How To Be Crazy Successful Writing In Medium (Part 7 — The Long and Short Forms).
Many of us focus on the story duration when we write. The longer the story, the higher our earnings based on readership. One point that I want to flag out — There is a long road between typing the first alphabet of the first word to hitting the Big Green Publish/Submit button. The ability of our free time, conciseness of idea, and availability of writing formats at our disposal, matter. This story is about that.
Writing can be as easy as documenting our idea and publishing it. I am afraid that is the only easy part. The road in between writing and publishing is a long one. Based on my personal experience, rather meandering. So, how can we express ourselves from time to time without sacrificing the frequency of publication?
We have to use Long-Forms and Short-Forms interchangeably to our advantage.
One question has to be asked before I continue. That question is: -
“Have you read a book?”
Okay, I am willing to take a bet that you have. What are you doing on Medium otherwise? I mean, there are 3 main social segments in Medium. No, no, I am not referring to the Young, Able, and Aged. I am referring to Writers, Readers, and Editors.
What do we have in common?
An inquisitive mind backed by piles of reads behind us. We read a ton. We read less when we are busy. We read more when we have time. We read emails while working. We read Instagram posts when we are bored.
The point is this. We read according to the availability of our time. We are more likely to read a Linkedin post while commuting, compared to an article in Times magazine. That is behavioral economics at play.
Should we not write to cater to the ever-changing time demands of our readers? I think we should.
How do we read a book when we do not have the time?
We can reconstruct the core lessons of a book by reading the book blurb (reviews), the author’s preface (why the author decides to burn the midnight oil to write it), reviews from established peers (what industry peers think about the book), the introduction, plus concluding chapters.
That is all. You will extract 80% of the information from the book.
And that is my point. Writing Long-Form stories on Medium is like writing a book, literally and figuratively. Man, the effort to produce is painful.
Writing Short-Forms on Medium can be a quick fractional effort producing parts of the book. Parts of. There is a difference between writing an Executive Summary versus writing a Thesis paper.
The Executive Summary distills our ideas into the core with no wastage of additional alphabets. It is not easy to synthesize, but the benefits come from a shorter time to completion. The Thesis paper represents verbal diarrhea of our ideas, fully elaborated, leaving no stones unturned
Conciseness and depth cannot be measured at 2 ends of the spectrum. They are not opposites. Instead, they are complements.
There is a place for summaries, and there is a place for a thesis. That place is determined by readers, writers, and our available time.
If you are a prolific writer experiencing encountering time crunch today, then there is a lot of leverage you can deploy.
Write an executive summary using Medium Short Forms to revive your aging stories. These babies of ours are aging over time and not aging due to irrelevance.
We can bring them back to life and then get busy. We do not lose anything to time and writing.
Remember, conciseness and elaboration are complements. Not enemies.
Use them interchangeably for our advantage.
Get Started And Happy Writing.
Aldric
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About the Author:
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure.
Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.
As a Consultant by training, I believe in making the complex simple.
Because simplicity adds value.
And with clarity — We grow.
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