Son Of Fontsplosion

In a previous post I ranted about how writers' blogs can be the biggest obstacle to readers' enjoyment of their work, mainly focusing on... well, fonts. Fonts and font size and justification and color and all the ways we try to make our post 'body' stand out and instead end up shooting it in the foot.

 

I'd like to revisit the topic while expanding the scope of my dismay to include general page layout. In other words: the ways we forget to try to make our post 'body' stand out.

 

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I can't tell you how many writers' websites I've visited where the body of the post — the story I've presumably come to read — isn't visible without scrolling down. This is on the actual post page, where you have arrived from clicking a link to the post, not the blog main page.

Imagine a newspaper (remember those?) where no actual news content was above the fold. Other than the day after the second coming, that is. A newspaper man could tell you why reporters fight to get their content above the fold. I'll hazard a guess: because it's more likely to get your attention there.

I'm currently looking at a post — linked from a prompt site — where I had to scroll three screens' worth of real estate down to see the first line of a story that is less than one screen long. Above it were a) a gorgeous header b) the story title b) four lines of tags c) an image whose relevance to the story I don't know because I haven't read the story yet (turns out to be a prompt image) d) a 'tag line' for the story e) the title again, only smaller, and the author's name f) three small logos, arranged vertically, of three separate prompt sites whose challenges the story is a response to g) the complete text of one of the prompt challenges' rules, only it's widely spaced so it takes up three times as much room as it needs to (not that it needs to be there at all) h) still another image whose relevance to the story I don't know because I haven't read the story yet (turns out to apparently be an author-chosen illustration) i) a stock photo credit for the above image j) links to previous appearances by the main characters of the story I haven't read yet and k) an horizontal rule.

This may seem like an extreme example but it's not. It has a lot of company. Did you make it all the way through that list? Do you wonder why you should have to make it through all of those things to get to the story?

Personally I would say that the only thing that should appear between the links bar under the website header and the body of the post is b) the story title. Everything else is either unnecessary or should appear somewhere else on the page or under the post rather than above it. All the information from the prompt site is either already known to the reader, their having come from the prompt site; or irrelevant to the reader, as they haven't come from the prompt site and don't need to see how the sausages are made. Your name should only appear (as a byline) if other people also post to that blog and you need to differentiate your posts from others'. Otherwise, it should go on the header or on a sidebar as part of a 'profile'. Tags belong below the post body, not between the post title and the post body.

If you really want to include an image you chose, go for it. Make it small and clickable for a bigger version. I don't know what to tell you about using multiple images from multiple prompt sites. A gallery or slideshow format maybe? Just remember that they should be secondary to your actual content. They should accompany it, rather than displace it.

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Let's talk about headers. I love a good header and header image. They don't, however, need to take up two-thirds of the screen. I'm looking at a second site where the huge header image and the large blog title and blog tag line are separate, leaving only the bottom third of the screen for the post title and the beginning of the post body. Result: I see only the first two lines of the story. If the header image contained the blog title and tag line, the whole thing would only take up one-third of the screen instead of two-thirds.

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You don't need to embolden the word you were asked to include in the prompt. The people who came from the prompt site know what the word is, and the people who didn't shouldn't care. All it does in either case is get their heads out of the story and into, (in the former case) "Hey, there's this week's word!" or (in the latter case) "Hey, why is that one word in bold type?" Let people read your story as a story rather than as a technical exercise. See above re: leaving the prompt rules out of the body of your post.

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Please, please pay attention to the separation of paragraphs. Either indent the first line of your paragraph or add a blank line between them. You may be able to set your editor or your website to do one of these things automatically.

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If your entire story is in italics, or worse, italics and bold type, you then can't use italics for emphasis (which by now you realize I clearly do way too much when writing non-fiction). You can't use it for anything else, for that matter. If you need something to set your story apart from other text in the body of your post (which, again, probably shouldn't really be there in the first place), put that other text in italics. A good example of text that probably should be in the post but might be best set apart by putting it in italics: an author's note.

As for bold type: save it for titles and subtitles and 'special effects' (writing a story where you've already got regular dialogue [plain] and telepathy [italics], and you need to add a robot's shouty voice? Bold! Available at a ctrl key near you.)

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Don't include hyperlinks in the body of a fiction story. You don't want your readers clicking away from your story mid-read. You don't even want them pausing to open new tabs for later. Also, it makes it look like a non-fiction article. If there's something you need to link to for the reader's edification (previous installments, etc) it should be done as part of an author's note. Give them that information when you're not in the middle of trying to immerse them in your world.

 

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I hope that this is helpful to the reader. It's meant as a wake-up call to help writers on the web to get out of their own way when it comes to their blogs/websites. I hope no one is offended at how strenuously I make my argument: it's done out of a sincere wish to help good writers get read.

To sum up: the reader shouldn't have to go hunting for your story, or pick it out of the clutter like it's in a police lineup. You want them to read your story. It's why they came.

Maybe it's just me...

I go to a lot of prompt sites to inspire my writing. Velvet Verbosity, Chuck Wendig, The Parking Lot Confessional, and today, Friday Fictioneers. Some of these are vibrant communities, and at least one is a ghost town, but all have one thing in common: they provide me with weekly inspiration. In fact, this blog started out as an attempt at founding a prompt site of my own.

Part of the bargain is that you read the pieces other people post in response to the prompt, in the hope that they will return the favor and read yours. (Which I do, except when it's poetry: I don't know enough about poetry to offer any intelligent criticism.) Frequently, when reading some of the entries, I come up against a problem that I really don't know how to address.

They can be mind-numbingly prosaic.

I don't mean in the sense that they lack 'poetry' in the sense of color and tone and metaphor; I mean that their subjects are commonplace to the point of being banal. And while style is important, any artistry devoted to such a dull subject serves not to elevate it so much as bring it into the realm of the absurd: to wax poetic about something so pedestrian is to tilt at windmills. Maybe it's a trap inherent in the maxim 'Write What You Know'.

Though many of the worst offenders come from the category, I certainly don't want to criticize 'Mommy Blogs' in general: they can be fascinating and hilarious and profound. Certainly such subjects can be leveraged to say something bigger, something important, something about life (much like, as I am constantly reminding people: good zombie stories are not about the zombies. They're about something else, usually humanity and what it means and implies). These particular offerings are just not, in my opinion, getting there. They're not about something bigger, something magical.

I need magical. I've read too much Ray Bradbury to accept anything else.

What do you think? Am I off the rails here?

Kindle Worlds

I've just read two articles about Amazon's new fanfiction-for-money scheme, one by John Scalzi and one by Chuck Wendig, both of which raise interesting points about whether or not the scheme is good or bad for authors of fanfiction, and here's my thought on the issue:

Don't write fanfiction in the first place; write original fiction.

'But I enjoy writing fanfiction because I love this universe/setting', you say. I respond: why do you assume you are incapable of creating an original universe/setting that you don't love as much, if not more because it is wholly yours?

'But fanfiction is good practice for aspiring writers', you say. I respond: that's like saying you can practice for the Daytona 500 by just driving on straightaways. The curves are part of driving too, and the creation of characters and setting are part of writing, too. Practice them. You might even discover that that's the fun part.

'But fanfiction has a built-in audience that I would lose if I wrote original fiction'. I respond: yes. I'll bet more people read my awful geocities-hosted Star Trek fanfiction from the late 90s in a day than have read a word of my original stuff in the past four years. But I earned the views I'm getting now all by myself.

'But there's an online community for my fanfic/fandom'. I respond: there are communities for writers of original fiction on the net as well. Google is your friend.

Just my humble opinion, of course. And none of this is meant as any sort of personal attack on people who write fanfic; I used to be one of them. If you want to write fanfiction, go right ahead. But I've never heard an argument for writing it that's not more true for writing original work.

Please feel free to comment, just keep it polite.