Critical review of blog post

Question

I wrote a blog post a long time back. For this post I chose a writing style very different from what I'd read or what I'd seen before. Some guys did criticize me and others did acknowledge me for the same. Now this is not a publicity stunt, but could you guys provide critical comments on my writing style and the content too?

Here's the post.

[EDIT] : I am a budding writer and I love to write tidbits of philosophy. Can my post be judged on the following guidelines?

• Is the flow of my words smooth? In general, is the writing style appealing, does it make you want to read the post in completion?
• I know the vocabulary may not be up to the mark, but does it make me appear inadequate with words?
• I know the starting and ending portions of any creation in writing are extremely important. Does my opening grab you? Does my ending leave an appropriate sense of resolution without being simplistic?
• Does the tone of my writing give an impression that I'm well read or am I just another budding writer off the block?

Also I'd love if you could cite text from the post that would be support your arguments.

Answer 1

You have some good ideas, and I think it's great that you're taking the time to experiment and explore. But in terms of writing style, I think you need to keep working.

The first paragraph opens with a cliche - "In times like these" - has there ever been a time when people DIDN'T think they were living in unusual times? You're right, your opening counts, and I think you could make this one count for more.

And then I like the idea of all the parallelism in the first paragraph, but you've got to be careful to make it fit. You start with "You find yourself", and then your first two items fit that structure "You find yourself in a strange city," "[You find yourself] miles away from college," but then you lose the structure. "[You find yourself] just swarming with people you don't know"? No. You started off describing yourself, but then you start describing the city, and then you start describing the people, etc. By the end of the list, I'm not really sure WHAT you're describing. Parallelism can be a really effective structure, and you're almost there, but you need to be a bit more disciplined about it. You could still keep most of the ideas, but break them down into tighter sentences.

And after that huge, flowing list, I wasn't too happy to see another use of the same stylistic device at the start of the next paragraph. Variety creates interest. Some short, tight sentences would be welcome there. The sentence "Today I choose to write about myself" really worked, for me, because it was such a break from the long, convoluted and not entirely clear sentences that came before it.

That's as far as I got. Good luck with it, and keep working!