Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Secrets of the 7 Basic Blog Posts

Wired magazine logo

Something lighter for a change. I’m almost sure I heard Bob Monkhouse on the radio once espousing his belief that there were only really seven different types of joke - laughing at other people’s misfortune, unexpected interventions, word play, etc.

Lore Sjöberg

Lore Sjöberg has heard something similar about story writing, and then applied it to blog post. Let’s hope it wasn't on a creative writing course!

His article in Wired sets out his vision. In his own words:

“In the spirit of oversimplifying things so that you can smugly shove human endeavors into pre-labeled slots, I'd like to present my own, contemporary take on this premise: the Seven Basic Blog Posts.” [It’s a US publication to endeavors and labelled are correct spellings in their dictionary.]

You’ll need to read his article to get the full details, but the headlines are ...

  1. Be upset!
  2. Buy a thing!
  3. Animals are cute! [though he does include babies and children in the animals category]
  4. People are dumb!
  5. Something I like, only different! [which will have to include handcrafts, cooking and photography]
  6. Weird science!
  7. Me, the blogger!

(Thanks to Norwin over at Destroy all Onions for the tip.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Bob Monkhouse???? I never really thought he was funny but I've two tickets for Billy Connolly, coming to the Waterfront Hall!!!!