Writing a blog – creation of a new writing style?
Nov 28th, 2011 by annaig
Blogs exist on the Internet for a decade now. And they became non only a real institution but also a way to use freedom of speech. From casual tumblr to personal blogs, from everyday thoughts to a real edition process the variety of speech tone is strikening.
However. Writing styles and tones have always followed their support. You don’t write a newspaper article for The New Yorker as you write a 100 pages essay sold in book stores. The way you create an interaction with the reader, the way you try to catch his attention is highly linked to the kind of support you use. And that for some simple reasons: the reader’s attention depend from the “reading moment” – attention availability – which influence the length of the text. The length will influence the type of style you use. Going strait to the point, using longly developed examples or simply using references is dependent from the reading context. A traditional example of it in the classical French literature is comparing Alexandre Dumas’ novel (the famous writer of The Three musketeers) with Honoré de Balzac (another contemporary French famous writer). Dumas’ novels were published in newspapers, every week. Balzac published his novel through the classical way. Dumas’ writing is very sharp, strait to the point and full of dialogues whereas Balzac takes time to describe the places and people very precisely – onto the dust on the chimney. Dumas’ strengh is the plot while Balzac strengh is the athmosphere. To get into the athmosphere you have to take time whereas building the plot needs dynamic. You can actually feel in Dumas’ writing the rythme of the releases in the newspapers, and how he tries to manage keeping the reader’s attention.
The writing is truly linked to the support you use because you have to feel when and where you are loosing the reader. But what about the internet? Is blog writing that far from the other types of support’s? Blogging means you write on the internet. And you are read by e-users. The reading context is driven by fast and quick changes of pages, applications. It must be short because the reader don’t have time any more to stay and scroll again and again. But at the same time, blog articles are often longer than Newspaper’s ones because there is no material limitation. It’s a balance to find. The length has to adapt to the content.
The form influence the content. But the content influence the writing style. And blogs, with the variety of contents implies an incredible variety of style. Anyway, it is possible to determine that there is the merging of a new writing style specific to the use of blogs. This style is dominated by the informal level of speech. Blogs imply a direct link to the readers (with for example the use of comments to create a discussion about the topic) and as so a tone close to the “actual speaking” . Moreover to stay “alive” a blog must be fed regularly. The blogger has an “imperative” of writing that makes them write fast and without a very high level of “self-control”. We are very far from the French writer Gustave Flaubert who wrote “Madame Bovary” in five years, correcting over and over each word of each sentence. We are here in front of a new oral style – much more oral than newspapers. Another particularity is the use of cultural references, to joke or create a complicity feeling. This is used a lot in blogs because 1) it is more appropriate regarding the oral level of speech 2) the blogger is addressing his post to a particular group, often target as part of his “tribe”. Finally, another particularity is the obviousness of the intertextuality. Intertextuality use to be implied but not direct. In blogs, with the post of photos, linked, videos… every intertext is quoted and the reader is pushed to go to it and enquire himself. This dynamic is very original and possible thanks to the flexibility of the support.
Writing in a blog is definitely an all new way to write. Internet is creating new expression systems, with their own conditions and particularities. Blogs, tumblr, 4chan… all these new channels are revolutionizing the writing and enable each individual person to sit in front of a page and write, post speaks. Something Dumas, Balzac or Flaubert would have never imagined…