Writing Through Reading: Analyzing Existing Medium Blogs.
As many of my teachers have said, the only way to get better at writing is to read. But reading alone is not enough to truly improve one’s craft, instead analyzing while reading is the only thing that can help readers become writers. This week I have examined three blogs and closely read two to three articles from each blog to discover their strengths and their potential weaknesses. I will be detailing a brief summation of each blog and then writing on the strengths of the blog and reviewing what areas of improvement become apparent through this analysis. Through this students can understand writing better and improve their own craft.
Personal Growth
The first blog I analyzed was Personal Growth and the writer Niklas Göke. This blog mainly seems to focus on posts intended on helping people better themselves and think deeper about the world around them. This is not a journalism centered blog. Instead of covering news events this blog generally consists of mini essays about given topics and ideas.
The first article I read, “The Future of Learning”, argues that a state of mind of receptiveness is more important than rote knowledge or memorization. “What are the Habits of Successful People?” is a structured piece focused on debunking the myth that simple habits relate to people’s success in life. Göke effectively uses a number of examples from successful people whose habits differed from each other greatly to establish his point.
This blog uses a casual engaging tone that is interesting to read. The articles are structured into subsections using boldfaced headers, which helps nail in the main point of the article and the progression of the arguments made in each article. Another strong point of this blog is the way Göke uses examples and statistics to illustrate his points. All of these elements make this blog interesting.
Some things I thought were executed less effectively; I think the writer could have integrated more outside sources and hyperlinks into each post. In the post “What are the Habits of Successful People?” the blogger backed up the argument with a quote from Zat Rana that was hyperlinked in the article. The writer also included some other outside statistics and information but in the other post I didn’t see much outside sourcing. I think if he added more hyperlinks from other sources it would help people who want to read more about the topic easily find information on each given subject. It would also help his readers easily authenticate the argument by comparing it to the beliefs of other scholars.
The Polymath Project
The second blog I examined was The Polymath Project and the writer Charles Chu. From the three articles I read, it seems that the focus of this blog explores some philosophical issues and topics relating to the workings of mind. The last writer used a serious but casual tone, but this writer uses a humorous casual style of writing throughout all three articles I examined.
The article “The Ideological Turing Test: How to be Less Wrong” comments on a philosophical theory about how people are rarely right yet people usually think they are right and how this stunts peoples growth. The next article is titled “The Drama of Rules: What Storytelling Teaches Us About Human Nature.” This article is about how stories have conflict and how this is thought to come from evolutionary thinking which is useful in teaching people to avoid unpleasant situations without having to endure the problems first hand. The final article I examined from this blog is titled “Games and the Design of Optimal Human Experience.” In this article Chu delves into how the learning aspect of video games contributes to the enjoyable experience of video games. Chu then he contrasts this with school being associated with boredom despite also containing learning elements.
One of the strengths of this blog is the humorous casual tone. I think the writer really uses tone to his advantage in his articles. It never feels like he is talking down to the audience and his humor makes the story more engaging. One example of this from “The Ideological Turing Test: How To Be Less Wrong” is included in a line in which Chu says:
“You could probably fool lots of folks without truly understanding what they’re saying. That’s how we fooled our teachers into letting us graduate high school, isn’t it?”
One issue I had with this blog was the excessive use of quotes. At some points the articles are quote heavy and it seems like he needs to paraphrase some of the arguments. This is particularly a problem in “The Ideological Turing Test: How to be Less Wrong.” There are a number of long blocks of offset quotes. Some of these quotes are helpful but some aren’t completely necessary to the understanding of the subject and could be at least partially summarized.
The Book Mechanic
The third blog I examined was The Book Mechanic and posts from writer August Birch. This blog seems to focus on topics of honing creativity and exploring the issues commonly experienced by people pursuing a creative career. This is a niche blog that doesn’t have a journalistic slant but presents engaging ideas and helpful tips to those pursuing creative careers.
The first article I examined was “The Creative Difference Between Multitasking and Multi-Focus.” This article focused on the positive impact of multitasking in creative careers while addressing its frequent confusion with the negative concept of multi-focusing. The article “How to Convince Family Your Crazy Creative Pursuit is Worthwhile” emphasized a particular story of a man with a letter business that was doubted by his family but ended up very successful. The article draws encouragement from this particular example and urges readers to continue with some points of advice. “A Writing Distraction-Fix That Works All the Time, 25% of The Time” focused on eliminating distraction for an optimal work environment and presents a specific trick to help people refocus their minds once they’ve lost their momentum.
Birch uses a very casual laid back writing style that seems to address the average reader conversationally. The structures of the articles are easy to follow with each subsection is given a boldfaced header in large font and a descriptive title. The style of the articles is visually appealing with key points of the articles written in bold font that highlights their importance but is differentiated from subheadings by font size. The paragraphs are short and easy to manage as well. Birch uses interesting header pictures that relate to his subject matter. For example, in “How to Convince Family Your Crazy Creative Pursuit is Worthwhile,” he uses an image of a mailbox to depict an anecdote that is emphasized throughout the article.
The main issue I found with this blog was the way outside sourcing was presented and the lack of hyperlinks. A lot of his posts used ads instead of hyperlinks and prefaced each ad with a sentence at the end of a paragraph telling people to read about the subject here or there. I found this style of outside sourcing a little confusing since I didn’t realize he was outside sourcing at first. I felt like this method of telling the reader to read something jolted me out of the article and distracted from the main point of the story.
Conclusion
All of these blogs used interesting tone and form. Each writer seems well versed in their topics. In each individual post of these blogs it is obvious that each writer did a magnitude of outside research and used voices outside their own to formulate an educated and reliable opinion. While even the most experienced blog has room for improvement, these blogs all are effective communicators and conveyed their arguments and opinions well through the use of external sources and clear language. Learning how these writers effectively use writing, form and voice can help any student or writer better their own craft.
Mock Tweet: Check out my debut article giving an in depth analysis of the three Medium blogs: Personal Growth, The Polymath Project and The Book Mechanic.
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