When you start writing you realize that shorter posts take a lot more time than longer ones. As Mark Twain said
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
This is largely because putting a stream of conscious thoughts together is easy with some examples, but putting together a thoughtful, concise post requires organization, planning and a level of introspection that’s very hard.
Here are some hacks that work well when you want to write shorter, but more effectively.
- More examples work better than descriptive narratives. Examples have a positive effect in reinforcing a statement. although if you don’t choose a good example, the words become superfluous. Instead of explaining the point, giving an example works better.
- Remove sentences that give a lot of context with links and references that point to where you can read more.
- Think how will someone tweet this if they were listening to you instead of reading it.
Of these the tweet seems to work the best. If someone were reading an entire essay or paragraph and had only 1 to 3 tweets to summarize your content, what would they say.
What would someone tweet? (WWST)?
