upset me: That isn't him. He isn't there. Stop acting like that's my father. That box contains no magic.”



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In Action: The Kicker

“I am quite familiar with the disappointments of the body, both its expected failures and its shocking betrayals. I've spent so long treating my own as an adversary that I think of people as neatly divisible, what we are easily distinguished from who we are. It was a simple matter, then, to believe my father irrevocably gone before he'd even been extubated. Without the part that had made him who he was, the body no longer mattered.

But is it unseemly, or even inhumane, I wondered later after the funeral, to be so ready to divorce the body from the being? Am I too hasty to dismiss the last physical scraps of someone — anyone — unique and precious? Do the people who bowed in front of that box know something I don't? Maybe. But I know something, too: What our bodies can't do is not who we are.”



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Rule # 3: Write for Your Audience

17

• It seems obvious, but if you want people to read it, you need to write it for them.

17


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Rule #3 Translated:

• Nobody cares what you think.


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• They care whether you can make them think.


Brought to you by

The Write Brain |Essential Blog Content Development Workshop (Double-Slot)

1:15pm - 2pm

Britt Bravo, brittbravo.com

@bbravo

2:15pm - 3pm

Elizabeth Soutter, damomma.com

@damomma

3:15pm - 4pm

Julie Weckerlein, julieandmartin.com

@julies_tweets

#BH11content

RATE THIS SESSION! iPad and iPhone users: Rate this session in the BlogHer '11 mobile app!!

Documents

Wireless Network (no password required): BLOGHER #BlogHer11 Brought to you by The Write Brain |Essential Blog Content Development Workshop (Double-Slot)