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?