Blog writing to engage people

[v_a_redwood]

Greetings fellow readers and writers! As a writer and blogger, do people want first person narratives, or does third person work as well when writing short essays about everyday life incidents? My writing style is conversational in an inclusive way that rarely uses "I" or "me" and more "we" or "you" to discuss a topic. Does this style work?

[moderntimes]

I'm not so vain that I think people will be interested in what happens to me daily, such as what I had for lunch or what movie I saw, what was on TV, what book I'm reading.

If I do have something to say, I usually post on Facebook or email friends. This is maybe something new in my experience, such as reading a terrific new book or whatever.

Now for my writing career, I maintain my own personal website which contains all the info on my mystery novels, latest reviews, publication news, and so on. And on this website I have a blog section where I regularly update with the latest news. But this website is totally dedicated to my 3 private detective novels which are sold and published, and info on the 4th in-progress novel.

But a daily blog? Nope. I'm not having that many interesting things happen in my life or thoughts.

Besides, if I DID post a blog, where would I post it? Facebook updates? I get those all day from friends who want to tell everyone what they had for lunch. I'm not that vain to think anyone cares, unless maybe I found a nifty new restaurant, then I'll post a Facebook message.

If I may ask, where do people post their blogs so that others can read them? On their registered website? Or wherever? I don't think many people have and maintain their own websites, as I do. But my website and domain is for a specific purpose, to publicize my mystery novels.

[v_a_redwood]

I absolutely concur @moderntimes! I too am uncomfortable in detailing my day to day moves on the world wide web for random people to stumble across. I leave such private messages and information to the people who i see as my friends and family. I think it's a very wise move to leave your website as professional as possible, and draw in people who are keen on mystery novels (May i ask what the title of the books are? I'm always after a thrilling read).

I've started to explore with my writing through an essay type blog that somewhat detaches my daily activities such as what coffee i drink in the morning, to more thought provoking stories in order to engage people to question life. I'm after inquisitive thoughts and debates to flow through in my blogs. I mean i do write from personal experiences, however my style doesn't use language as "I feel this...I want this..." but more "We are inquisitive beings by nature".

Such statements as this, does this resonate with people?

Thanks so much @moderntimes for your thoughts! Much appreciated!

[moderntimes]

It's not that I'm uncomfortable revealing my thoughts -- I'm a writer, after all. But either I don't think that my trivial daily thoughts are worth caring about, or that if important, I simply don't want others to know private things which are only for family or close friends.

My point being, what is the purpose of my blog? I'll often put funny or random thoughts on things on Facebook, which I do not take seriously. My website blog is strictly about my private eye novels.

Okay, my books. The first 2 are, in order, "Blood Spiral" and "Blood Storm" and here are the links to their BookClub reviews. Both books are available via Amazon, paperback & Kindle. The newest in the series, Blood Vengeance" will be out soon. The novels are modern American private detective thrillers, based in Houston where I live. They are adult oriented and pitched toward a fairly educated readership.

For Blood Spiral
http://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewto ... 22&t=31242

For Blood Storm
http://forums.onlinebookclub.org/viewto ... 22&t=31992

Thanks for asking!

[v_a_redwood]

Indeed @moderntimes, there's a place for everything, despite the blurring lines between public and private. Wonderful to hear about your two books! Is there a third on the way? Will check out the links in the meantime. Happy writing/reading!

[moderntimes]

Thanks. I was very fortunate to receive 4-star ratings on both books here in this forum. Yes, the 3rd in the series, "Blood Vengeance" is now under editorial review by my publisher and I'll receive the final galley proofs in the next couple days. The book is set for early March release. And I'm working on the 4th novel as we speak.

[VintageMerlotStudios]

I believe that if you have a unique thought or writing style or even something that resonated with many people, that it may not matter what your writing voice sounds like. I personally use the "I have... I can..." that you speak of but it seems to me that many of the blogs that I enjoy use the third person or a passive voice that is thought provoking for the points the writers are attempting to make. I think that perhaps the conversational voice you are using may be advantageous depending on the topics you are writing on. For instructional blog posts the use of a first person voice would be useful: "I have done this thing this way for this reason" while the example you have given of "We are inquisitive beings by nature" I feel like I would find in an empowering or narrative blog.

So it sounds like you're on the right track for whom you intend to write for!

[MsMartha]

This has been an interesting discussion, since I'm an occasional blogger. I don't read blogs too often either, but I have noticed that people do blog for various reasons. Some share personal information--and some don't. I think the bottom line is to decide what you want to do with your blog, if you WANT to do one. I started mine because I wanted to get back into practicing writing. So far it's been personal stories, and some are a lot longer than what I'd post on Facebook. So far, the most interesting thing for me is the comments and "likes" I get. Those are not frequent either, but they're mostly from people I don't know and that makes me wonder how they saw the blog in the first place. Apparently curiosity is one of the things I like

[moderntimes]

I wish to ask once more -- if you "blog" the where?

I've got a registered website and domain and I post my blog on a page in that website.

But others, exactly where is your blog found? Do you simply post a message on Facebook or Tweet something? In other words, how will others find your blog?

Or do you just send an email to friends and that email is the blog?

[MsMartha]

My blog is on Wordpress--

[moderntimes]

Ah, thanks. As I understand, Wordpress is a site where people can create websites.

This is similar to what I did, except that as an old computer hack from ancient days, who's written several websites for companies, I wrote my own site in HTML from scratch, and then bought a domain and website address from GoDaddy, uploaded my own site files, and maintain them. My site is not a "personal" news site -- it's specifically focused on my private detective novels and the publisher, and I have pages there for introducing my themes, talking about the books, with links to their purchase on Amazon, and also of course the 2 very nice reviews I received here on this site.

And one page of my website is a blog, but again, it's only about my writing and private eye novels, not personal "what I had for lunch" type things.

[MsMartha]

I used a program called Namo Webeditor to create a few (VERY few!) sites back in the day--I never really learned HTML, although it was on my to-do list for awhile.

[moderntimes]

There are many HTML creator software packages these days and anyone who's setting up a website would of course want to use them. I had however some leftover notes and manuals from writing an engineering website for the company where I ran the computers, and used that.

Important is the embedding of "broadcast" items, so that your website gets distributed into the internet, sites like Google or others, so that if your name or your book's name is entered in a search, your website URL link will pop up. Here's a bit of the preface from my "index" file. For those who don't know, a file named "index.html" is the initial first page, the "home" page on a website. Here's the preface from my own "index.html" file:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Sam Waas and Mitch King Mysteries</TITLE>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="Sam Waas and Mitch King Mysteries" name=SamWaas>
<META content="" name=DESCRIPTION>
<META
content="Sam, Waas, Sam Waas, Mysteries, Mystery, Private Detective, Detective, Houston, Texas, Crime, Murder, Police, Tell-Tale, Tell-Tale Publishing, Mitchell King, Mitch King, Mitch, Mitchell, Blood Spiral, Blood Storm, Blood Vengeance, Blood, Spiral, Storm, Vengeance"
name=KEYWORDS>
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1141" name=GENERATOR></HEAD>
<BODY>

What does this do? It sets up key words which will pop up in a global search. In the items under "META content" you can see all the items which are keywords to my 3 private eye novels. It also defines the website URL correctly. That's all part of the hidden file junk you need in a website.

Anyone who's setting up a website should ensure that the site design software allows you to insert these items from your own list of good things to search for.

[5ngela]

Usually I try to write it with first own point of view. I think you should write with style you are comfortable with.