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Four Hour Medium Reads Are IN — Short Pieces are OUT

Why the Long Form is Back!

The days of the 2–4 minute read are over. Gone are the days of writers getting away with a 3-minute piece on their cat. Or a couple of paragraphs on their dog.

New rules now require ALL Medium writers to submit pieces of no less than four hours. All manuscripts MUST be submitted in their entirety, and not broken up into a childish series format no one cares about.

Furthermore, pieces MUST not contain any photographs, icons, glyphs, line breaks, lists, dropped capitals, headings, or ads for any of the author's other stupid pieces.

Paragraphs MUST be no shorter than 500 words, and sentences MUST be meandering, rambling, inconclusive and vague, with as little punctuation as possible. Think Thomas Mann or William Faulkner when you write your next piece. Sentences that can sprawl to two pages or more with little or no punctuation whatsoever. Challenge yourself. Challenge the reader.

Example Text

I, for one, am looking forward to publishing to great fanfare my 4-hour-essay. “The Effect of Hegel on Post War European Primary School Teaching.”

Coming soon…

Help and Advice

If you’re acquainted with basic arithmetic —most writers are not— you’ll realize that 240 minutes equates to four hours, which is the absolute minimum.

Writers lacking inspiration, are advised to start rewriting previous pieces.

For example, an article entitled “Ten Telltale Signs I’m An Idiot!” could be easily transformed into a thesis using Freudian analysis to determine why indeed you are an idiot.

The Potential

With most writers on the platform lazily submitting dull articles of between 2–4 minutes, the potential for the long form is immense. Think of how each item in your listicle piece could be extended into long and extremely dense chapters that could rival anything written by Dickens or Twain.

But Will Anyone Read Them?

Ha ha ha! Are you serious?

Of course not!

You might get a bot to pour over them, but apart from that, your memoir “Death on Two Legs — My Life as An Ultra Marathon Runner,” will remain just as unread as it was before

Will It Increase My Earnings?

No.

In fact, it’s likely your earnings will gradually slide, before tailing off to absolute zero within a few weeks.

So What’s The Point In It?

Oh, you want a point!

Why didn’t you think of that before you started? Before you wasted the last two years trying to earn a living as a writer. Before you sacrificed everything in front of the Medium altar, all for the sake of a few claps, plaudits, and a few cents extra per month in your bank.

Now you want a point? Well, here’s the answer.

There is no point. It’s just another way to drain whatever life’s left in you. So quit cussing, quit moaning, quit crying to mummy, and start writing.

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