--- title: "Being boring (Sins of blogging)" date: 2009-10-13 description: "Seven deadly sins of blogging 1.0 Being fake (Sins of blogging) 1.1 Being irrelevant (Sins..." canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2009/10/13/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-blogging-sin-3-being-boring/ --- # Being boring (Sins of blogging) I somewhat disagree. When readers complain that writing is too long, what they're really saying is that they're getting bored. The length isn't so much the problem as the content. They want to click elsewhere because they're bored. ### What Is Boring? To better understand what defines boring, let's look at a random article from the *Technical Communication Journal *– a journal that is known for being a bit on the dry side. As an academic journal, the authors perhaps feel constrained by scholarly conventions. These conventions involve omitting personal experiences, avoiding the use of "I," backpedaling from straightforward speech, and taking as long as possible to get to the point. Here's a passage in the August 2009 issue from an [article about mentoring](http://docserver.ingentaconnect.com/deliver/connect/stc/00493155/v56n3/s6.pdf?expires=1255443904&id=52498567&titleid=10262&accname=Society+for+Technical+Communication+Members&checksum=1BD63554F005BA6A314A88714F1E5EA7): > In our survey, we asked participants to explain any "risks" (Society for Technical Communication 2002), "constraints," or "difficulties" they may have encountered in their mentoring relationships; however, we allowed respondents to interpret these terms as they wished. Their responses, which were lengthy and covered multiple issues, indicated that they defined these terms in a broad sense. Three readers (two of the authors of this paper and a graduate student) analyzed the responses independently and parsed each response to the questions into individual comments—the length of which was determined by topic rather than by grammatical unit. To ensure the reliability of these divisions, all three readers had to agree on the length of the resulting comments. As a result of the divisions, there were 267 comments. > Realizing we may have biased the responses with our example ("a student who asks her mentor for a letter of recommendation when she has performed poorly in the eyes of the mentor"), we tagged any comment that related to that example as a "metacomment" and excluded these responses from our analysis. We also tagged participants' comments that were unrelated to the issue (such as comments about mentoring in general or comments about the questionnaire) as metacomments. That left us with 208 comments to categorize. > The readers then tried to categorize the comments using an existing taxonomy, Eby and Allen's (2002) multilevel taxonomy of protégé's' negative mentoring experiences (see Appendix B), that we had revised to reflect a mentor's perspective. For example, we took Eby's category, Lack of Mentor Expertise, and changed it to Lack of Protege Expertise. We felt the taxonomy might be a valuable tool for organizing the results. We soon discovered, however, that the majority of the comments from our survey did not correspond to Eby and Allen's taxonomy. > Although some of the comments fit into some of the categories (29%), most of the comments (71%) did not fit into any of the five categories in the Eby-Allen taxonomy of negative mentoring experiences. Therefore, the readers took the remaining comments and grouped them by topic and created a new taxonomy (as described in our Results section) to better reflect the academic mentor's perspective. (p.250). Are you bored yet? What exactly is it about this article that makes it boring? The authors do focus a lot on the process instead of the point. This may be a required academic convention for journal articles, but if so, perhaps it could be moved to some footnotes or an appendix. It's the equivalent of describing the writing process. Can you imagine a post that contains the following? > First I made a series of notes on a piece of paper. The paper was 8.5 x 11 and purchased at Staples at a discount. The fact that the paper was purchased at a discount did not bias the way we used the paper. We made our notes in a dual column format, with pros in one column and cons in the other column. In my notes, pros is synonymous with advantages, while cons aligns itself with disadvantages, though it also included negative connotations. As I began to make notes, I also compiled a brief bibliography on the topic. Readings included both websites, blogs, and articles. STC publications were given priority as well as articles submitted to tc.eserver.org. With each reading, I added notes on index cards, which I then taxonomized into a hierarchical structure sorted first by author and then by date. The index cards were lined and initially encased in thin plastic. It's dreadful writing like this that partly discouraged me from academia. In addition to emphasizing seemingly unnecessary details, the writing omits any personal experiences. I suppose I expose my biases here, but good writing mixes the personal and professional. In other words, good essays have a balance of personal experiences and ideas. You may only be a "[narrative presence](http://tedconover.com/beast.html)," as Ted Conover explains, but don't completely omit the personal if you want your ideas to come alive. The experiences you bring to the topic not only give the essay a engaging spin, personal experiences also usually bring in story, which is essential. ### Story Your writing will ultimately bore readers unless you can hook them with story. Story is the *sine qua non* of writing -- without it, chances are what you're writing will be lifeless. When I refer to story, I'm not talking about Cinderella or Huck Finn narratives. Any time someone or something struggles to overcome a problem, that's a story. The problem could be purely conceptual, such as a philosophical idea you struggle against. Better stories have characters (perhaps the character is you) that experience a change to overcome the problem, but that change isn't always necessary. A bare bones story simply needs conflict. However you tackle it, when you approach your posts from the perspective of story, the writing gains propulsion and keeps the reader engaged. A while ago, I read a chapter in a book -- Ivan Tors' 1979 memoir, *My Life in the Wild* -- that provides somewhat of an example with the power of story. Tors is probably an author no one has ever heard of. And rightly so -- his prose is pretty bad and unenlightening. I bought the novel at a thrift store looking for some cheap adventure nonfiction. However, in his chapter "In Cold Sweat," he nails the story technique. Ivan is an animal expert accompanying a video documentary team in Kenya. On an outing to observe migrations of animals from the dry Serengeti to Lake Victoria, his jeep's water pump gives way, stranding him miles from camp. As he starts walking back to camp, he realizes something is following him. He writes, > As soon as I began my long walk, I heard the yellow grass rustling behind me. I turned and looked. There was an enormous female lion following me, just sauntering behind me. I knew that I must not run or I might provoke an attack. When a 500-pound body pounces on a human back, something is bound to give. I knew what I had to do. I must disregard her and do nothing that would excite her, but I could not help thinking about my friend who was killed by a lion, and this did not do much for my morale.