How to Style Your Medium Stories to Get Them Read

Make it easy for readers to consume and enjoy your content

You’ve written a great new story, and you’re getting ready to hit the Publish button on Medium.

But wait!

There’s one more thing you need to do — stop and take the time to style your story to attract more readers.

Here’s some style tips to get you started:

1. Leave lots of white space by breaking up large paragraphs into shorter lines.
2. Use a drop cap for emphasis on the beginning word of a paragraph.
3. Use numbered lists and bullets for steps and tips.
4. Use quotes to feature an important point.
5. Use the Subtitle Small T format to make bold section headings.
6. Use an eye catching main image that stops the scroll and attracts the reader to click through. You can do this in Canva by selecting a photo or an image and then enhancing it by adding words or other images to make it more unique.
7. Make sure your story’s not too long. Keep it between 3 to 5 minutes of reading time. The attention time of most readers is short. You don’t want them to say: TL;DR (Too Long Didn’t Read).
8. But if you do have a great longer story, you can make it work by dividing it into 2 or 3 smaller stories to make it a series. You can add a Kicker title above your main story title to define the series and then provide links in each story to tie them all together.
9. You can also use additional images throughout your story to add some fun and emphasis to different sections.
10. Use a spacer between your sections to define them. I’ve used one below as an example.

Try using some of these techniques in your stories to make sure you’re styling them to improve their readability. Notice how other writer’s style their stories and try using the methods you like most.

If you’re not familiar with all the things you can do with Medium’s Story editor to style your stories, check out this help page for a crash course.

Above all, have fun styling your stories. Use a little bit here and there or go all out. It’s up to you.

Key Message: Just slow down and take some time to make sure that you’ve formatted your article in a way that helps enhance the words and tells a story. Your readers will thank you for it.

Got questions? Please ask them in the comments and I’ll answer.

Linda Locke is a writer and mentor/teacher. She lives in Southern California in Ventura County by the Coast with her husband books.

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