WRITING FOR THE WEB
Creative Content from the Active Observer
First Year Seminar | Lauren Haldeman

OVERVIEW
This course will examine the importance of quality writing on the web.  The blog is an exceptional way to document your life, catalog your thoughts and advance your writing skills. Whether you are writing about your coursework, your personal philosophy, or creating conversations with other writers, your own personal blogging website is a valuable entryway into the mastery of the written word. Light, serious, funny, insightful -- these small bits of writing can act as journals, social outreach, portfolios and more. In this class, you’ll generate new content about your first year at Iowa, with graded writing assignments and exercises. But more than that, you will build your own personal blogging website from scratch, which will be up and running by the end of the semester.

In Writing for the Web, we will be creating written work as well as experimenting in other forms of “composition.” We will explore the many varied means of communication that the web has to offer (and that we have to offer the web). We will also look at how to express our ideas in a more engaging fashion, by achieve certain aesthetic effects, both visually and as a component of a larger idea.

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Creating our blogs

1. Go to wordpress.com
2. Click on ‘Make a Website’
3. Pick a blog name (example.wordpress.com)
4. Click ‘Next’
5. Fill out your email, username and password
6. Click ‘Next’
7. Skip the page for custom address (Click ‘No Thanks’)
8. Choose a theme. We will all start with the suggested theme: Hemingway Rewritten (all themes can be changed later).
9. Click ‘Next Step’
10. Select ‘Free’ for your plan.
11. Activate your account, by logging into your email (the email account you used in step #5) and clicking on the link in the email that you received from Wordpress
12. Activating your account should take you to your dashboard.

Adding pages

The first page we are going to create is the About page. This is where you will include your bio, a picture of yourself and other appropriate links.

1. In your Dashboard, in the left-hand sidebar, click on View Site.
2. This is your new website! Look at the top menu. You should see a link labelled ‘About’. Click this link.
3. The page opens to show an About page of ‘dummy content’. We are going to edit this content.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page. You should see a link labelled ‘Edit’. Click on this link.(If you do not see this link, follow these directions: Go to your dashboard. You can do this from anywhere in your site by hovering over the Wordpress symbol in the top left corner  -- next to the words “My Site” -- and clicking on ‘WP Admin’. Once in your dashboard, click on the link in the left-hand sidebar that says ‘Pages’. This will reveal a list of all your pages. Hover over the ‘About’ page in the list, and click on ‘Edit’.)
5. This opens up our page editor. You will see:

• A right side bar with three boxes.
• A Body Field
• A Title Field

First we will edit the Body area. This is our main text field for the Page.

Add some text by typing or copy/pasting from an existing document. Once complete, click on the ‘Update’ button on the right-hand sidebar.

This has updated your page. You can click on the ‘View Page’ button under the Title Bar to see the updated text on the page.

Adding Media to Pages and Posts

Now we are going to learn how to add media to posts.

1. Start by going back to your dashboard. You can do this from anywhere in your site by hovering over the Wordpress symbol in the top left corner (next to the words “My Site”) and clicking on ‘WP Admin’.
2. Once in your dashboard, click on the link in the left-hand sidebar that says ‘Pages’. This will reveal a list of all your pages.
3. Find the About page -- hover over it and click ‘Edit’.
4. This opens up our page editor.
5. Click in the Body Field. Once the cursor is blinking in the Body Field, find the button above the field that says “Add Media”
6. Here you can add images, video and other media. We are going to add an image.
7. Click on the button that says ‘Select Files’. This will open up a browser.
8. Find an image file on your computer: if you have brought images on a zip drive, insert the zip drive into the computer. You should see it appear in the navigation area of your browser. If you don’t see it, close the window and click ‘Select Files’ again.
9. Choose an image.
10. You should now see the image appear in your media library. On the right side of the library, there is a sidebar with information about the image. Look under the header “ATTACHMENT DISPLAY SETTINGS”. We are going to choose these settings:
    1. Alignment: Left
    2. Link to: Media File
    3. Size: Medium
11. Now click “Insert into Page”.
12. Congratulations! You have inserted an image.

Writing our first blog post

Up to now we have been working in a ‘Page’. Now we are going to create a ‘Post’. Your blog will be made up of many ‘Post’s over time.

1. Start by going back to your dashboard. You can do this from anywhere in your site by hovering over the Wordpress symbol in the top left corner (next to the words “My Site”) and clicking on ‘WP Admin’.
2. Once in your dashboard, click on the link in the left-hand sidebar that says ‘Posts’. This will reveal a list of all your posts.
3. At the very top, find the button that says ‘Add New’ and click on it.
4. This will open up the post editor. You will see:
   1. A Title Field
   2. A Body Field
   3. A right side bar with three boxes.
5. Click inside the Body field. We are now ready to write our first post.

Different Types of Blog Posts

1. Diary Style posts
2. Listicles
3. Book Reviews
4. Guides / Instructions
5. Photo posts

We want to write posts for many reasons. For one, we want to share with the world who we are and what we do. We also want to bring people to our site, in an effort to promote our work. We also want to join the community of bloggers and writers worldwide. There are many different types of posts that can help us do that.

Diary Style posts

This is the most basic type of blog post. It is very flexible, fun and open. You can write about anything in your diary posts.  Some examples on where to start: describe your day, catalogue your thoughts, track your progress with a project, share a funny story.

Listicles

Listicles are ‘articles’ that consist of ‘lists’. You can see them everywhere online these days. There are a number of classic subgenres for the listicle: the “best of” list, the “worst of” list, the “helpful hints” list, the “mistakes you might be making” list, the “reasons why” list.

Eight fun facts about the listicle

1. A listicle is an article in the form of a list.
2. It is sort of like a haiku or a limerick.
3. It has comforting structure.
4. It makes pieces.
5. It puts them in an order.
6. Language does that too.
7. Sometimes with great difficulty.
8. Lists make it look easier.

Book Reviews

Book reviews are a GREAT way to get other writers to interact and notice your blog. It is also a great way to engage a writing community with stewardship and sharing. Consider writing a very short book review to start off -- choose a book by an author you don’t know personally, and then write three to four paragraphs about the book -- its subject, its style, its strengths and weaknesses. Then contact the publisher of the book, and let them know that you have post this review. With more practice, you can begin to send your reviews to journals!

Guides / Instructions

This is another great way to bring traffic to your site: provide useful information. Examples:

Tips about creating a robust writing practice.

How to get over a writer's’ block

Guides to research

Organizing your writing desk

Great resources for writers

Photo posts

Photos are the eye-candy of the internet. A single great photo in a post can bring in more readers than a text only version of a post. Try making a post that is mostly photos, with a few descriptions. This is a more visual form of writing, and can help inspire your own writing in different ways.

First Generative Writing Session

20 min

Now it is time to create our first post. You can choose from any of the styles listed above, or you can just write in free form. You can write the post on paper first, or you can write directly into the editor. Ask the teacher for help. We will share our pieces at the end of the session.

Second Generative Writing Session

20 min

Pick another format from the list above, and give it a try. By the end of this class, we want you to have tried as many forms as you can.

Resources

You can find a page of several examples of types of posts and other resources here:

http://laurenhaldeman.com/writing-for-the-web-resources/

 

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