Has anyone here ever read a liveblog?

It's a mess. Commentary from people who actually know what they're talking about mixed in with tweets from Twitter that use the relevant hashtag comments from viewers, updating every minute or so in a constant stream of information. It's interrupted by occasional polls, that flash across the bottom of the page, and if you don't have the actual streaming video they're blogging about open in another window and any relevant information on hand elsewhere you won't have a clue what's going on.

I'm currently in the middle of the liveblog for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and it's interesting how a "narrative" of sorts is constructed from all the various elements. There's definitely a flow similar to what we discussed for television - the dominant part, commentary on the actual hearing, is periodically interrupted by tweets with links to other relevant websites (commercials?) and poll questions, which invite readers to participate in creating the story.

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If you're a student in this class, you may well have questions about how to write blog entries. Maybe you aren't familiar with blogging in general, or maybe you want to know more about what I expect. In this blog entry, I'm going to try and answer both of those questions.

This present post is an adaptation of some earlier and similar blog entries I've written, so some of the advice herein will be applicable to blogging in general (I hope). Some of what I have to say, however, will be more specific to this class, although for the absolute specifics, the final word is the syllabus and the further requirements on the blogging assignment page.

This is advice, though, not a prescription. In short, whereas the syllabus and assignment page offer requirements for blogging in my class(es), what I want to do here is offer recommendations. Keep reading to learn what I think characterizes good blog writing.

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Welcome to the website for ENGL 251A, "Forms of Narrative."

If you're a student in the seminar, the first thing you should do is create an account. You'll be using this website quite a bit in the course of the semester, so you also might want to bookmark the URL.

If you're someone else who is just interested in the course, feel free to look around. Once content starts appearing, you'll be able to post comments of your own. Actual user accounts are only for students, but you can leave your contact info to let us know who you are.