Story length

How long does it takes to read?

Think average reading time to reduce story length

I am, sadly, monolingual, so I am not able to read 20 minutes, a free commuter newspaper published in Geneva and Lausanne, Switzerland.… Read the full article

‘Nearly all of them are far too long’

Churchill calls for shorter communications

Do your executives add words to every communication they review? Not so Winston Churchill. He called for shorter pieces to save staff time and energy.… Read the full article

Newspaper + marker = poetry for Austin Kleon

“Instead of starting with a blank page, poet Austin Kleon grabs a newspaper and a permanent marker and eliminates the words he doesn’t need.”

— NPR’s “Morning Edition”

Talk about writing with an eraser.… Read the full article

The longer your piece, the less readers will read

Size does matter.

The longer your story, the less of it your readers will read — and the less likely they are to understand and act on it.… Read the full article

What closet tidying taught me about editing

Audition your words to go in, not out

When Lynn Wylie, aka Best Sister Ever, sent me an Unfancy blog post arguing that all you need to look great every day is a capsule wardrobe of 37 items per season, I scoffed.… Read the full article

Mini narratives can be as brief as a paragraph

In The Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee shares this tiny tale:

“In 2005, a man diagnosed with multiple myeloma asked me if he would be alive to watch his daughter graduate from high school in a few months.… Read the full article

The New York Times goes brief

Talk about brief: The New York Times packs 13 stories onto its briefs page, called The (One-Page) Magazine.

Notice the combination of:

One-paragraph profiles, trend pieces and new nuggets
One-sentence reviews
Charts (History, in Kardashians)
Glossary items (This should be a word: Denigreet)
Timelines (This one’s running across the top and down the right side)
Infographics (This one’s running across the bottom of the page)

How brief are your briefs?… Read the full article

Longer stories lose readers faster

Size does matter.

Everything else being equal, your readers would rather read a short piece than a long piece.

Of course, all things are never really equal.… Read the full article

Can you finish your piece before you reach the period?

My favorite city magazine, Portland Monthly, runs five one-sentence stories per issue. Editors manage to cover the most Portlandish news of the month in an average of 26 words each.… Read the full article

6 words about writing

Readers offer super-short tips

Last month, in honor of Students First’s six-word essay contest to best describe what it means to be a great teacher, we asked readers to send us their writing tips in six words.… Read the full article