Are Your Short Posts Turning into Shortform?

It can happen when you’re not looking— here’s how to avoid it

Calling all you writers of haiku, minimal poetry, micro-fiction and challenges under 150 words across Medium. I wanted to share a discovery with you all so what you intend to write actually gets published that way — and doesn’t morph into something else all together. And the most frustrating thing is — you may not even notice!

This is why I’m sharing my discovery on Curation Matters, pub of all things to do with curation. So that you can give your shorter posts (notice I did NOT say shortform) — your evocative haikus and punchy micro-fiction a chance for curation — and not have them inadvertently disqualified from selection.

Here’s the kicker — it may have nothing to do with content, quality, or any error you made.

The Back-Story

Recently, I spent over three hours trying to figure out why the image in a short poem I’d published looked perfect when I opened the individual story link, but weird and “glazed-over” (kind of how I look after doing too much Medium-reading) when I looked at it in my newsfeed. Additionally, the story title overlaid the image.

I tried changing the image. The new image looked the same as the first one — glazed over. I knew the way the image looked seemed familiar, but I couldn’t identify why. I did more fiddling around, but I won’t bore you with irrelevant details.

Three hours and two separate emails to Medium Support later, I finally had an answer that I could understand and apply to fix my problem (shout-out to Andy at Medium Support).

Sadly, that delay meant that in all likelihood, the poem was passed over for curation review, as overall it took me four hours to rectify the problem. So, we’ll never know if it could have been curated. (Sad face)

I don’t want this to happen to you, and I don’t want you to waste the time I did trying to figure it out.

The Low-Down

Why would it be disqualified for curation, you ask? Well, for those four hours it was floating around the Medium stratosphere, it was actually masquerading as a shortform post, instead of the intricate etheree poem I originally published. Content was the same, but depending where people saw it, its appearance had changed. Like a reverse butterfly. And as most people are aware, shortform posts are ineligible for curation.

The alarming thing is if I only looked at the individual story-link, I could not tell this had happened. Here it is. The way it looks now (after fixing it) is exactly how it looked when I opened it 5 seconds after it was published.

Nothing unusual going on here, right? Wrong.

Because I fixed the post based on the advice I received, I can’t show you what it initially looked like. But hey, that’s just fine, because guess what? Lucky for you, but not so lucky for me, I found another poem in my newsfeed, blithely imitating a shortform post. Here it is, below:

I published this short poem called My Father’s Hands (top story in screenshot) last month. Since the beginning of 2021, I have close to a 100% curation rate for my poetry — so I did wonder why this poem was passed over. I wonder no longer … Cue much tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth.

What I Discovered

The enlightening email from Medium Support explained thus:

The story you linked to has fewer than 150 words, and is therefore considered to be shortform content. Therefore, the preview you are seeing is expected behavior.

Please refer to our help center article on shortform content.

You can read what Medium has to say about all things shortform here, but Andy very helpfully extracted some relevant highlights for me:

Shortform on Medium is considered as posts that are 150 words or less.

I occasionally publish shortform, so I knew this. But I also know you remove both title and subtitle when you deliberately create shortform. So, how was a poem with a properly formatted title and subtitle being interpreted by Medium as shortform?

Well, at some point since the advent of shortform late last year, something has changed — the key is if the entire post is 150 words or less, it will appear as shortform in some places in Medium — like your newsfeed.

And, if, like me, you put pretty much everything you publish behind the paywall:

If your post is metered behind our paywall and contains an image, it will display the featured image with the title over the image, will have no text preview, and will have a “read more” link.

The Lesson: (In Case You Missed the Memo too)

Medium “interprets” posts at 150 words or less as shortform and displays them (in certain places) as shortform.

I don’t know about you, but I missed that memo. In fact, I’m not sure Medium really has clearly communicated the potential issue this creates for those of us publishing work with shorter word-counts: such as haiku, minimalist poetry, short micro-fiction, and also challenges, like the ones The Bad Influence runs — which are 50 and 100- word challenges.

In addition to the way the posts look, from my experience so far, it seems highly likely that these post will not be eligible for curation review.

Luckily there’s a simple fix, and here’s a few approaches to stop it happening to your carefully-crafted minimalist posts.

What You Can Do Now

Short Post writers — CHECK YOUR NEWSFEED for posts that look like my screenshot above. If you didn’t intend to post them as shortform, read on for how to rectify it, and what you can do for future short posts.

What to Do So it Doesn’t Happen to You

Writing a short post?

Use Ctrl A in Medium editor to get a total word-count of your draft when you’re done. You’ll see a word-count pop up in the top left-hand corner. If it’s at 150 words or under, and you don’t want to add to the main content, here’s a few things you can do:

• Include a personal bio — I often do this with my shorter poems — which is possibly why I hadn’t noticed this sooner.
• Write a short back-story or brief essay related to the main feature content. What inspired you to write the poem / micro-fiction? If it was a specific form poem, you could discuss the creative process of transforming your ideas into this form, or muse briefly on why you enjoy writing haikus or micro-fiction.
• For prompted responses: write a bit more about the prompt itself. Wax a little lyrical if you have to — just to get your word-count over the 150 mark.
• Add your Kofi details or Amazon book-links
• Include a short call-to-action or a shout-out to a related post, Sometimes I put the following at the end of posts which can be enough to get me over 150 words:

Follow Melissa Coffey — for provocative poetry, fiction & essays

NOTE: If you are publishing in a publication, as opposed to self-publishing, check in with the sub guidelines or with an editor /owner you’re publishing in, as they will have different preferences or stipulations with what can be included.

In/Conclusions

Who really understands the whys and hows of what Medium chooses to officially communicate with individual members via email, what ends up on one of their official blogs such as Creators Hub — or what just gets plain overlooked? Sometimes it seems the perspective that most often gets overlooked is the essential need-to-know stuff for the humble content creators.

Curation does and can happen for shorter posts, so I hope that sharing my experience will help other “masters and mistresses of minimalism” to at least ensure their posts are in the running for selection. Good luck!

A few of my minimalist Curations:

More on Curation Tips: