It’s a real pleasure to come across another Australian on Squidoo. Michael has the real and refreshing Australian style of talking too, you hear his ‘voice’ clearly.
Voice
One of the hardest things to find is our ‘voice’. so often we try to write ‘well’, to make our work sound ‘professional’. But that’s the wrong way to go about things!
Voice is the distinct style of our work. Our writing should have as much personality as we do. Our voice establishes a relationship with our readers. Michael’s voice is clear and strong.
Let’s have a look at Michael’s Broken Hill, Australia. This is a very long lens and could be broken up into at least two lenses, possibly three.
What I’d like to see on this lens
We’ll zoom in on the module Broken Hill Facts. People who won’t read an article will read a lens, it’s weird, but that’s the way it goes. A very different audience. They will scan quickly so we have to make it easier for them to scan.
Bullet List
If I write the code in here, WordPress will just turn it into a bullet list (naturally) so I’ve put it on notepad and taken a screenshot
and so on … I would write those facts in less words too.
Module : The history of the Silver City
This text in this module sounds as if a committee wrote it. Where’s Michael’s voice gone? Ah, it’s from some clerk in government!
I don’t think I’d bother rewriting all of that text. There’s nothing really of interest in there, I’d chuck it out.
Module : Outback Australia is arid
Once again, we’re losing some of Michael’s voice here.
The first short paragraph is great but, after that, it gets government-clerkish again. I would condense all the rest into a few sentences with emphasis on the townsfolk fighting for water (now that’s interesting), that a solution was found but the issue is ongoing. People don’t want to read dates and names, but the idea of water being precious is good reading.
Module : Broken Hill, the artists, the light and the movie makers.
This very large textual content could be broken up into easier to digest pieces. I would start a new text module with the opening sentence Broken Hill is renowned for its vibrant, active and sometimes vocal art community with many art galleries and artists’ studios in and around the town.
I repeat, this is a very long lens with a lot of information. I would make a separate lens called Artists of Broken Hill or similar, have a short text module in this lens about the artists and link the lenses to each other with a Featured Lens module.
