We've been talking about the characteristics of effective writing. Check out this article, Confessions of an editor: A review of ‘How to Write Short’ by Roy Peter Clark, which includes one Washington Post editor's dark admission – that anticipating the social-media response to news stories as part of the editing craft, makes him "feel dirty."
Yikes!
I really enjoyed reading this article. It gave me a lot of insight on what I should be thinking about when I am writing. Of coarse you want to entertain your readers, but you also don't want to bore yourself. Editing writing before it is published is crucial because you want to make sure you get all of the last kinks off the pages. I like the idea of making my writing sound like it came off of a social media website. If writing is kept short and to the point, more people will be interested in reading it.
ReplyDeleteI think as a journalism student twitter is a very natural medium to use because it encourages the same thing that most journalism professors encourage: word economy. That's why I enjoy using it. Tweets that are to the point and devoid of clutter can hold the same value as a rambling paragraph saying the same thing, so why bother with all of the frills?
ReplyDeleteI thought this was a very good article and writers can take a lot of advise from this selection. He hits five key points every journalist should have in mind when they write a paper. He makes a good point when he brings up Twitter. As a Twitter user I follow many news networks and papers. I know personally by using Twitter I scroll through my feed and wait until something catches my eye. When one of the news networks post a short interesting tweet about the story I'll decide in those short seconds weather I would like to click the link to continue the news story and keep skimming through. Find something that can grasp the reader's attention, find a key point and focus on it, plan out your story from most important information to least important, keep it short, and do your best to inform readers.
ReplyDeleteI agree, I think the article is critical and has steps that all writers/journalists should keep in mind. I am a skim reader for a lot of things and that If my attention is not caught on instant I scroll past. It is important to always gage the readers attention or you can lose your potential audience.
DeleteI think this article gave great advice, especially for journalism students. Because we are still learning, we all become focused on making our writing sound professional and eloquent rather than just getting our point across. I am guilty of rambling in most of my writing, so I think this gave five great tips to help cut down the length without just flat out saying make it shorter. I really liked how he pointed out famous writings that are all very brief so that his audience can see how unnecessary excess truly is.
ReplyDeleteThis article was very interesting. I really liked how it broke up how to write short in numbered steps. I could really relate to steps 4 and 5. The reason for this is because I have a hard time being my own editor, because I do not want to delete any of my work.I like feedback from others, but before you let others edit it you should edit it yourself. In step five I can relate, because I always feel like my ideas are fresh to myself but not to others, so I need to think of new ways to interpret my writing for readers. I like the idea of writing short, because in the news that is what people want. They want short and to the point news stories that answer their questions leaving them with no new questions to ask.
ReplyDeleteI thought this article was great and amusing. It's funny how we adapt social media into everything even in this article by saying how twitter helps keep our stories short and to the point. As a college student I've always felt like we've been drilled to always put as much info as we can into our work and to not leave ANYTHING out. As a growing writer, I feel that I've always gone down that same path as well. It is nice to read these articles where these established writers are telling us not to worry about length and to keep it short and simple with importance. Not only are they telling us that short writing is king, but also that social media plays such a large role in todays news (which social media is obviously our generations strong point). Most everyone can say that social media plays some role in retrieving their news. By having a character limit on twitter, it forces people to get out what they are trying to say without overloading the reader. It forces the writer to sit there and think about the point he or she is trying to get across. I love how this article addresses every issue that a writer struggles with and for once, he's not pointing out the problems with today's media. A book can sit there and teach us about HOW to write short but rarely does a book ever tell us why we need to do that. To conclude, I definitely feel like I just contradicted myself by writing this extremely long blog post, but oh well! :)
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this article because of its helpful tips for successful writing and the author's honest evaluation of his own writing techniques. More and more frequently, this generation looks to social media for approval through "retweets," "likes," and "comments." The author admits that he tweaks his writing for the harsh eyes of the social media lens and the confined word limit in order to gain a positive response for his stories. This in turn, allows him to improve as a writer by shedding off unnecessary words and make his point more quickly and clearly. I too, struggle with finding how to paint a vivid and memorable picture of my story for my readers with as few words as possible.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the article because of how our generation can easily relate to it. Instead of blaming social media for ruining a lot of aspects of journalism it shows how it can be a useful tool in eliminating the clutter in our writing. As someone who uses Twitter, I can see how a character limit can help you determine what is important to the reader and what is expendable information or simply unnecessary. People don't have time to read unimportant details, they want to know what they need to know and move on, which is why I agree with Clark's quote "In the digital age, short writing is king."
ReplyDeleteThis article gave me a great insight as to how our generation is advancing in wanting things done quickly and the right way. I find it hard to read certain articles because it does not capture my attention in time to make me want to keep reading. Twitter is a great example of simple and "to the point" writing application, though I would say it is cluttered with people saying pointless things that don't pertain to most peoples interests. Overall this article included some great tips I will keep in mind for my future writing skills.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this article, and I thought the last quote was great to end the story with. I like what he had to say about the white space when he discussed lists the most because it shows the quick-pace society we live in today. Space grasps someone's attention before words because someone is more likely to take the time to read a shorter article than a lengthy one regardless of headlines.
ReplyDeleteThis article was interesting to me, it surprised me to see that people are referring to social media to get a point out about short writing. Mainly because most people that use social media incorrectly while putting down their thought.
ReplyDeleteBut, I did find it helpful that while writing short stories its good to put things in it that people could take out of it and put in one of there own tweets. It makes word of mouth more easily transferred to people because one thought is sent to every follower that one person has.
I really liked this article because I loved how it gave the inside thinking of a journalism writer today and how they write their stores based off of social media today or even trying to predict what the social media will write and read.
ReplyDeleteI found this article interesting because of the emphasis he placed on social media and his insight on most social media news consumers. I also enjoyed his organizational techniques for quick and effective writing and the little things that we have to remind ourselves of sometimes to keep our sanity as writers.
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