ANDRE BEGIN

When I first started blogging almost 13 years ago, even though I wasn’t a stickler for the word count, my target was around 1000 words. Why 1000? It sounded like a good round number, and intuitively, that seemed to be the average number of words that it took me to tell a story.

A few years later, for reasons of practicality, when things got busier at work, to help me stay on track with my weekly publishing goal, I proposed to myself that maybe 800 words was a better target. I hoped that the readers wouldn’t mind or feel like I let them down.

Fortunately, no one complained. Plus, that decision established a new creative challenge for me in trying to tell stories more efficiently. It also helped in the sense that in the past, I had rejected some articles that didn’t make it to 1000 words. Dropping the word count to 800 opened my blogging world to more topics.

However, more recently, the average word count dropped again. Most blog articles now seem to land in the 500-to-600-word range. It wasn’t necessarily a decision as much as it was the acceptance that not all stories need 1000 words to be considered complete. A 600-word article can still make a point, tell a story and entertain an audience.

Perhaps after years of honing my skills, I am more prone to tighter storytelling, getting to the point faster and having developed a better sense of prioritizing the points that are essential to a story. Not surprisingly, I am still learning as I go along.

Another advantage of this new blogging target is that it frees me up for other writing projects.

On the reader’s side, it requires less time, less attention and they can still check in and get on with their day faster. Everyone is busy and has multiple balls up in the air. I get that. We all do. The attention economy is dividing our focus in so many areas.

I believe that a short and tightly woven article might have a better chance of getting read than one containing details that only serve to circle the airport a few times rather than bring it to a nice, clean landing.

Let’s face it, when reading material online, we tend to scan. For that reason, less is more. Shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs and shorter stories overall can still be a crowd-pleaser.

I fully accept that some articles might still require more words to fully develop an idea, to offer evidence or examples to fully support a point, or to set up a joke to land a punchline.

When it comes to word count for articles, it’s not one-size-fits-all. I tend to think that there is room for all kinds, all lengths, and that the story itself determines its ideal length.

Either way, I am so appreciative when someone takes a few minutes out of their day to read one of my stories from start to finish. Whether it’s 600, 800, or 1000 words, keeping it fresh, crisp and uplifting is my job, to keep readers coming back for more.

Did you enjoy this post? If you did, your likes and shares are most appreciated. If you haven’t already, please check out the rest of my blog at andrebegin.blog.
Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André