Assignment #1--What Makes Good Online Writing

To be completely and utterly honest, I don't think that the assigned readings compliment the prompt too well. The prompt asks 'what makes for good online writing?'; which I interpret to asking "what makes for high quality, entertaining/informative writing?" The articles, How to Create Compelling Content That Ranks Well In Search Engines (Which is just an ad for some sort of Scribe thingie), and How You Will Change The World With Social Networking are more about how to write things that will get found on the internet and why social networking is cool, respectively. It's akin to asking me to read The Iliad and The Odyssey and asking me to write about war strategies and navigation. However, I was able to get some useful info from each of the articles, just as I would with the Iliad and Odyssey, (Don't piss off the gods, especially Poseidon; and never cross the streams)

What I got from the readings is a confirmation of some general rules of writing:

• The writing should be clear 
• Use keywords to relate info to audience
• Structure the page to be easily read/ guide reader's eyes
• Write on the audience's level. Don't talk down to them.
• Write for people, not for books/machines/databases. Write things to be read.

Deconstructing the Complete and Utter Insanity of 'Batman: Odyssey'  is a review of a comic book mini-series presented as a dialogue between the two authors of the review. Like most articles on and off the internet, under the headline is a related picture that is supposed to hook the reader, and in the case of a comic review, give an example of the art we might expect in the book. The image not only does that, but also gives a peak as to the nature of the comic we're dealing with, and together with the headline, sets up the tone and general content of the article.
The review is presented as a dialogue, and the format keeps the whole thing very cool and informal, as if the reader were listening in to a casual conversation. On the internet, especially with niche blogs, the reader should feel like he knows the writers; that they could be friends. A dialogue format keeps it personal but approachable. The format also is conducive to how most people do read on the internet: short sentences at a time instead of huge paragraphs.
The review also uses a lot of images to form natural breaks in the writing where a reader can take a quick pause, but also exemplify traits of the comic, giving credence to what the reviewers say.

The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing is an example of  'Let's Play' (to be referred to as lp from now on). Lp's are usually a walkthrough of a video game that contains a 'Mystery Science Theater 3000' like running commentary on the game being played that is either entertaining, informative, or in the best cases, a combination of both. (There's also Raocow, but he's different...he's French Canadian). Instead of being a straight walk-through of the game, Chewbot takes a more narrative approach, taking a very open ended game, Animal Crossing (or rather, it's sequel, Wild World, but whatever, they are pretty much the same), and using the in game resources to construct his own plot that deconstructs the original tone of the game. While not as initially welcoming as the comic review, the story does have it's own merits, many of which are generally literary based, so I won't go too heavily into them. Like the comic review, though, the Lp takes advantage of using images to convey the plot and further engage the reader. Also, when it was still being written, the chapters would be released periodically in updates, meaning that the reader would have had to actively follow the story; having to keep on coming back to the forum thread it was originally hosted on to keep on reading it; making it not just a story, but a routine, and creating a unique dynamic between author and audience not entirely unlike how most of Charles Dickens' stories were published in newspapers. Because it is a more creative endeavor, it doesn't make use of keywords, per-say, but Chewbot does incorporate a lot of the game's characters and setting in order to build his own narrative.

Now for the bad writing.

First is Time Cube. Time Cube, is, if you don't bother to (and please, DO NOT BOTHER TO) read it, a really, really, really, reallyreally stoooooopid conspiracy off-Broadway-pseudo-science theory THING. You don't even have to read it to see how reader unfriendly it is. You go to the page and it vomits big, blue, ungrammatical text at you. Scrolling down the page you notice that it is this type of text all the way down until it changes color and font for some reason and that the first uses of any other medium is halfway down the page with some stupid hand-drawn pictures that even if you bothered to read this piece of shit is not integrated well at all. Please just trust me when I say that it is not at all well researched and is just wrong on so many levels and please don't read it.

Amazing though, even more crappy than that...and there is something more crappy that that, and that thing is the now infamous Harry Potter fanfic (drum-roll please)...My Immortal. I should not have to explain why this writing is terrible, but I should at least attempt to do my homework. It's written in some sort of bizzaro English that isn't a language, the author (and I use that term INCREDIBLY loosely) regularly breaks tense, the characters are flat, uncomfortable shells of their former selves, the main character is a Mary Sue, the...shitter of the piece regularly insults the audience, for how incredibly crap the writing is, it's still too dense for it's own good and please mommy I don't want to talk about My Immortal anymore please please please