Writing is its own reward.

Henry Miller said that, and while I think it’s lovely, I’m not sure it’s true. Certainly one of my own favorite parts of writing – why I have a blog in the first place – is knowing that people read it. But how do you get people to read your writing? And once you’ve gotten them, how do you keep them?

I’m sorry to say, layout and design are a huge part of getting and maintaining readership. If you’ve got an agent and a publishing house, they’ll take care of that for you. For the rest of us, clicking out our thoughts into a computer day by day, let’s sort out what to look for and avoid in our writing.

For this month’s Technique Toolbox we’ll be talking about design and layout, and how your visual choices affect whether people can and will read your work. Look, y’all. I spent a HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS on art school, and I’m gonna use it. The rest of these tips and tricks were contributed by successful bloggers, editors, writers, and designers. Listen up.

The first thing you see

We’ve thrown around the advice that you need to capture your reader within the first five sentences or you don’t have them. Likewise, there are things you can do to get (or lose) your reader the minute they see your blog. Look. For convenience’s sake I’m going to use the word blog. You can call it whatever you like: writing storage archive, personal page, whatever. Use your fantastic human brain to substitute your words of choice for “blog” wherever I say that. Unless you’re a dog. In which case I promise not to tell that you’re a dog, but I still want you to make that substitution.

Page style

What is the first thing readers see when they get to your page? Is it a clutter of thumbnails? Is it one long blogscroll? Take a second to look at your landing page. You should have a clear navigation bar (including “about me”) and the ability to see and access several posts so that if you don’t post for a month (life happens) the casual reader doesn’t mistake you for a dead blog. If someone lands on your page and all they can see is a post from two months ago and no information about you or what you’re doing, the chances are they’re going to go ahead and skip on by.

Page color

I get it. In 1995 a black page was an attention-getter. Did you know it’s 2018? In the meantime, studies have shown that it’s really hard for the human eye to read light text on a dark background.

Another color gaffe to watch out for is forgetting colorblindness. What do I mean? Well, things that look high-contrast to people who aren’t colorblind (red-green, yellow-purple) can vanish entirely depending on what flavor of colorblind your reader is.

When you’re picking out a color scheme, it’s really best to stick with dark text on a light background, and not go for those high-contrast color combos. If reading on white gives you personally a headache, a nice light grey or blue or lavender is just fine. Just remember: dark on light, not red on green.

No clutter

Again, the last thing you want on your page is clutter. You want readers to be able to find and read the posts that interest them, right? Make it easy on them. Leave “white” (or light grey or blue or lavender or whatever) space around your writing. Clean design will draw people’s eyes to your words – and that’s where they belong, right?

Here are a few easy ways to declutter your front page:

• Make a sidebar and use it. Keep your big, recent awards here, so people will know how fancy you are; stick the other ones on the posts they belong to.
• Keep ads (if you must have them) contained in one spot.
• Keep your navigation links available and clean; don’t have a bunch of ambiguous pictures for navigation. Does anyone know your face means “about me” and your hand means “most recent post?” Just use words.
• Put all your “follow me, find me, fave me” links and images in one discreet spot, ideally on your sidebar.

Some words about pictures

Pictures are great! In fact, if you’ve ever been featured on WordPress and your post didn’t have a picture, you probably got a nice email suggesting you add one. But pictures can also be a cluttered mess waiting to happen. Here are a few tips to avoid that mess while still featuring fantastic images:

• Your theme probably has a “featured image” option. Use it, if you’ve only got one picture.
• Use free stock photo sites like pixabay, pexels, etc. if you know you don’t take clean, compelling pictures, or if the picture itself isn’t critical to the story you’re telling. (Or pay for photos! I feel like as a freelancer I should remind you that’s an option! Sites like colorstock are doing a lot to push the boundaries of stock photography from “weird white people smiling while they eat salad” to “people who look like the people around you” and if you can afford to reward that you should!)
• A picture included as part of a post should never, ever, be taller or wider than the post. You want people to be able to find and read your words, and they won’t do that if your hard work just looks like a caption. Extra-wide pictures can also signal the reader to stop reading in the middle of your post.
• Don’t make your background a picture. More on why later, but right now I’ll say it’s not 1997 so please just don’t.

Your words are worth reading

Stop. Go back up to that heading. Internalize it.

You are putting your words out into the world, and people WANT to put your words in their eyes and brain. Let’s talk about a few ways you might accidentally be making that harder for them.

Font matters.

Font can make or break your writing. No joke. There’s a reason that submission sites require you to use one of a very few fonts, and it’s not always to anonymize your work. Frankly, some fonts are just more readable than others. Tired of Times New Roman? It was designed to be easy to read. Hate Arial and all sans serif fonts? Too bad; they’re also designed to be easy to read. While it can be tempting to pick a font that’s really really individual and you, let’s talk about some reasons not to (and when to):

• Back in 1997, which is a year that I’m probably picking on unfairly, everyone figured out that fonts like Black Chancery existed. The problem? When you write an entire paper in Black Chancery yes, it does look like a vampire wrote it, but more importantly only an immortal vampire has the time to fight their way through reading it.
• Most websites use only a few fonts because those are the fonts that can be trusted to display with consistency and readability across a variety of platforms, from OS Whatevercatwe’reonnow to Windows Whocares to your mobile device of choice. Picking one of these fonts gives you the maximum possible amount of control over how your work will be displayed and read.
• If you need to diverge from one of the most common fonts, do it purposefully. For example, stick-and-ball fonts increase readability for dyslexics.
• Watch out for italics and bold in your writing – use them sparingly and for effect. A post entirely in italics might as well be in a different font, and it will almost certainly be harder to read.

Layout matters

This is almost – but not quite – a substantive question. Don’t make your entire essay or story one big paragraph.

Look. People are trying to do 10 different things at once. They’re working on their side hustle, the kid or dog is making That Noise Again, they’re trying to assemble lunch, they’re on a bus, and they want to read your words. If they have to hunt for their place again every time they glance up, they’re going to give up before they get to the good part.

Make it as easy as possible for your reader to find their place again if they have to look away. Use headings. Use obvious jumps like asterisks or divider lines to signal not only transitions but conceptual jumps where a reader could stop, take care of whichever kid is bleeding, and come back to your work. And yes, use pictures – if they’re relevant. If your entire essay is just you describing a series of pictures, it might be a journal entry.

Color still matters

Did you know that 50% of the population struggles to read white on black, and that reading accuracy decreases by about a quarter when people read light text on a dark background? Part of this has to do with light levels: if you’ve ever taken pictures with real film you know that a small aperture gives clearer focus at greater depth. The same thing happens with your eyes. With a bright display the iris closes a bit more, making the edges of letters seem more “focused.” On a dark display the iris opens to receive more light, creating a much fuzzier, haloed focus around your words.

Sure, accessibility is a thought-out option now and folks *can* change settings to try to make your post display dark-on-light, but why make them fight for it?

Only put your words where your words go

This seems basic and intuitive. But you’ve probably seen “snowing” or “drifting petals” backgrounds on at least one blog. People are still using those “pretty” frills on their blogs. The problem? Putting something moving up against something stationary messes with the connection between your eyes and inner ear. It can make people carsick, and significantly decreases your readability. In fact, depending on your background color, those little drifting pixels can resemble or even trigger ocular migraines. You don’t want a migraine and neither do your readers; skip the flying dots.

And again – don’t make your background a picture. It forces your readers to try to figure out which shapes belong to the picture and which to the letters that make up your words. If they’re trying to figure out what a word is, they’re not reading your story.

Learn from the pros

There are several ways to do this. One is to search for blog design and site design. Another is to look at the pros, and what their sites look like. But if you’re going to do that, remember:

You are not your favorite, well-established blogger.

Y’all, I love The Bloggess. And The Yarn Harlot. And I loved the heck out of Regretsy. But I’m not them, and neither are you, and it’s not 2006. Folks who came up and made a name for themselves in the early days of blogging often have sites that are hard to read or outdated by today’s standards. They stick with those looks because that’s their brand, but it would be almost impossible to launch that brand in today’s environment. Keep that in mind when you’re looking for examples of “a good design.”

Your style is your own.

Sure, Samantha Irby writes in 12 different colors and three fonts. That’s great for Samantha Irby. But you’re not her. Develop your own style and look. It’s entirely possible to do that while using a clean design with readable font.

But you know what? If you’ve got something to say, people will read it. You don’t have to make it five colors and boldface. It won’t matter if you’re using the same free WordPress theme as 5,000 other writers. Don’t be the kid who acts up to get attention – any attention, even negative attention – in class. Sure, you’ll get some initial clicks, but you won’t get those follows.

Get noticed

I know I just said don’t act out to get attention. But there are other things you can do to get noticed!

• Use tags. Tags tell your reader what your writing is about. They’re also an easy way to sort your work into menus later.
• Use titles. Don’t just call your post “YeahWrite Post 3: Personal Story” call it “How I learned to stop worrying and love training wheels” or something like that.
• If your title is catchy but your story has some big themes, consider a content warning. It takes ten seconds to write, doesn’t even count toward your word count for many competitions (including ours), and lets readers who might have a strong reaction to your writing pick the time and place to read it. This goes for both nonfiction and fiction: if the way you choose to let a reader know how terrible your antagonist is, is describing their graphic rape of another character, or the way you want to demonstrate how mean someone is, is to have them punch their kid in front of the protagonist, maybe give folks who’ve been victims of sexual or domestic violence a heads up that they might not want to read this in front of their boss while they’re pretending to be at work? You actually will get and maintain a wider readership with the occasional content warning, because folks will know they can trust you to keep their secret work reading habit safe and won’t just say “well I never know what I’ll get here so I’m not going to follow this content.”
• Submit your work. We’ll be talking more about this in future Tech Toolboxes, but submitting and nominating yourself and others for aggregations or awards can get eyes on your work a lot faster than a bunch of colors, fonts, and snow in the background. We promise.

About the author:

Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.

rowan@yeahwrite.me