Three Tips for Writing Longer Stories
How to get your word count up without filler
When I was first starting out on Medium I found it difficult to write more than 300 words. Around the 200 word count I would start focusing on the number of words just hoping I had enough in me to make it a respectable length story. I was tired of writing the 1 and 2 minute read stories. It didn’t feel like I was a real writer hitting publish on stories of that length.
Recently, my wife started writing for Medium and said the same thing, “It’s so difficult to write longer stories. I get stuck around the 200–300 word mark.”
Here are the three tips I gave my wife to write longer stories on Medium:
Write more
Yes, that is the jerk answer that no one wants to hear. And, I don’t necessarily mean write more on your story, although that is good advice. No, the real advice is keep a daily writing practice. It’s amazing how easy it becomes to write 600 words or more when you’re writing every day. It’s almost like the spigot of your writing brain is turned on.
My first week it was difficult getting to 200 words, my second week was a little easier, my third week I was at 350 words and didn’t even realize it. The more you write, the more you can write. What was once daunting will become mundane.
By writing more you’ll write more. It’s not rocket surgery.
Have something to say
Trust me, it’s difficult writing about something you don’t care about. It’s like being transported back to high school and the teacher tells you the paper is required to be 500 words long. I know my paper is going to 501 words and a quarter of them will be filler.
When you write about something you’re passionate about, you don’t worry about word count. You have something to say and something you want to share with people. The words spill out and keep coming. If you’re passionate then you’ve probably spent a lot of time with the topic, you have more resources to call on to write.
Lacking passion, write about what you’ve been thinking about. The thoughts rolling around in your head that won’t leave until you write them down are perfect to write about. I have a friend who says the squirrels in his head aren’t quiet until he writes his thoughts down. Writing is a way of organizing the squirrels and telling them to take a break.
Do some research
If you’re working from a single data point it’s hard to write a lot about it. If you do little bit of research you are able to exponentially increase your data points and therefore write more. The real magic happens when you are able to bring non-related data points together to form a more cohesive story.
There are times I believe there are no new thoughts, just new ways to present them and combine them. It’s exciting when you can combine quotes or ideas from a movie, a psychology book, and a biography into one story. It takes research to bring different ideas together and formulate a better, longer story.
In the end, it doesn’t matter how long your stories are on Medium. Thankfully, this isn’t high school English. It does feel better though to produce stories that aren’t so short. Plus, a glance at the front page of Medium seems to indicate the sweet spot for story length is 6–8 minutes.
What really matters is that you are putting words down and working on your craft. Sometimes shorter is better. Sometimes something at all is better than nothing. But, if you do want to write more, write more. Write about topics or ideas that are stuck in your head and do a little research. Most importantly, keep moving forward on your writing journey.
