As I sit on this sofa typing this essay, I am listening to “Drops of Jupiter” by Train and thinking back on the discussion we had in class about authority and copyright law. I can’t help but keep thinking that knowledge should be free to all and that art exists to be interpreted by the audience that takes it in. The complexities of plagiarism, profit, and economy are not lost on me though my beliefs stem from an often naively idealistic worldview. Thinking about the nature of artistic expression, however, was something that deeply inspired me to create the Multimedia project that I am including in my portfolio. The topic, however, is not what earned the Multimedia project a spot in this portfolio- rather, its informative nature and structure are what gave it the spot.
I deeply enjoy creative writing, but I often find myself scouring the Internet to find information to pepper my fiction with to make it feel more ‘realistic’ and more and more I have been leaning towards the idea of becoming a professional tutor. Sharing information, teaching people, and making difficult concepts easier for other people to grasp and make their own is very much a part of who I am, and I have found that my best and most effective pieces of writing are those that inform. One of the primary strengths of my informative writing I feel is my voice- I believe that I am easy to understand without being provincial. One of the weakness of this type of writing is that I depend very heavily on the linear structure of print text, thus limiting the ability for people to browse my writing in a scattershot fashion the new Web 2.0 way of reading is training modern audiences to consume information.
One might argue that this new scattershot type of reading is “making us stupid,” but I know that modern readers are exercising a very high degree of intellect in being able to skim through and pull out only the most relevant pieces of information. I am pleased that my readers are able to take in information in such a way and I hope that in time I can further adapt my writing to better suit my readers. However, I fear that I may loose my distinct voice if I abbreviate my text to the point of only having bulleted lists that are only a sentence or a word long or if I only write my information as though each individual point exists solely on its own, exclusive of other information. It reminds me to a certain extent of the timelines my history teacher expected me to memorize in high school… He wanted me to know every date and person involved, even if he mixed them up in a pile, but more importantly he expected me to understand the significance of the sequence of the events. Knowing that the Civil War was fought in the 1860′s and the Revolutionary War was fought in the 1770′s does no good if one does not understand the significance of the Constitutional Convention, state’s rights, the lines about slavery in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and the growing socio-economic tensions between the North and South that existed even back during the Revolutionary War. Even the most interactive Wikipedia entry cannot quite capture the scope of these issues the way a textbook can- though admittedly most laymen would rather the Wikipedia entry than the textbook.
At any rate, the revisions I plan on making will be increasing the interactivity of my blog posts so that rather than reading the whole post as one long list, readers can jump immediately to interesting or helpful parts and save the time on the other parts. I also plan on editing the specific words of the blog posts, Remediation project, and Multimedia project. The Multimedia project will actually be undergoing a complete structural overhaul, revising the arrangement of the content, omitting superfluous information, and making each “entry” more universal, and this, I hope, more informative. It comes off as rambling and more like an outline than like an informative piece. I know that the structure of the Prezi is the way it is in a failed attempt at making scattershot reading more possible, but since some sections contain too little information (such as the section on Odysseus) or too much or even unnecessary information (such as the segments on the developments of specific media that exist separate of the character entries) I need to stop thinking about how my readers might skim their way through it and focus on exactly what content my readers will be skimming through. Quality of content is always preferable to quantity- or as Lanham calls it, ‘fluff’.
One of the most crucial aspects of informative writing is establishing authority and credibility. Even before I began writing papers for classes that I intended to claim as “authoritative,” I was writing fiction with characters and settings that adhered to very specific rules and motivations, thus establishing authority within the fiction. In informative writing, one cannot ever throw out a fact and expect the audience to accept it, especially on the Internet. I have seen many forum posts that say “pics or it didn’t happen” or even “I don’t know, it looks ‘shopped”- showing the real reluctance from people online to believe everything they see. Considering how many “Ethiopian princes” are trying to deposit large sums of money in off shore bank accounts and will cut a person in for a share if the prince could only use that person’s bank account number, this reluctance is a little reassuring to me. It does present a significant challenge for informative writers to provide not only information, but a way for the reader to validate it. In my scholarly writing, this is easy enough simply by providing correct citations and a Works Cited page, but in situations where I am just offering advice about things I have experienced, I often find myself drawing not only on my personal experience but attempts to relate my advice to other people’s experiences. True, this leads to a certain degree of “I’m not a lawyer, but”‘ing, but I feel that detailed and accessible (to one’s personal experiences, not just accessible online) enough information will help me establish the credibility I need.
That said, I hope that my portfolio shows my skills and development as an informative writer.
