Yeah, I’m particularly interested in a kind of nodal style – writing that positions itself at the nexus of a network of links and references, building connections, directing the reader to other sites of information, aggregating it and systematising it. I’m excited by the kind of democratisation of references allowed by the internet. That doesn’t mean that a lot of writers are doing this, or want to do this, only that I think that’s an interesting avenue…
Tag: Ben Eastham
I think this relates to the earlier question about understanding the public and reading patterns online. There’s certainly an added pressure to writing online, in the knowledge that a piece can be measured both by number of visits and average time spent on the page, but I don’t think either of these metrics quite describe the influence of a successful piece. It’s easy to become obsessed with the analytics, to everyone’s detriment. Editors need to have confidence in their writers. Not sure if that quite answers the question.
Personally, I feel that my attention span is considerably shorter online. It makes a big difference to the way I read. So that’s reflected in writing shorter, perhaps more referential/networked pieces for online.
Yes, but I think this can be misleading. Cursory likes or retweets might demonstrate timeliness, but rarely provide much useful feedback.
In order: generally shorter; more breadth, less depth; more images; more references to online sources (via hyperlinks, embeds).
On the sentence level, no. But if I’m writing for a platform that supports embeds/hyperlinks then my style tends to become more referential, more open in the sense that one feels able to draw in other elements without alienating the reader.