The Write Brain |Essential Blog Content Development Workshop (Double-Slot)

1. The Write Brain |Essential Blog Content Development Workshop (Double-Slot) #BH11content 1:15pm - 2pm Britt Bravo, brittbravo.com @bbravo 2:15pm - 3pm Elizabeth Soutter, damomma.com @damomma 3:15pm - 4pm Julie Weckerlein, julieandmartin.com @julies_tweets RATE THIS SESSION!iPad and iPhone users: Rate this session in the BlogHer '11 mobile app!!

2. CREATION: Three Rules for Writing Great Blog Posts Elizabeth B. Soutter “The Write Brain”Essential Blog Content Development Workshop

3. Shorter is Better Organize Your Post Write for Your Audience The Rules

4. “I apologize for the length of this letter. I did not have time to make it shorter.” Mark Twain Rule #1: Shorter is Better

5. “Writing is the process of figuring out what you think.” Me Rule #1: Shorter is Better

6. Two ways to shorten your work: Play “word elimination;” Look for echoes. Rule #1: Shorter is Better

7. The Four Boxes:* LEDE NUTGRAPH BODY KICKER * (Modified from Rick Bragg http://www.poynter.org/how-tos/newsgathering-storytelling/chip-on-your-shoulder/3929/helping-writers-take-charge-five-tools-for-editors-5/) Rule #2: Organize Your Post

8. LEDE (or “Lead”) The hook, does not have to impart information, does need to grab the reader.

9. NUTGRAPH Places your feet in the story, gives the reader notice as to what the piece will be about; Gives enough factual information that the story can now begin.

10. The NUTGRAPH must address: The familiar reader, whom you are forbidden to bore; The new reader, whom you are forbidden to confuse.

11. BODY Tells the story Although it is the bulk of the post, it is not the entire post and must not take up too much space.

12. KICKER Brings the reader back to the nutgraph -- the promised point of the story; Answers the question, “Why was this worth the reader’s time?”

13. “Beefalo. Rockumentary. Brangelina. Manwich. Blaxploitation. Cremains.” The Boxes in Action: The Lede -“My Father, The Body” August 27, 2007 Julie, A Little Pregnant

14. “That last portmanteau, of course, denotes cremated human remains. Most of us call them ashes, more comfortable with a polite euphemism than the more accurate but harsher description, pulverized bone fragments. The funeral director settled for the middle ground, cremains, and was startled when I laughed. (It sounds like a brand name: Cremains™. I can only assume BoFrags didn't make it through the focus groups.) I spent the rest of our meeting tuning out his solicitous questions and thinking of other blends. Feminazi. Televangelist. Clamato! What can I say? I was grieving, y'all.” The Boxes in Action: The Lede, Extended -“My Father, The Body” August 27, 2007 Julie, A Little Pregnant

15. “I am not sentimental about my father's remains. In fact, I am almost the opposite. The only part of his funeral service — Catholic, but not a mass — that truly offended me were the repeated reverences to the small wooden box that houses his ashes. So implacably do I believe that he's gone that seeing people bow to a few pounds of dust upset me: That isn't him. He isn't there. Stop acting like that's my father. That box contains no magic.” The Boxes in Action: The Nutgraph -“My Father, The Body” August 27, 2007 Julie, A Little Pregnant

16. “I am quite familiar with the disappointments of the body, both its expected failures and its shocking betrayals. I've spent so long treating my own as an adversary that I think of people as neatly divisible, what we are easily distinguished from who we are. It was a simple matter, then, to believe my father irrevocably gone before he'd even been extubated. Without the part that had made him who he was, the body no longer mattered. But is it unseemly, or even inhumane, I wondered later after the funeral, to be so ready to divorce the body from the being? Am I too hasty to dismiss the last physical scraps of someone — anyone — unique and precious? Do the people who bowed in front of that box know something I don't? Maybe. But I know something, too: What our bodies can't do is not who we are.” In Action: The Kicker -“My Father, The Body” August 27, 2007 Julie, A Little Pregnant

17. It seems obvious, but if you want people to read it, you need to write it for them. Rule # 3: Write for Your Audience 17

18. Nobody cares what you think. Rule #3 Translated:

19. They care whether you can make them think.

20. The Write Brain |Essential Blog Content Development Workshop (Double-Slot) #BH11content 1:15pm - 2pm Britt Bravo, brittbravo.com @bbravo 2:15pm - 3pm Elizabeth Soutter, damomma.com @damomma 3:15pm - 4pm Julie Weckerlein, julieandmartin.com @julies_tweets RATE THIS SESSION!iPad and iPhone users: Rate this session in the BlogHer '11 mobile app!!