Although words like “reflection” and “revision” may evoke frustration for writers and students like me who aren’t perfectionist and like to call the first draft the final draft, reflecting and revising work is a good way re-formulate ideas to better communicate a point in a more effective way.
In my last post, I turned my 2,600 work paper into a 820 word blog… frightening. To transform my paper to a blog, I had to use what works online. To do so, I had to discard some aspects that made it a successful paper…
…This was difficult for me because what I needed to cut were well formulated sentences and paragraphs that I pined over to perfectly transcribe my ideas to the reader. The parts that made my paper “good” hindered my blog from being successful because of the different rhetoric that the online world calls for.
After getting over my hesitation to discard my beautiful sentences that just don’t work in the format of a blog, I was able to convey a similar message that was suitable for the new context. This online version became successful because I still was able to communicate my ideas, but in a different way. The blog was a new vehicle for me to get my point across.
In all of our years of schooling, we’ve been taught to loyally rely on models like the five paragraph essay. In contrast, the blog is a great way to add creativity to work and convey ideas with more freedom and less constraints and rules. This new freedom provided by the blog is something that was hard to dive into because it is simply foreign to me.
In addition of using different ways to get my ideas to the readers, the rhetoric and main points had to be changed significantly so my blog didn’t act like an essay that was copy and pasted online.
In order to have a blog that “works’, I think that it is most important to shed the essay image while still holding to the integrity of my ideas– but in an appropriate context of a blog.
To be successful, the transition of my paper to blog needed to incorporate…
- Shorter paragraphs
- A clear focus
- Approachability
- Multimedia
- Hyperlinks
- Casual punctuation and language
Although my nice long sentences were beautiful, they would feel completely out of place in a blog.
I wanted the readers to feel welcomed to read my blog as if they were entering a casual conversation at a coffee shop while still keeping interesting content. When I transformed my paper into a much more casual format that was better suited for the context of a blog, I had to balance making it casual to where readers can feel invited but not dumbing it down too much to where it became boring.
Saying what I wanted to say in a new way is something that I was never tasked with before. I suppose that finding balance of what “works” to read the readers of my blog is something that will come with practice, like the papers that I’ve been writing for years.
As my readers are welcomed to my blog in a more casual way, I think that the online nature of blogs provides more opportunities to become part of “the conversation”. Through links and connecting other blogs there is naturally more access to a variety of discussions and perspectives online rather than in a paper which is a huge advantage that blogs provide. Incorporating hyperlinks was something that I was sure to include.
I also wanted my blog to be very accessible to readers. Understanding the audience is a very important aspect of blogs because they should aimed towards a wider audience than a paper in hopes to continue and spark more conversation. The point of a blog is so that entering the conversation is much more of a reality opportunity because of the interactions that the online community can facilitate is much greater than that of a paper.
In order to transform my paper a successful blog, I had to change the rhetoric to fit the expectations of a “blog viewer”. Basically, I had to change how I was getting across my point through a few different techniques that are unique to blogs. Although I am accustomed to the more formal ways to try to get a well articulated argument to readers through a more formalized essay, I think that a blog has the ability to convey equally valuable ideas to viewers. Blogs also provide a space for personality and opinion that are not often permitted in formal writing.
In my next post I will embark further into the uncharted territory of blogging one step at a time… until next time!!