Practical Blogging Tips: Why Write Short Fiction?

As writing reviews teaches you brevity, writing short fiction helps you to develop non-fiction narratives that, if applied properly, could make your blogging more entertaining and/or inspiring. Brian Clark’s Copyblogger post, The Snowboard, the Subdural Hematoma, and the Secret of Life, as an exampler. That post is inspirational, and has many elements of fictional storytelling woven into it – a process that can also be applied to structuring your blog posts for more impact.

What Short Fiction Is Not

Note that short fiction is not shorter long fiction. There’s a whole different dynamic in short fiction than in a full-length novel or even a novella. In short fiction, the plot has to be tighter, and the events happen “faster” (in the time frame of the reading experience).

Short fiction is said by some to be harder to write than long fiction, though I find it’s much easier to map out the events and plot line in short fiction. (I’ve used the process to transform a few short stories into novelettes, but a complete novel escapes me still.)

Why Do This?

Keep in mind that the purpose here is not necessarily to write short fiction for publication but rather to learn the process and apply it to your blogging. There are two possible uses of the process you’ll learn:

  1. Writing narrative posts.
  2. Learning to structure your longer posts for more impact.

Use #1 isn’t appropriate for all types of blogs, but #2 is. I apply #1 to a personal/ inspirational blog that, which is maintained mostly as a writing exercise for me. I apply #2 for all of my longer posts/ linkbaits. If I’m lucky, I might manage to also apply a bit of storytelling style to propel readers through long posts – though that’s an art I haven’t consistently achieved quite yet.

What about you? Do you use storytelling in any of your non-fiction writing/ blogging?

5 thoughts on “Practical Blogging Tips: Why Write Short Fiction?

  1. Ooops. I realize my error now 😛 But you’ve answered my true question now

  2. Here’s where being bathed in social media vernacular isn’t necessarily a good thing. To answer your true question, vs. what I thought you were asking (http://www.stumbleupon.com), “storytelling” is just the way I’ve always approached communication.

  3. I’ve been reading via RSS for a little while now, always interesting to see what other bloggers are doing and what the trends are.

  4. Tonya: Very nice to hear. Congratulations. I’ll be checking out your site. Did you stumble upon this? Or was it premeditated to use your narrative style?

  5. I don’t earn revenue from my blog, mainly out of laziness for trying to and because it’s a very personal space, but my readership has grown exponentially over the last several years from about 500 visitors a month in 2003 to more than 12,000 a month today — and almost solely from attraction to a “narrative”.

    I most definitely notice the difference in RSS subscriptions and visits when I fall into a slump and don’t post narrative-style entries. When I bring them back, the visitors come back with them.

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