3 In What Forms May I Write?
Carla, a computer programmer by day, felt as if she had exhausted her creativity in writing poetry as a hobby and sideline. She had begun with haiku before progressing to other poetry forms. Carla had eventually grown sufficiently skilled and confident in writing poetry, and familiar enough with its various forms, that she had published a book of poetry in addition to having poems published in other books. Yet rather than write more poetry, Carla felt a call to try her hand at prose. Her problem was that she didn’t know what form to pursue. Should she write a blog, newsletter, article, or book? Which form would fit her interests, accomplish her goal, reach her audience, and match her time and skill?
Writings
Writings come in different forms, formats, genres, and types. While the definitions can be loose, a writing form generally refers to the writing’s structure, shape, and length, such as either a blog, newsletter, article, chapter, or book. A writing format refers to the writing’s delivery mode, layout, or presentation, such as in paperback, hard cover, or digital. A writing genre refers to the writing’s content, style, purpose, and audience, such as fiction and its sub-genres like mystery or romance, non-fiction and its sub-genres like biography and journalism, and poetry or prose. A writing type refers to writing style categories like expository writing such as a textbook or news report, persuasive writing such as a review or speech, personal narrative such as a novel or autobiography, descriptive writing such as a memoir or journal entry, and creative writing such as a play or fantasy fiction. The next chapter addresses different writing genres and types. This chapter addresses writing forms.
Choice
Writers sometimes miss that they have a choice of the writing that they should write. You don’t have to only be a blogger, website content writer, or book author. Writers may, across a day of writing or across a writing career, move back and forth among different writing forms, genres, and types. Each form, genre, and type has its own purpose, audience, demands, and parameters. Some subjects deserve only a brief blog, while other subjects deserve a well-developed article, and still other subjects require a whole book. Sometimes, an idea deserves a poem, while other times the idea requires an expository analysis or argument, and still other times it requires a space-fantasy fiction. Writers can have an incredibly wide set of choices when considering what to write. Yet writers must still generally make a choice. A writer may simply begin to write, but sooner or later, if the writing is to earn publication and reach an audience, a writer must choose a form, genre, and type. And the writer must then know and properly execute the conventions of that chosen single writing.
Forms
The writing form you choose for your first or next project is particularly important. While your writing may cross lines between expository, argumentative, or descriptive writing, for instance, or between personal narrative and journalism, for another example, you must especially write to the conventions of the form, or your writing won’t find a publisher and audience. If your assignment calls for a blog, you can’t submit a full-length article or book-style chapter. Or if, conversely, you’re writing a book, you won’t generally be able to do so following the cursory treatment that you’d properly give a blog subject. Likewise, if you’re supposed to produce a scholarly article, don’t instead follow newsletter form and conventions. Yet you need not stick to writing all of your projects all in one form. You can have several writing projects going, each in a different form. Indeed, the writing forms through which you progress across a writing career are also important. Get stuck in a single form, and you may end up being only a limited writer. Conversely, progress through writing forms, and you may achieve all you’d hoped to achieve as a writer. Major writing forms include website content, newsletters, blogs, articles, book chapters in collected works, and books, addressed in the following sections.
Website
Content writing for websites is big business. You may think of a website as a relatively static platform with lots of images and a few short blurbs of text. Think again. Many websites include voluminous original writings, especially for search engine optimization (SEO). You may have to follow drop-down menus and internal links, but a single website can offer dozens or even hundreds of blogs, newsletters, articles, and even book chapters and books. For instance, the website help-with-your.com on which this full guide resides has a million words. Websites have their own writing forms, particularly landing pages. A landing page’s text and images tells the web searcher that they have landed in the right place. Given the incredibly short attention spans of web surfers, a landing page’s title must be clear and catchy. Its text must be equally so, with especially clear organization, headings, and subheadings. Website text must be carefully calibrated to the reading level of those whom the website’s owner hopes to attract and inform. Website text must also generally compel the reader’s attention, or the reader will be off on another search. If you like writing highly informative and accessible material that has a vibey, breathless, and bouncy pace, capable of holding the attention of an eighth grader, web content writing may be for you. Find a content-writing firm, or build your own website client portfolio.
Newsletters
Newsletters are a related writing form, near and dear to websites. The difference is that website owners can prefer so-called evergreen content that remains useful as time passes. Otherwise, website updating becomes a continual chore. Newsletters, by contrast, generally feature timely information and updates, or news, relating to the organization posting the newsletter, the usefulness of which will soon pass. Website owners may combine evergreen web content with digital newsletters, the latter quickly archived online. Nearly any organization of any type, including businesses, nonprofits, schools, churches, community organizations, and government agencies, may offer a newsletter, making the newsletter a widely used writing form. Like a website, a newsletter’s purpose may go well beyond sharing educational information related to the sponsoring organization. The newsletter’s deeper purpose is likely to be reader engagement, including marketing the organization’s goods and services. If you like informing readers with a marketing hook or angle, then write newsletter copy for a content firm or your own client portfolio.
Blogs
A blog is a special form of website post that addresses a current issue. While website content is typically evergreen, informative across a long period without going quickly out of date, a blog post is generally the opposite, quickly becoming irrelevant as circumstances change. Blogs aren’t exactly news pieces. They instead express the writer’s personal perspective on a new development. That perspective typically promotes the interests of the organization owning the website on which the blog appears. If you’re writing a blog for an organization’s website, you need to know the organization’s interests and align your perspective with those interests, or the organization won’t likely post your blog on its website. Because blogs generally pass quickly out of date, blogs are usually short, topical pieces, in the here’s what you need to know vein. Writing blogs can be a good way to get your footing as a writer, giving you experience working with organization clients and quickly building a writing portfolio. You can even blog on your own website to build a writing portfolio. Yet blogs are lightweight pieces. You won’t generally get a great writer’s reputation simply by blogging. You may, though, find employment with a website content-writing firm whose clients need regular blogs on hot topics.
Articles
For a writer, an article is a next step up from writing website content including newsletters and blogs. An article is an in-depth treatment of a specific topic. Readers read articles when they want to know more about a topic than a superficial understanding. Readers read articles not just for handy information or quick answers but for deeper analysis including justification or rationalization. An article presumes a greater degree of weight and seriousness to the topic’s treatment than blogs or other website copy. An article can also imply a greater degree of objectivity, representing the author’s considered view, although writers may still slant articles to the publisher’s interests, to get the article published. Given their deeper and richer treatment of their topics, articles are generally longer than blogs. While blogs may be barely more than a page or two, meaning a computer screen or two of text, articles may run to several or many pages. Website owners pay for and post articles when the articles inform their customers and clients. Website articles can thus have a marketing angle. Articles can add significantly to your writing credits and portfolio.
Scholarship
Articles advance a writer’s career another step when published not on a private owner’s website, promoting in some sense the owner’s business or other interests, but instead in an online or print journal. Journals carry a greater degree of independence, or at least the appearance of independence, than organizations owning their own website and controlling the website’s content. Journals generally have an editorial board that selects the articles for publication, presumably on their merit for advancing the scientific, educational, literary, or other special interest the journal serves. Journals are, in that sense, not truly independent. Journals, like website owners, have their interests and biases. But journals may publish competing views, when the competition advances the state of the art or science. You’ll have to know the subject and field to write a publishable journal article, either from your education, experience, or research. Journal articles require some claim or assertion of expertise, either your own or the authors of the research your article cites. People read journal articles not just for the quality of their reasoning and research citations but also the credentials of their authors. Up your writing game with journal articles. They add a big credit to your writer’s resume.
Chapters
Writing book chapters requires a somewhat different skill set and thus brings a different sort of credit to a writer. To get something published in a book, you don’t have to write the whole book. You may instead have the opportunity to contribute a chapter to an edited volume or treatise of collected works. Professional associations, for instance, may publish practitioner treatises in which different practitioners write different chapters on their own speciality practice. Contributing a chapter to such a work can mark you out as an expert on the niche subject, among other experts on other niche subjects. Authors and editors of literary, descriptive, expository, and argumentative works may likewise seek chapter contributors, when their own contributions fall short of a full volume or they simply want to include the views and experiences of other authors. Contributing to a collected work can mark you out as a writer of interest and note, since the volume’s editor or editors thought enough of you and your piece to include it in their book. Network within your writing community for opportunities to contribute book chapters.
Books
For many writers, writing their own published book is the crowning achievement of a writing interest and career. Book writing adds a significant degree of perseverance to the writing task. A skilled and experienced writer can pound out a quality blog in under an hour. The same writer might produce a quality article in a half day or so. A scholarly writer might take a month or more to produce a scholarly article. A book chapter might take a skilled writer at least as much time or more. A whole book, though, could take months, a year, or years, depending on the book’s length and the writer’s time and persistence. Good writers may never quite pull it off, for lack of time, energy, or discipline. And writing a publishable book takes more than time. It also takes deep insight into a broader topic. Book subjects are generally not one offs, not long, broad, and deep writings on a topic that needs only one treatment. Books are instead typically deeply reflective treatments of subjects that others have also addressed and will address again from their own perspective. If you haven’t already done so, then conceive your book project and get started. Let this guide help you along the way toward your crowning writer’s achievement.
Others
The above sections describe only several major writing forms. Writers can enjoy a good career writing in other forms. Technical manuals, for instance, are also big business, requiring that the writer follow strict conventions. A good technical manual can be a literary artwork. Ad copy is another writing form offering writers substantial opportunity to exercise a precise, valuable, and satisfying skill. Imagine hearing the jingle that you wrote a million times over in advertisements, each time bringing a special smile to your face. Summarizing empirical studies, scientific tests, and other research results is another precise and valuable writing form. Other such writing forms include script writing, producing case studies, drafting textbooks and other course and assessment materials, and grant writing, among several more such writing forms. If you haven’t found it yet, a writing form is out there for you.
Reflection
What writing form makes you most comfortable? Do you prefer the instant gratification and one-and-done nature of blogging? Or do you prefer writing deeper analyses in article form? Or would writing a book chapter or book be your preference, giving you greater opportunity to reflect more deeply and broadly but requiring your dedication and persistence? If you haven’t done so already, would you like to try your hand at writing educational web content or newsletters for websites? If so, can you locate a content-writing firm to send you assignments or develop your own clientele of website owners for whom to write? In what area do you have education and expertise, or could you intelligently research expertise, to write articles? Do you have organization contacts who would know article topics and for whom you could write articles? Do you have the credentials to write for a scholarly journal? If so, identify the journals for which you would like to write and their submission requirements, while you research appropriate topics. Is writing a book, or another and better book, your ultimate writing goal? What other writing form might you explore?
Key Points
Writers write their pieces in various forms, formats, genres, and types.
You must generally choose your writing’s form, genre, and type.
Writing forms, like blogs, articles, and books, have their conventions.
Websites publish evergreen text in a catchy, vibey, informative form.
Newsletters publish current information with a marketing purpose.
Blogs publish brief views on current events linked to website interest.
Articles take an in-depth view of developments to inform readers.
Scholarly articles bring research credentials to journal publications.
Contributing a book chapter credits the author with subject expertise.
Writing a published book can be a writer’s crowning achievement.
Writers have other forms they can pursue for published writings.