No one can get in the head of New Yorker writer David Denby, but to read this piece on Wonkette—one that eviscerates Denby’s criticism of blogs and exposes serious flaws in his own writing/research ability—is to understand perfectly the relationship between old-school and new-school writers.

Why?

Because I almost never read their posts.

Why?

Because their headlines really stink.

I suppose it doesn’t surprise me that creative writers gloss over an essential part of getting people to actually read their work—namely, by choosing a good headline. I’ve written terribly uninformative headlines myself. But I almost never read lit blogs now simply because I have no idea what I might be reading.

The main thing creative writers need to get past, when it comes to blogs, is that the title is not part of the post. The title is almost always going to be viewed alone, especially when it comes to RSS feeds, so it needs to stand on its own two serifs.

Let’s compare the headlines of blogs I read a lot and lit blogs that I now read rarely:

Well-written headlines

From Wonkette:
“Rudy’s Son Sues College For Cutting Him From Golf Team”
“Pennsylvania’s Beauty Queen/Fake Job/Cigar Store/Car Sex Scandal”
“Obama Lies About His Foreign Language Skillz”

From Slashdot:
“Mars In 3D”
“The Death of Nearly All Software Patents?”
“Researchers Face Jail Risk For Tor Snooping Study”

From Brain And Consciousness Research:
“Aggressive preschoolers found to have fewer friends than others”
“Magic is the trick to understanding the mind”
“Team creates touch-based illusion”

Poorly-written lit blog headlines

From the Sycamore Review:
“A day in the life of a week . . .”
“The cinema of the theatre of the absurd”
“Show your working”

From Bookninja:
“I get to go to Vermin!”
“Since you asked (or not)”
“don’s fountain of health”

Even McSweeney’s:
“Way back when”
“Amazon vs. everybody else”
“High fashion out of fashion”

Since I’m not one to bitch without a follow-up suggestion, if you yourself have trouble writing good headlines, here are some great resources:

• Writing Effective, Attention-Getting Headlines and Titles on Your Blog
• Great Content… Bad Titles – How to Let Your Blog Go #4
• 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work

Because I didn’t sleep last night.

The Internets are so much better when you’re out late with friends and come home convinced that you have to put together that new kitchen island at two in the morning or it’ll never get done.

Video via Wonkette, “Why Do Muskrats Hate America?”