I see you've clicked on my Odyssey Article! Thanks! That means a lot to me. But you might be wondering, just how did this article come to be? Well, I would like, if I may, to tell you just how one of these little digital gems comes to be. So, without further ado, I would like to walk you through how an Odyssey article comes into being.
When a writer prepares to write about something for the Odyssey, they typically try to find something tantalizing and tempting to write about. People might write a list of things to do your freshman year, or how they feel about a new social movement, anything honestly. At this point, the Odyssey writer goes into the mode of writing...
Now that the Odyssey writer is in the writing mode, they go find a secluded place to transcribe their thoughts onto the digital platform. To ensure complete focus, the writer will often times go a secluded location.
This location could be anything from a coffee shop, bedroom, bathroom, small cave on the side of a sacred mountain inhabited by hobbit monks who peddle knowledge for the price of the horn of a ram, any of these locales works great. Once there, they will begin to write their epic article (epic being used here as both a form of honesty and hyperbole).
The Odyssey writer can write a solid article, devoid of any kind of picture, gif or humor. It will be a solid block of text and can look like this:
text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text,
text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text,
text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text, text.
Or the author can create something so full of vibrancy and joy, it can look like this:
Humorous joke followed by a laughing gif of a relatable tv show you can stream on Netflix;
More jokes, humorous commentary on today's society, along with a more serious note. This serious note can then be cut by a funny/cute gif.
As you can see these two styles of an article can really bring different moods to the writer's piece. It can show a more serious point of view, or can show the audience that the writer likes to have fun, and wants to be a friendly face online. After the writing process, the writer must then edit the piece.
You don't want to have a silly typo here or there, so the writer double checks the spelling of all their words, including big ones like defenestration or onomatopeia (the first one means to be thrown from a window, and the other is the word for another word that sounds like a sound. Try to mix them into your conversation and you'll sound SUPER smart).
After this then the author must find relatable tags to ensure that their article is found and that the audience can find it relatable. AFter this, and a number of other super secret Odyssey Online steps, the article is ready to be published! I hope you enjoyed my telling of how an Odyssey Article is written! I was inspired by this video on TED Talks.
Enjoy that as well, and have a great day!
-Adam, the Odyssey Online Writer whose picture is featured below this article.