Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

In my last post, I suggested that blogging steals time better spent writing novels. The flip-side is what blogging has taught me about writing.

So, what have I learned?

In the past three years, I’ve published over 550 posts here, racking up over 400,000 words, so the first thing I’ve obviously learned is how much I actually can write when I don’t think I’m actually writing. The second thing is that blogging is writing, just a different form.

But these are about having written, and aren’t useful when writing. What have I learned that I can use while I write?

I’ve learned about my dependence on the Rule of Three. (The Rule of Three says that patterns of three things–phrases, words, ideas–are more satisfying to the reader or listener than other patterns. See how I used three items back there, between the em-dashes? That’s the Rule of Three.) I didn’t learn about this in school; it’s just something I picked up along the way. It’s everywhere, from “Stop, Look, and Listen” to “…of the people, by the people, and for the people” and it’s power is undeniable, so finding it in my writing isn’t a surprise. In writing blog posts, though, I came to see just how much I use it. Or how much I used to use it. Now, it’s on my edit list, and every time I it crops up, I question its propriety. It’s a good rhetorical tool, so I don’t throw it out automatically, but sometimes two or four or even seven are better than three. Three items have a good rhythm, but if they pop up regularly, it gets monotonous.

Another thing blogging has taught me is to be concise. My first drafts are often weak-worded, rambling things with lots of passive verbs surrounded by hads and have beens. I don’t try to clean them up in the first draft–first drafts are all crap–but I pay especial attention to them during edits. (Yes, I actually edit my blog posts. I know…Crazy Town, eh?) Blogging has given me ample opportunity to practice Ken Rand’s Ten Percent Solution, and now I’m pretty good at cutting extraneous words and tightening up my prose. Blogging is a brief form. Readers don’t want to spend an hour pawing through a shambling mound of ill-wrought ideas and thoughts, so keeping it clean and tight is key.

The main lesson I’ve learned, though, is structure. Blogging is different from fiction (unless the post is fiction, of course…duh); I approach each post like an essay. Thesis, exposition, and conclusion is another example of the Rule of Three, so to avoid predictability, I often twist it around and warp it to provide more interest for the reader. I also have learned the importance of the hook: that opening line or evocative title that gets you to click the link in the first place. Blogging has heightened my awareness of the need to draw the reader onward. The opening has to be good enough so that you click that link, read past the jump, but it has to continue to be engaging enough to carry you through the development to the conclusion. In fiction, this is easy to forget as I get wrapped up in just telling the story, but its importance can’t be over-stressed. I can’t merely trust in chapter endings to make you turn the page; every paragraph, every sentence, has to be good enough to make you want to read on to the next.

Now, I’ve just given three examples of things I’ve learned–that damned Rule of Three, again–but I’m going to leave it there because, were I to add a fourth, you might say TL;DR and I will have failed in my mission.

k