When my teacher first described the assignment of turning a formal, academic essay into a blog post, I was a bit scared for three reasons.

1. When I think of blogs, I think of writing that is creative, witty, full of personality and pushes the envelope. And when I think of my writing, none of these words come to mind.
2. My whole life I have been taught to write with a formal, academic voice that tries to sound smart and put together. Blogs, although still insightful and well-thought out, are much less refined and more personal.
3. I had absolutely no idea how I was going to cut down a page that was over 2200 words into a blog post that was only 600-1200 words.

To overcome these challenges, I employed a couple strategies.

Normal Speak

Source: Pixabay

When I started writing my blog post, I split my computer screen and placed my formal essay beside a blank document. My first step was to basically translate my essay into “normal speak,” so I acted like I was explaining my argument to one of my friends. I added more personal pronouns like “I” and “we” so that the composition was more of a conversation between me and the audience rather than the usual academic essay.

In doing so, I found that my writing had more personality and was more creative. I had removed my “filter” and was writing what came to mind and what I thought as opposed to what sounded best or what I thought my teacher would like. Because of this, even though some of the language is less polished, more of my ideas come through.

Multimedia

I added multiple hyperlinks throughout my post that take the audience to relevant articles or programs/sites that I discuss in my discussion. To take my argument one step further, I started searching the web for sources related to my topic outside the ones I had already used in my formal essay. As a result, I attached a couple intriguing articles at the end of my post for some further reading.

I also looked up videos on YouTube that related to my topic and embedded my favorite one in the text. I thought that this would be a nice change of scenery for my audience because, let’s be honest, my writing isn’t that riveting. The implementation of the video is effective because it allowed me to say something to the reader without having to write anything. In a way, the video was like another “concrete detail” in my argument, so it contributes to my credibility as a writer.

I struggled the most to find photos that furthered my point. However, I believe that the links and video sufficiently supplement my argument in a way that cancels out the lack of images.

Cutting It Down

Source: Wikimedia

Significantly shortening my paper was one of the things that I was most worried about at the start of the writing process, but as it turns out, it was the thing that I least struggled with. During my “normal speak” translation process, I realized that I could condense many of my ideas into shorter and simpler statements that, even though they weren’t as elaborate, still have the same effect on the reader.

I ended up keeping the bulk of my evidence, but sacrificing some of the introduction and background information. The abridged version of the intro didn’t diminish my argument, but leaving out evidence would. However, I did omit some metacommentary (my teacher’s word for explanation/elaboration/analysis) because I felt that my point was clear without an more extensive explanation.

Overall

As a whole, I enjoyed the challenge of a new style of writing. I grew as a writer from the experience and have a greater appreciation for bloggers. It is definitely a skill to effectively develop an argument with limited words. The process taught me how to make every word and sentence count and further my argument.

I hope to continue my blogging career and develop this skill set. Hopefully, I will improve with each post and translate these skills into my academic writing as well.