Writing for Web Audience

Writing a novel is a whole lot different from writing online though both avenues require the same mechanical act. The audience your targeting would greatly affect the way you write though I know a lot of people who write without caring who their audience is. Purists would also look at this the wrong way, thinking that writing is an art form and should not be constrained by the people you are aiming for.

Length
Most writers right now find solace in the internet especially if they don't have the means to publish their own work. Published articles are still reserved for the lucky ones. For online audiences the standard length of articles should be no longer than 400 words for blog posts. For articles you can go for as long as 500 to 600 but you should be reminded of the attention span of people. If you're not that confident in producing output that is engaging, then try to keep your sentences as short as possible.

I once wrote a three-part blog post that would've amounted to 2 thousand words if I squeezed it in one single blog post. If you want your readers to go through the whole ordeal of your full story break your story in parts. Each part should be able to stand alone and is engaging enough to be visited again.

And because I want to prove my point, I'll be cutting my post short from here and continue the next tips in the following blog posts.

Writing Metaphors

Dealing with metaphors can be tricky. If you relate one unrelated word to another you have to make it work so much so that the language flows seamlessly and naturally. A lot of writers make fools out of themselves when they try to use metaphors to convey meaning. As a heavy user of StumbleUpon, one of my preference options led me to a website. This particular website showcases all the funny (and sometimes downright retarded) metaphors used by high school students in schools all over the US. I got around to reading them and was laughing all the way

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I'm going to give you a chosen few:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

3. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.


... and a favorite:

4. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.


Amazing what these kids come up with. Looking at it in another way, these statements actually make you think. I mean, you get to pause and actually think about what they mean and visualize in your head how it goes. It's good mind exercise. It's also good for a few laughs too.

Copied Writing Style

When I was a kid I used to read a lot of Stephen King books on top of the no-brainer Sweet Valley Twins and Friends. I started writing early on in grade school and found myself copying the way Stephen King and Francine Pascal writes. If you want me to explain how I merge the writing style of a suspense novelist and a teenage drama writer, I can't do that.


But I do remember alternating their writing styles. If you read King a little too much, you're going to start writing like King.

Which can both be a good thing and a bad thing. While it may sound wrong to copy someone else's writing style, we should all remember that that's how most writers start. You start by copying someone else's style and then you realize that certain things work and certain things don't. Adjustment and change comes until eventually you develop your own style.

Now what do I mean by saying all these things? What's my point? This blog was created not to tell you guys what writing style works best or how you can achieve a certain writing style. If you want something like that you can go ahead and read Strunk & White and that's assuming that you haven't already. What we're going to do here is try to find our own style. To rock to our own music. By examining different writing styles we get to have an understanding of how we sound. Our true writing style.

Remember that at the beginning, copying is unavoidable. It is actually even unconsciously done. But true art comes when you break away from that. So just keep on writing. Write and write... don't even think of stopping. Keep writing until you shed off your shell and come out as yourself.