What's there to improve, experienced people? :)

Hey everybody,

I like writing little stories (+/- 700 words) about things that happen both while I'm travelling and when I'm at home, and I'm curious to hear from you if there's anything that could make my stories better.

If you'd have time and if you'd be interested: I think these two stories are quite representative for what I'm doing:
- Straining off broccoli will never be the same again is a jolly one about something that happened on an ordinary day when I was living in Spain, and
- Concrete blocks, t.v.-aerials and electricity wires: true love is a little more serious, in a bigger picture.

Anyway, I'd be glad to have an idea of what people think, besides my friends and family 😉. I hope that you can give me some feedback either way, and I hope you'll enjoy reading it anyway of course!

Thanks already, greets from Holland!

Nelly Reply to this

Hello Nelly and welcome to the Forum!

I've read your blogs and found them to be an enjoyable and easy read - congratulations! Your writing would be termed more as prose, and in that sense, I think it is easier to write smaller blogs with such a style.

I spoke at an International Conference of Tourism Bloggers last year and I identified five criteria that make for a more interesting blog for readers. This was based on being a moderator for six years at Travelblog and seeing what blogs caught people's attention. You already do a few of them:

1) Intriguing titles
2) Beautiful photographs
3) Descriptive language
4) Interaction with the surroundings
5) The human element

You easily complete numbers one and three - superb descriptive writing. You half do numbers four and five. Have a read Anastasia's blogs for an excellent idea on how she incorporates interactions and the human element within her blog.

The human element is that part of a story that only you can tell. This is the hardest one to master, but try to evoke the emotions in your blog - describe what you see, hear, smell, taste and touch. Everyone has their personal style for this, so I'll let you find your own voice on this one.

Photographs is the one area to change a bit. In the Concrete blog, I would have had the second photo (Playing at the city wall) as the title photo, it is far more impressive in terms of photography. Try to take a lot of photos, as that way there is more of a chance to get a decent one. People often comment on the standard of my photography, but I take hundreds upon hundreds of photos and there is a lot of rubbish that people never see.

Keep writing and photographing, that is the only way to improve. To paraphrase Aristotle, he said that the way to be more virtuous was to practice being virtuous. Thus the same with blogging. Blog on a regular basis, your style will change over time as it has done with virtually every long term blogger on this site. Reply to this

Hey Nelly!

I was glad to see you reply. I thought Shane's suggestions were really good too. I'm going to keep them in mind when I write again.

These are a few of my favorite bloggers.
cabochick--Hilarious!
Journey of Echoes--Witty
chantalita--Lyrical

You might enjoy reading their posts too.

Looking forward to seeing what you write next!
Reply to this