Shaping Short Narratives & Strong Thematic Posts

This week we're going to explore writing techniques for stronger entries. Because all the widgets and whizbangery in the world can't save a blog without strong content ... To do this, we'll look at a mix of "dead tree" tactics, as well as new media content ... and analyses of both.

1. Storytelling in the age of content curation
2. Making a strong first impression –  on readers and search bots
3. Blog posts deserve snappy ledes (starts)
4. Lively lede devices for bloggers (and other authors)
5. Nut graf – framework to hang the story upon
6. More nut graf goodness
7. Speaking of suspense...
8. Creative nonfiction – Plot your posts
9. Plot arc: get complicated!
10. Transitions: write the sweet segue
11. Satisfying blog-entry conclusions
12. S.W.A.K. – the envelope ending
13. Blogs benefit from short, clear sentence structure
14. Employ imagery and colorful language in posts
15. Murder your darlings
16. Avoiding word repetition
17. Your mission, week seven
    

Some of this advice, I hope, will seem very old and obvious to you. That's because experts have spent decades – centuries even – analyzing what readers enjoy. Hopefully books and dedicated teachers and empirical evidence have brought many of these patterns to your attention already.

Storytelling in the age of content curation

How time-honored reporting and storytelling techniques play out best in the blogosphere is a debate that generates enough steam to light a small city. As the mainstream media (MSM) destabilizes, no one's certain what – if anything – might fill that "fourth estate" gap. Maybe, as Steve Rosenblum notes in The Huffington Post: "Big things will get smaller, or die. Little things will survive and start to grow. Consumers will become creators. Lurkers will become participants. The volume of voices will expand exponentially – and the need for clarity and trusted filters will go from being useful to being essential."

He argues that we're entering an age of curation, where the editors will skim the cream off the Milky Way of data. "This will drive an emerging class of content entrepreneurs – people who are able to turn their trusted personal brands into high-quality filtered content destinations," Rosenblum writes.

SF Gate Columnist Mark Morford weighs in with Die, Newspaper, Die? "In the howling absence of all the essential, unglamorous work newspapers now do – the fact-checking, interviewing, researching, all by experienced pros who know how to sift the human maelstrom better than anyone, and all hitched to 100+ years of hard-fought newsbrand credibility – what's the new yardstick for integrity? On what do you base your choices? Some fickle mix of personal mood, blood-alcohol level, and how many followers your given source has on Twitter? Right."

As I've pulpit-pounded before, I believe the new world order will always need professional and dedicated semipro storytellers: a tradition that stretches back to our first recorded stories, like the glib gossip of Homer and the war correspondence of Xenophon (I once made my ancient Greek professor hyperventilate by pointing out he was the first, known embedded journalist. Yet I stand by that assertion, however bratty. Who cares if the medium is a papyrus or a pixel?). Creatives – writers, photographers, broadcasters, videographers, designers etc. – will produce, even if their efforts must blend more media to gain attention. And editors will continue to objectively collate the most noteworthy of those projects, while the pundits, the critics, mouth off about 'em.

The industry's challenge is how to preserve a professional layer in this cake, so it doesn't deflate into a puddle of soggy ingredients (or, to use a more common metaphor, the unintelligible, unproductive screaming of a mob). But your challenge is to determine how literary devices, strong reporting and original content apply to the blogosphere – and your stake claim of it.

Art: A sign advertising the Homeless Grapevine, a street newspaper, at Lincoln Park, Tremont, Ohio, U.S.A. By Eddie~S via Flickr and Wikimedia Commons.

Making a strong first impression – on readers and search bots

A post's headline and generally its first 25 words appear in search indexes, as well as on subscription feeds, aggregator sites and social-media links. Seed this canvas with the strongest material possible: news angles, dynamic prose, original reporting, etc. It's the bait on your hook.

Subscribers and regular readers aside, winning attention can be even more challenging online than in print. Someone perusing, say, a hard copy of Nutcracker Collector Monthly or Wise Widgeter Digest already has enough interest in a topic to seek out a publication on it (or pick one off the doctor's waiting room table). The audience self-selects to a great degree and often pays money for the privilege, upping its stake in consumption of that media. So magazine and newspaper writers often preach to the choir.

Fishers on the ocean of free Internet content need to be more crafty.

As we discussed last week, search engines send spider bots to crawl the web, analyzing domain names, keywords, inbound and outbound links, and 190-something other mysterious factors to determine a page's point ... and also its authority, called PageRank in the Googleverse. Various techniques exist to boost SEO (search engine optimization).

The higher your PageRank, the higher your site appears when people search. And if your first impression is compelling, they click through and read. The same goes for folks perusing feeds, Facebook links or fecklessly skimming spamtastic linkfarms.

Wow 'em. Hard and fast.

For the bots, touch upon keywords – the terms that really sum up the gist of a post. Don't stuff them in, but if you're reviewing the Big Book of Biscuits, don't lead with 250 words on your grandfather's favorite cookie-making apron. That's called "burying the lede" in media jargon.

People-wise, be precise and colorful, emphasizing the original (language and material). Avoid word repetition between the headline and first paragraph. Those 35-ish words together are the post's ambassador and advert alike. Make every one count.

Blog posts deserve snappy ledes (starts)

Think elevator pitch. Think love at first sight. Because you have mere seconds to engage readers' attention with the "lede" of a story: the first sentence (or paragraph. And yes, the misspelling's intentional, differentiating from the hot metal printers employed in the last century. But you'll also see "lead" referring to a tale's kickoff.)

Good story starts are tough to write, but worth the struggle. As Poynter's Chip Scanlan points out: "[a lede] makes a promise to the reader or viewer: I have something important, something interesting, to tell you. A good lead beckons and invites. It informs, attracts, and entices. If there's any poetry in journalism, it's most often found in the lead, as in the classic opening of what could have been a mundane weather forecast: 'Snow, followed by small boys on sleds.'"

Blogs, in particular, need to charm quickly, making ledes all the more critical. As noted above, aggregators excerpt those first 25 words: they are a post's calling card to the world, scrutinized by potential readers and search spiders alike. And, of course, readers haven't even invested spare change for a newspaper, $10 for a movie ticket or $30 for a hardback with a bestseller seal of approval. They have clicked upon your site – possibly an unknown site – for free and can just as easily click away to someone else's.

But a good lede pulls them in and entices them to stay. And the best can even survive the erosion of time, as writer John Barth reminds us: “A first sentence’s job is to draw its reader into the sentence after it – while at the same time, maybe establishing the tale’s tone and narrative viewpoint . . . some do that job so well that they remain in our memory long after we’ve forgotten most of the words that followed.”

Art: Children on sleds in Central Park, New York City, Bain News Service, c.a.1915. This image is available on Wikimedia Commons from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division under the digital ID cph.3c11106.

Lively lede devices for bloggers (and other authors)

Focus your thoughts before beginning. What tone is appropriate for the article: lively, dry and newsy, dreamy and erudite? What's the target audience? What are the key points? The gist of the article?

Now bait your hook. You need a scene – or language – arresting enough to capture readers attention. Some tried and true techniques:

• Action: studies reveal that reader like to see characters and even things in motion. Focus on active, evocative verbs, not passive constructions.
• Be challenging: shake up what folks think they know. Reveal something new, whether that's a better ad revenue model or tips for a silkier showdog coat...
• Dilemma: Introduce a problem that the characters – or reader or society – need to solve.
• Emotion: Stir up empathy or revulsion or anger, then unravel the narrative or intellectual arguments.
• In media res: Latin for "in the middle the things". Drop the reader into a scene, then spool out the backstory before proceeding on the journey.
• Quest: Humans are hardwired to learn from the experiences of others, as we discussed week two. Curious situations rivet us and excite the rubberneck impulse. A quest takes that a step further, tapping one of our great plot archetypes: hero overcomes obstacles, wins reward. (Aristotle boiled all tales down to seven categories: quest, voyage and return, rebirth, comedy, tragedy, overcoming the monster and rags to riches, as Peter Reeves points out here.)
• Running joke: make with the funny. And keep the humor weaving through the post, evolving.
• Senses: stretch beyond the obvious (sight) and engage readers on other levels. Be precise. Don't say "sweet smell," when you can specify the "musk of old orchids" or the "scent of sun-warmed cedar".
• Suspense: Intrigue can involve a reader in a story. Bewilderment, however, is a harder sell. Give the audience enough framework to follow, but enough mystery to continue following...
• Universal stories: Emphasize the elements readers are most likely to share.

Weak lede techniques to avoid

• Burying the lede: Chief among journalistic sins, this denotes putting the good stuff low in the story, rather than up front as bait. Given search-bot behavior, it's even more critical to write important details into the top of a post. Those concerned about SEO should work in keywords also.
• Clichés: They don't engage the reader with a familiar device. They bore them with it. So no dark and stormy nights, unless you follow up with some riveting and immediate twist.
• Hypotheticals: Long convoluted "if, then" clauses slow the pace of the text and reverse into the point. Also, they encourage readers to skip ahead, should the scenario not speak immediately to them. Be especially wary of anticipating how people might feel or react: that can insult and alienate an audience. Captivate readers with strong plots and prose: don't try to artificially inject them into the action.
  
• Second person: Like "if" clauses, the second-person pronoun "you" promises to involve the reader in the story. But many editors consider this such a cheap, blatant ploy that they ban it. Just sayin'...
• Stalling: The material at the start of a sentence – or especially a paragraph – has greater prominence. Don't fill that key space with dates, subclauses or padded out verbs of being, like "there are" and "it may be".
• Thinking out loud: Save your musing for later in the piece. Or rather, don't ask the readers to watch you ponder until you've already nabbed their attention with the topic in question.

Plenty of world-class writers break these guidelines routinely, sure. But until your writing's world-class and has a devoted audience, it's worth learning the tricks, then deciding which to discard in certain circumstances.

Nut graf – framework to hang the story upon

In lecture three, we touched upon the nut graf (And yes, that's an accurate spelling, more slang left over from the printing-press days). This paragraph grounds an article – or blog post – briefly sketching out the who, what, when, where and why. It runs early, typically as the second paragraph, and gives the reader a framework for what's to come. Ken Wells, a writer and editor at The Wall Street Journal, described it as “a paragraph that says what this whole story is about and why you should read it. It's a flag to the reader, high up in the story: You can decide to proceed or not, but if you read no farther, you know what that story's about.”

Often called "the heart of a story," the nut graf sets the context. And that's especially important in blogging, where readers may be parachuting into any given entry via a search engine – or consuming more recent posts ahead of old ones, as they scroll down from the top. Remember the discussion about the man from Mars? The nut graf is his cue card.

Here's an example of how this can work, even in a very short post anchored around a punny travel episode. I've italicized the nut-graffy bits:

BIHAC SLAPPED
PLITVICKA JEZERA, Croatia – "Veliki Slap," the sign reads: Big Waterfall.

The jokes are inevitable, especially after lunch in Bihac, Bosnia...

The slap is nice, as slaps go. The 70-meter cascade lies inside the Plitvicka Jezera National Park, a chain of 16 peacock-colored lakes.

Though occupied by Serb forces from 1991-1995, the park's landscape remains fairly unspoilt. Boardwalks snake across the water, teeming with trout. Heron skim among the travertine cliffs. We hike a few miles, then catch the last pontoon boat down the dusky lake.

Pure magic. As it should be. I make some quick calculations: income lost by rejecting the guidebook gig + savings about to be spent.

We've just enjoyed a $4,000 day in the Balkans.

Here's a newsier excerpt from Craig Romano's World Hiker. Notice how he leads with a position statement, explains the politics, then continues with his rant. That formula may be familiar from your school days. It works in English classes – and works online too...

Omnibus Public Land Management Act Has Overwhelming Support in Congress but Goes Down in Defeat! Say What?

You have to love the way our system works sometimes (Insert sarcasm here).

The Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, a bill that would have established two million acres of new wilderness and make the Pacific Northwest Trail and the New England Trail National Scenic Trails among other things - a bill that had wide bipartisan support (73-21) in the Senate was defeated in the house by 2 votes.

Final Vote 282 For
144 Against
6 Not Voting

If it had 282 votes for it-then how could it have possibly been defeated you are probably thinking. Well - you are going to love this - the bill failed in the House of Representatives this week by roll call vote. The vote was held under a suspension of the rules to cut debate short and pass the bill, needing a two-thirds majority. Something that usually occurs for non-controversial legislation.

Repeat after me:
Un - insert a common profane modifier here - believable!

... (read full post here)

Louche weighs in with a giddy diary-style example. He leads with some in media res excitement, then – very blatantly – flashes back to explain what's up.

I've gotta be a macho man

I am hungover. Actually that isn't entirely correct, I am still drunk. I am ruined man, who has had about 20 minutes of sleep of sleep and will have to go into quite a serious meeting this afternoon. I didn't mean for it to end up like this but it did. Let me start at the beginning.

If I'm being honest it probably started to get dangerous around lunch time. For some reason it seemed like an excellent idea to skip any real food and just have a coffee. This would come back to haunt me later when the idea of some sort of starchy ballast to absorb drink would be terribly welcome.

... (read full post here)

Art: Plitvicka Lakes, Croatia. Copyright Amanda Castleman, 2006.

More nut graf goodness

Poynter's Chip Scanlan, a giant among writing coaches, offers this quick primer in his series on nut grafs:

The nut graf has several purposes:

• It justifies the story by telling readers why they should care.
• It provides a transition from the lead and explains the lead and its connection to the rest of the story.
• It often tells readers why the story is timely.
• It often includes supporting material that helps readers see why the story is important.

"Here's a quick way to produce a nut graf for your next story: Make up your mind what the story is about and why people should read it – and then type that conclusion in one or two sentences.

"Experienced reporters say they find it helpful to constantly write and rewrite the nut graf through the course of reporting the story. Doing so tends to reveal holes earlier in the process and helps you avoid too many intriguing but tangential side trips."

Give readers a framework, but not too much information. James B. Stewart advises this in his book Follow the Story: How to Write Successful Nonfiction. "Don't let nut grafs tell so much about the story that they have no incentive to keep reading." He argues that a nut graf should "sell" the story by emphasizing its timeliness and importance, while "preserving every bit of the suspense and curiosity so carefully cultivated in the lead."

Stewart's guidelines include:

• Never give away the ending of the story.
• Anticipate the questions that readers might be asking early in a story, and address them.
• Give readers a concrete reason or reasons to move on.

Speaking of suspense...

You need it. Lashings and lashings. Small internal tensions and resolutions are what keep readers moving through a text. As Roy Peter Clark, author of Writing Tools, points out: sprinkle gold coins along the path. "Reward the reader with high points, especially in the middle."

Yeah, I know it's kinda sinister in a Hansel and Gretel way. But, well, the witch lured those greedy little crumbsuckers out there, didn't she?

Beth Blair's rooster post on Travelling Mamas builds up a wonderful head of steam. She moves from a rant into a more contemplative moment, shifting gears smoothly and ending with art. Note that she also has a strong nut graf, explaining the context of these rogue poultry! She interweaves sensory details beyond visual ... and builds to an insight that recalls the opening theme. It's not the most jarring revelation ever, granted. But Beth ends things with finality – and a glance towards the future. This formula has endured because it works. More elaborate variations may win the kudos and awards, but, you know, in a pinch, circle back around and scan the portentous horizon. At least you're ending with a bang, not a whimper!

Surreal. Magical. A Kaua’i Sunrise.
By DesertMama | June 2, 2008

I sat up straight in bed, jarred from a deep sleep, and looked around the Kaha Lani Resort bedroom. What was that noise? There was enough light coming through the windows to tell dawn was approaching. I heard “it” again, now realizing the noise was Mother Nature’s colorful alarm clock. I slowly placed my head back on the pillow, but it crowed once more, this time with a friend.

I cringed and cover my ears.

The roosters, hens and baby chicks seen on Kaua’i are products of Hurricane Iniki’s September 11, 2002 destruction when the caged birds escaped, never to be held captive again. Instead, they were fruitful and multiplied and multiplied and multiplied and now run wild all across the Hawaiian “Garden Island.”

Some people find them annoying while others such as myself find them charming, that was until my early morning wake-up call.

There was no way I was going to be able to fall back to sleep. I wandered to the window overlooking the ocean to see a dull looking sky with a hint of brightness in the distance. The sun had yet to rise. I quickly changed into cropped pants and a navy blue tank top and grabbed my camera. Barefoot, I flew down the three flights of wooden stairs and across a short spread of grass. I climbed down a few boulders and jumped into the sand. A woman dressed in black was situated in the sand, involved in the yoga stance downward facing dog as the ocean’s waved crashed only yards from her feet and hands.

The wet sand felt soft between my toes while telling of the ocean’s recent presence. I realized my feet were the first to walk the beach that morning. Just like every new day, the slate had been wiped clean and new adventures were to begin. The sun slowly crept into the sky, dodging behind clouds, occasionally allowing its reflection to dance on the water. The waves rolling onto the shore were the only sound except for the occasional rooster’s crow. The waves kissed my ankles as a light breeze came off the water. My lips welcomed the light taste of saltwater. Suddenly, my heart was filled with gratitude for the little colorful creature who welcomed me that morning.

Once the sun was well in the sky I found myself looking forward to the day and the next morning’s sunrise.

Art: Sunrise in Palau.Copyright Amanda Castleman, 2009.

Creative nonfiction – Plot your posts

In narrative writing, events unfold around a protagonist, which could be yourself or another. Jon Franklin, the guru behind the classic Writing for Story, declared that “a story consists of a sequence of actions that occur when a sympathetic character encounters a complicating situation that he confronts and solves.

Week three we discussed writing for narrative or thematic continuity, as well as features-style techniques. Today we'll explore the engine of the technique: plot.

A good story moves a character – and the reader's understanding and emotions – from one place to another. Blocking action adds spice to this mix. Give your protagonist hell. It forces him or her to evolve, ideally towards a defining moment, the climax, which produces some insight ... some raison d'être for the piece.

Jack R. Hart, author of A Writer's Coach, broke down plot arc thus at the 2005 National Writer's Workshop:

1. Exposition: introduce the protagonist, the person who makes things happen (if you're stuck, start with the protagonist's name and a transitive verb).
2. Inciting incident: something knocks the protagonist off the status quo. “Think of a movie ... a Hollywood movie, not a Danish one,” he joked.
3. Rising action: the protagonist struggles with confrontations.
4. Point of insight. The solution or outcome clarifies.
5. Climax: the confrontation resolves.
6. Denouement: Wrap it up.

Hart considers the “point of insight” most valuable. “Here's what people are looking for in stories. They want to learn from the experiences of others how to be a more successful human being. Find the universal theme.”

Narrative writing is an advanced technique. Experiment, but don't panic if this new medium takes time to learn. Mimicry really is the best tool. Read stories – and watch films – with these techniques in mind. Then perhaps try a brief post in the format. As the great writing coach Hart said, “narrative articles needn't be 100-inch goat-chokers”. The short length forces your concentration onto the plot – picking, choosing and crystallizing the essential elements – rather than a glut of expression.

Plot arc: get complicated!

Once you’ve pinned down the message – the essential nature of the post– draft a one-sentence summary. This needn’t be flashy, as it’s for your eyes alone. Many writers pin this declaration to the wall or paste it into the top of their computer file. A few examples:

1. The ostrich jockeys: running the big birds in the Valley of the Sun
2. Is it fair to take children on a gambling holiday?
3. Tea time: faded colonial splendor in Candacraig, Burma

This "capsule sentence" introduces your theme, the thread that leads you through the post. Your first paragraph (the "lead" or "lede") and conclusion will most likely reflect this key information. And all the bits between should be in harmony. Cut the retired showgirl anecdote, if the entry’s about children in casinos. Don’t get sidetracked by hang-gliding, if the subject at hand is mountaineering. Be ruthless – but don’t despair. All that excised material can be spun into other stories, so nothing’s ever wasted.

Professor Jon Franklin takes this a step further in Writing for Story. He encourages students to plot pieces by crafting two sentences in a noun-active verb-noun format. The first is the problem, the second its resolution. Then note three steps that advance the tale. For example:

Complication: Company fires Joe

Development:

1. Depression paralyses Joe
2. Joe regains confidence
3. Joe sues company

Resolution: Joe regains job

The telegraphed style focuses the writer's thoughts on the relationships in the story, he claims. Plus, "if there's anything wrong with 'Company fires Joe,' we need to discover it now, before we've written several thousand unusable words."

Avoid statements that are weak or static (includes the verbs be, am, was, were, have, has, being, been, do, does, did, could, would, should). "Stories consist of actions! Stories consist of actions! Stories consist of actions!" Franklin writes (he gets a free pass on the exclamation marks for helping to invent narrative nonfiction).

Not all journalism is plot-fueled, obviously; this approach doesn't suit every wearable-blanket brief and hotel review. Yet even a service piece benefits from a theme and an outline. Not the hideous textbook sort with nested subsets in Roman numerals like "I.E.iii.a". Rather a simple list of topics that need coverage, roughly in order. The "five boxes" stratagem – a sort of slapdash structure – remains popular with many journalists and bloggers.

Transitions: write the sweet segue

Think about the rhythm of your writing. Does one idea flow smoothly from the next? Are short sentences mixed with longer ones? Are facts interwoven with descriptions? Have you repeated the same words over and over – or carefully chosen fresh, evocative phrases each time?

Writing is like dancing. Lead your partner – the reader – through the piece. Direct them gracefully, gently but firmly. And don’t trip over your own shoe laces: if you’re muddled while writing, it shows. Work and rework the tricky bits. Read them out loud. Sleep on them. Digest the material, the reshape it, until it flows as smoothly as the waltz.

Suave transitions add polish to your style. One dance step leads to another – not a frozen moment on the floor and complete change of pace (tango aside). Pay special attention to the endings and beginnings of your paragraphs. Are they linked together, bridging seamlessly from one idea to another?

Phrases like however, despite and on the contrary are useful, as are and, furthermore and similarly. Cause-and-effect relationships work well too: as a result, because, consequently . Don’t forget time transitions like the following evening, by afternoon, 200 years later, and their more subtle cousins leaves were falling when my train departed and my lamb chop grew cold, forgotten in the confusion. The most graceful transitions simply tweak an idea – or contrast it – from the previous sentence.

Art: Classical dance exhibition on a ball in the Prague Congress Center. Photo by Petr Novák via Wikimedia Commons.

Satisfying blog-entry conclusions

Posts should conclude with a flourish, a grand finale. Don’t save the best for last in a newsier piece, as the reader might never get there. Do hoard a pithy quote or clever observation, something punchy. The last sentence should sum up or nicely round off the discussion.

The theme often comes into play at the conclusion. I more often use a quote or allusion here than the beginning – for a satisfying, folksy note. In Yayoi Drops the H-Bomb, I riffed on Kipling's East is East quote, for example. Some others:

1. The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. And for the Via Giulia, the result couldn’t be more charming.
2. So wiggle into your worn woolens and head off to Never Never Land. Even if you don’t believe in fairies, it’ll leave you clapping.
3. A coin cast into the Trevi Fountain ensures a return to Rome, according to folklore. My motivation won’t be the art, the ruins, the fine wines and food, however precious. No, my euro is for another shot at Zen and the art of moped mayhem.

Are these deep insights? Hell no! But they at least signal a clear and satisfying end to the reader. If you can reward their tenacity with nothing else, end with a bang, not a whimper, as they say in England.

My friend, the travel writer Anna Melville-James, and I call this the "ta-dum" after the snare flourish following a comedian’s joke. Others dub it the "kicker". The impulse is the same: to clearly mark the conclusion and cue laughter (or reflection or whatever response you crave).

A strong ending shows the writer is in control, not merely blundering through a swamp of material, but shaping it. This is by no means a easy task. I still agonize most about the first and last sentences, as do most professionals.

Here's an amazing example by an unlikely source, world-class photographer David Lansing. In his post, The Son Also Falls about Hemingway's children, he uses something small and inconsequential to light up a bigger picture, and, in just a few hundred words, he elaborates a full story. The last line is a marvelous summation, bringing the whole tale together... and with a video clip, no less.

Read it. No, really. Do.

S.W.A.K. – the envelope ending

A classic journalistic technique is to seal together the opening and closing with a kiss. The idea's simple: circle back around to your initial theme. And preferably, give it a final twist to reward readers for their perseverance. Take Road Remedies' Venturesome Minority, which opens and closes on very different bear-charge reflections.

Marie Javins provides an excellent example on No Hurry in J.C. Her post The Way To a Woman's Heart opens:

About 7 years ago, I was walking south on Manhattan's Orchard Street. An older man passed me, walking north. He eyeballed me.

"You still got it."

Aghast, I'd thought I wasn't aware I'd lost it. Talk about a backhanded compliment. At 35, I wasn't exactly sagging around the edges.

Today, seven years later, his comment might be appropriate. In the 9-person group I was in Bolivia with, I felt more an outsider than an active participant. I'd been on a half-dozen small group expeditions in the past, but on the other trips, I'd been of the median age. Now I was the only one in my age group.

The two younger women primped and vamped and made themselves up at night for dinner (our men were oblivious). I watched them with a little envy but mostly with relief. Let them put on the show. I wasn't here to flirt. I didn't feel any pressure to perform or even to shower. But I like to stay clean so I showered when I could, like on the last morning in Uyuni before we were to go into the salt flats for three days.

Hair still sopping wet, I got into one of the two Land Cruisers. After we left Uyuni and stopped by the train cemetery, we headed towards the Eduardo Avaroa National Reserve, home of salt flats, lagoons, and pink flamingos.

Notice how tight her segues are: between paragraphs three and four, she pivots on time, next on age, then on primping. Ideas flow one into another: very slick. She then veers into an anecdote about a Bolivia bathroom, ending with this wry ending, which wraps everything up with a bow (full text here).

I blanched... I didn't have the money to enter the ladies room.

The handsome Bolivian man then stepped in. He gallantly forked over one of his own coins, smiled, and waved me into the ladies room.

I reddened and walked in, as my group and a few Bolivians tittered behind me. Better than a drink, a man had bought me a pee.

I still got it.

Here's another great example – coincidentally on the chick grooming front. Sue Frause's text is so tightly integrated, I'll include the whole post, with her permission. She especially celebrates the girly element, since: "Crosscut is pretty much a white, male-centric, online publication all about politics, politics and politics."

The few, the proud, the blonde
By Sue Frause

I'm a Salonista. I started training for it from the first day my Aunt Esther experimented on my hair at her Carousel Beauty Salon up in Marysville. Being introduced to salons at an early age meant I escaped my mamma's haircuts, which was good. It also turned me into a high-end shampoo buyer at a tender age. (What teenager packed Breck or Prell once she'd held Redken in her hands?)

My salon missions began in earnest during my stint at Seattle University. Although the majority of the co-eds on my floor (in all-female Bellarmine Hall) sported the same color hair, thanks to Clairol's Frost & Tip, we were a bit more adventurous when it came to actual hair cuts. The first real salon I recall was Tomoe's, where the Asian haircutters created those cool, geometric cuts we saw in magazines, and lusted over. (Think Twiggy.)

Next came the kind of cutter with only one name. Roberto. Paul. And like a lot of young Seattle women, I did my tour of duty in many, many chairs within the Gene Juarez empire.

I've accepted that there are risks to what I do. That time I tried henna, ending up with dark-black hair so bizarre that my husband walked right past me in a downtown hotel lobby. ("Well, you sorta look like Linda Ronstadt," was his loving attempt to talk me down.)

I don't want to brag, but when you've risen through the ranks, you meet people. That time at Bocz Salon when I sat next to Tom Robbins; Salon Marco on a day that Gov. Chris Gregoire was holding court in the chair next to me. I mingled with the greats at Gary Manuel, Mode Organic Salon, Halo Salon and SEVEN. I am proud to say that Yuki Ohno (father of Gold Medal winner Apolo Ohno) cut my hair years ago at his salon, Yuki's Diffusion.

I've done my time in foreign postings too. San Francisco (Yosh for Hair); Vancouver, BC (Moods Hair Salon, Ian Daburn Salon); New York City (Bumble & Bumble) and Boston. I don't recall the name of that Beantown salon, but my designer had cut Kevin Spacey's hair prior to the actor hitting the big time. Like I said, in this line of work, you meet people.

Those distant salons toughened me up, taught me things. But sooner or later, every Salonista returns to her, uh, roots. Sassoon Salon opened in Seattle on Valentine's Day, and I was there in the first wave. The Sassoon name is new to many of the young things out there but to a veteran like myself, it harkens back to a time long ago. When blondes were fewer, and only the bravest tried henna. When a bold man named Vidal Sassoon made being a Salonista something to be proud of.

Blogs benefit from short, clear sentence structure

Clarity and brevity are essential in journalism. Authors can no longer indulge in the three-page, purple-prose sunsets of Victorian literature. Readers have limited time in this bustling modern world – and your brainchild must compete against the radio, TV, Internet, cinema and a fun-tastic 24-hour, clamoring culture.

Make it easy for your audience. Take them firmly by the hand and lead them through the piece. At The Daily, we used to joke that our motto was "we spoon-feed you the world". A cynical thought, but there's an echo of truth there. As writers we are ambassadors to foreign lands, permitted behind-the-scenes glimpses. Upon our return, we become teachers.

Elementary school teachers, really, as most publications aim for a 13-year-old's reading level. Many colleagues complain bitterly about this "dumbing down", but I've always found it satisfying. Nut-shelling complex topics for Joe Public is tougher than preaching to the converted: It demands far more writing skill, comprehension and empathy.

And plenty of scope remains for literary expression (sans SAT words, of course). Puns and catchy phrases are just as prevalent in Newsweek as The New Yorker – the references are just a bit more populist. Too many writers confuse convoluted prose with good prose, a snobbery often encouraged in academic circles sadly.

Recently the BBC polled Britain to find the nation's best-loved book. The top 21 included far more "children's" books than heavy hitters: Harry Potter, Wind in the Willows, Lord of the Rings, Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials, the Narnia tales, Little Women and Winnie the Pooh. These simple, compelling tales command far more love than, say, Ulysses by James Joyce (no.78) or the philosophical pretensions of Paul Coelho's The Alchemist (no. 94).

Personally, I'd rather be useful and understood, than avant garde. However, the web is a broad church with room for all sorts. A dense, sophisticated style narrows your appeal, but readers remain out there for you.

To attract a larger audience, keep it short and sweet. The average newspaper reader begins to lose the plot after two dozen words. In fact, their comprehension dips 5% for every term beyond 25...

Paula LaRocque, author of The Book on Writing, confirms this: "Research consistently showed that long tracts of sentences exceeding 25 or so words in length are neither clear nor inviting. It also found that even the most highly educated readers prefer to read a school grade level of 10 or below.

"Einstein wrote his Theory of Relativity at an average grade level of 13.3," she notes in a September 2006 Quill column. "Do we really want writing that is less readable than the Theory of Relativity?"

Employ imagery and colorful language in posts

English could almost be classed as a pigeon language, incorporating Latin, Ancient Greek, German and French, not to mention other strands like Yiddish and Spanish. Our ancestors glommed onto new words, but were reluctant to relinquish the old, which gradually acquired slightly differentiated, nuanced meanings, like canal and channel, poor and pauper, house and home, sensual and sensuous, childish and childlike. Or we held onto a native word – book – and filched the Latin adjective, literary.

Anglophones are the world's linguistic magpies: over half our words are from non-Anglo-Saxon stock. This hodgepodge provides an enormously rich palette for writers. As Bill Bryson points out in his excellent popular study, Mother Tongue: "No other language has so many words all saying the same thing. It has been said that English is unique in possessing a synonym for each level of our culture: popular, literary, and scholarly – so that we can, according to our background and cerebral attainments, rise, mount, or ascend a stairway, shrink in fear, terror or trepidation, and think, ponder or cogitate upon a problem."

In short, we're spoilt for choice. So be persnickety: strive for the right vocabulary. Don't settle for generic terms like good, beautiful and breathtaking, when whole flocks of colorful, precise words soar on the horizon. A good author should be able to justify every turn of phrase.

As George Orwell writes: "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print". He argues that using clichés is a substitute for thinking, a form of automatic writing: "Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house."

Consider this passage by D. H. Lawrence: "I sat and looked at the ruins on the old, olive-fuming shores, at all the peace of the ancient world still covered in sunshine" (Twilight in Italy, 1916). The inclusion of "olive-fuming" ignites the sentence.

As Poynter's Roy Peter Clark stresses: "Choose words the average writer avoids but the average reader understands ... All of us possess a reading vocabulary as big as a lake, but draw from a writing vocabulary as small as a pond. The good news is that the act of reporting always expands the number of useable words. The reporter sees and hears and records. The seeing leads to language."

Play with the sound and shape of words too. A "buxom belle" is more zingy than a "large-chested woman", both in tone and alliteration. "From loggerheads to lager-head louts" neatly connects turtles and tourists. Inspiration for such bon mots often occurs during the rewriting phase. And yes, good bloggers redraft, polish, groom and buff pieces until they're honed and shining. They slice out excess verbiage, weave in witticisms and smooth transitions. They not only write, but rewrite: often the key to strong texts...

Murder your darlings

Week three, we explored ten tips for trimming. Some further tricks are detailed below.

A good pruning trick is to eliminate all the "ing" verbs ('I swam', rather than 'I was swimming'). Condense possessives as well ('the cat's bed', rather than 'the bed of the cat')."If" clauses are notorious padding. For example:

BEFORE: If you want a really relaxed holiday in the United Kingdom, you should rent a narrowboat. (16 words)
AFTER: English narrowboats inspire relaxed holidays. (5 words)

The content is the same, but the sentence is more than 66% smaller (perhaps even too small!).

BEFORE: When you get to Seattle, make sure you visit Pike Place Market, a great shopping center where the famous Levi's commercial with the men throwing fish was filmed. (28 words)
AFTER: Don't miss Seattle's Pike Place Market, home of the fish-flingers made famous by the Levi's commercial (16 words).

Switching from a wordy second-person viewpoint to the imperative made this example more crisp.

BEFORE: The florist gave me a huge, dazzling smile, resting her shears on the table under the window, covered with a checkered cloth and heaps of roses. (26 words)
AFTER: The florist's smile was bigger and brighter than the rose heap overflowing the checkered tablecloth. (15 words)

Condensing – or eliminating – prepositional clauses often gets a sentence down to fighting trim. Take a step back: what do you need to say (big smile, flowers)? What's color (checkered cloth)? What's just plain in the way (the shear, the table being specifically under the window)?

BEFORE: I was chased across the piazza by a grandmother, who was very angry. (13 words)
AFTER: The irate grandmother chased me across the piazza. (8 words)

Here, the active version (where the subject "does" the verb) is shorter than the passive sentence – and easier to understand, according to linguistic experts. An adjective replaced the 'who' clause, which shaves off a few more words.

Gradually, concise writing becomes a habit (news reporting is great practice). In the meantime, don't let journalistic conventions tie your tongue. You're a blogger. You're the boss. Do as you like. When you like.

Burble away, take a break (a few hours or, preferably, days), then return with fresh eyes. Try reading the piece aloud. Need to stop for breath mid-sentence? Time to cut! Notice a budding alliteration? Plump it up. Repeating the same word ad nauseam? Search the thesaurus. But don't confuse your "writer's hat" with your editor's visor. Someday the two may mesh together. Until that happens, don't dam your creative flow with grammatical tweaking and rule paranoia. Take your time – and do both well.

Avoiding word repetition

Nothing smacks more of lazy, disinterested writing than the same, tired phrases being endlessly recycled. Remember the tedium of "see Dick, see Jane, see Spot. See Dick and Jane with Spot"? Children need this re-enforcement. Adults don't, so dig deep for synonyms.

The "find" function is a good indicator (under the "Edit" menu in most word processing programs). Writing about skiing? Type in "slope". If it surfaces 30 times, you might want to rethink, sprinkling the text with "incline, mountain, hill, run, cliff," etc.

Experimenting with language is also more rewarding for you, as a writer. Presumably, you've come to this profession – or hobby – because you savor words and expression. So don't trot out trite copy. Push yourself towards fresh phrases and clever twists. Your enjoyment will translate to the reader.

Your mission, week seven

Assignment: either a longer post (500 words) or three thematically linked entries (no more than 600 words total). Mawkish praise for the following:

• Three sources – the ole newspaper minimum
• Quotes, which can be drawn from documents or, preferably, interviews.
• Pro and con perspectives, which add balance
• Links and expert opinions.
• Dialogue, plot, imagery, nut grafs and envelope endings

This week, especially, I encourage you to offer your peers feedback. Different eyes spot different strengths and concerns ... and the critiquer has much to learn from the process. WIN for all!

Please post your links on the class forum, as usual.

Feedback: (Amanda) writing line-critique