|
|
How To Become A CyberWriter
-by Sherry Miller |
Publishing on the internet is inexpensive and wide-reaching. A few years ago some friends and I invented a little magazine called "The Electric Page." Writers submitted stories, and the zine was published on several bulletin boards which were precursors to the world wide web.The stories were all text with few, if any, pictures. So the writers just wrote the way they already did. We didn't make any money with these early e-zines. But in 1994 the world wide web appeared as a brand new publishing medium. Since then most writing on the web has been transposed or rewritten from existing texts such as magazine and newspaper articles. Just recently, innovative and creative writing designed for the web has begun to appear. Writers worldwide are wondering if their current writing skills can be used in this new medium. How? Will they make any money? Do they need new skills?
The first thing to do is take some time to get used to the world wide web. As you navigate around the web, you'll be reading things like, how you feel reading longer articles, how long do you continue reading plain text before surfing to a new page. Figure out what attracts your attention and what is boring in terms of writing on the web.
You will find that the web is more than just a lot of text. It started out that way, but now people working and "writing"for the web are also using pictures, graphics, animation and sound to enhance or complement or even replace the role of plain text. In a way this is multimedia at work. We are accustomed to communicating in one medium at a ime -
But now we will be communicating in many media simultaneously on our computers and our tv's which will soon have web capabilities. Soon a normal written document on the web will routinely contain sound and images.
Writers can begin to consider how they will present the same "word" concepts in a multimedia format. If you have an article that is three typed pages you might be arranging that type and those ideas in terms of illustrations, illustrations that move and talk, and most importantly of all, hyperlinks. This means you can briefly write what your main ideas are. You can hyperlink words to other documents to enlarge the information available. You can set the mood and tone with images and sounds rather than with long verbal descriptions. Can you begin to see some of the changes that will happen to your writing?
More and more web developers will be looking for trained writers to work in this new medium. Writers will be describing products; telling stories; training people; teaching children; publishing columns; writing fiction. Writers will also be writing manuals that are published and downloaded on the web; they will write courses, instructions, technical support, product descriptions, advertising, scientific papers and more on the web. Most of all, writers will be inventing new ways to use the world wide web. Slowly writers and other content producers on the web are figuring out the ways you can tell stories in this new medium.
Is the type too big?Is it too small?Is there too much of it? Translated for a writer this means you have to learn to say something in a lot less words if you want to be sure the viewer will read it all. Usually when you write for a magazine or newspaper, they have a well documented audience and you speak to that group of people -even if it's a broad based group. On the web demographics (descriptions or profiles of users) are still a new phenomenon and no one is ever sure just who is looking at a particular site or why. If you are writing for the internet, try to determine what kind of people will be looking at the web site or newsgroup where you are writing. Ask the person who hires you to tell you everything she/he knows about the target audience. No matter what the format of writing, storytelling or narrative always remains the chief form of communication. What keeps a reader glued to the screen is a compelling story line - same as movies, radio, tv, and novels. Although the storyline may be curtailed or hidden in web writing, it still will grab the attention of your reader. While you are telling your basic story, you can also have highlighted hyperlinks to additional material. For example, "Jane did not know where her mother was vacationing." In this sentence, mother can be a hyperlink and you can click on mother and go to a description of the mother and then return to the main narrative or keep going from there. (Remember to include a back to main story button when you use hyperlinks.) If you would like more information about writing on the web, check Yahoo's writing Pages. Topics include: Agents, Archives, Authors, Children's writing, Conferences, Contests, Festivals, Grammar, Usage, and Style, Institutes,Mysteries, Online Forums, Organizations, Poetry, Publications, Rhetoric,Romance, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Speech writing, Workshops, and writer Directories. Also, be sure and check The writers Guild. Here you'll find information about:
All this potential can be overwhelming right now. Just remember that the web is interactive and when you write for it, you are not limited to your "active" writing and the reader's "passive"reading. All of your writing skills can be used on the web. Spend your time cruising the web and getting a feeling for what it is, what you like,how it's done, and what you think you can do here! Good luck.
Visit the Helping Hands bulletin board to ask other cyberfolks about writing on the web. |
|
Home / Comics / Newsletter / Horoscope / Directories / Classifieds / Guestbook True stories / Helping Hands / Community / Resources / Treasure Chest |
|
|
Contact FolksOnline Helping each other use the Net to reach for our dreams. © 1999 Yinspire. All rights reserved. |
Transform Your Existing Talents to the Web
Where does a writer begin? 