HOW LONG ARE MY LINES SUPPOSED TO STRETCH?
Am I supposed to pen down a novel or simply have a synopsis of my intended thoughts?
I believe every writer in here and every other site bends the pen for a reason. To speak out the minds, express a feeling, send a message or even for fun. The main aim at every start will remain to grab the attention of the reader, at least that's according to my gospel. Along the way a couple of styles will be applied to keep the reader glued to the publication since any slight sense of boredom will send him/her away and in search of another post worth to strain the eyes for.
So, how long should it be? Let me outline my belief depending on two situations or themes with the hopes that mine still won't be too long to hide my sweet tiny thighs and also not any way short to pull the non-intended admirers.
Image source
You writing on a new product description plus a how-to note? Take your time and gather enough of the alphabets because you need them. No way a poem-sized post will instill sufficient usage braveness to a customer who is contemplating between buying your automated child feeding machine or going the tradition way, hiring an assistant.
If you are a published author (my own selfish opinion from an unpublished level) trying to pull us closer to your book launch why feed us with a million lines when you can simply 'synopsis' it and leave everything else in a suspense pot?
...
New fields will always pose a tiny threat to the shepherd specially if it took long to re-visit the site.
Above is my opinion, no harm intended but of course criticism is much welcomed. Let's get talking.
@murathe.
You make some very good points. And I like the way in which you're stating them.
I think every writer questions the length of his posts at one time or another (or maybe every time). It's hard to guess how long you can keep the attention of your readers.
I arrived here through @macoolette's entry post for the Pay It Forward channel.
Great thanks for checking and @macoolette for the feature, appreciating the knocks.
I'll think of my posts' length after each and every line, attempts to keep neat.
As a follower of @followforupvotes this post has been randomly selected and upvoted! Enjoy your upvote and have a great day!
I'd read other's review rather than the authors promotional post.. LOL. Photo is the most attractive way to get me reading something from other authors except for writers I knew. Clue : is something I learned from writing a reportage for news paper or online news even for radio reportage, not more than 2 line or 15 words. But on Steemit? I didn't use that rules, hehehehe.
I appreciate your opinion @murathe, and I found your post through @macoolette entry post in the pay it forward contest this week, She is a good writer who made a synopsis about your post, check on her entry if you have time.
Oooooh, that's huge @cicisaja, thanks for letting me know. A new feeling is on me, checking on her blog.
We share the attractiveness thrown our way by pictures. Actually, I'd fail to notice a good post without a picture and run into a medium post with a sweet image, it tells many stories even without having to read the words first.
Thank you for reading through.
Hehehe.. I love picture too but I skipped it away when I found no information I need or check on the comments, if there's nobinteraction in there... I skipped it too😊 unless I know that the posters need someone to drag them out of comfort zone😂
I fully agree that length of an article plays an important role to keep our readers interested and not to make them feel bored for too long entries or wanting for more for too short ones.
For long articles, ice breakers like photos, separators or breaking thrm into different sections can help not to strain the eyes. Also, I agree that a picture paints a thousand words but it definitely helps to still have a caption on it with the story behind the photo.
Good take you have there. I featured your post on my article as an entry to the Pay It Forward Curation contest. The contest is open to everyone so you are welcome to join. 😊
An immediate join, huge thanks for the nomination. Feeling powered up to write more and build up networks.
Captions works better for me, might be tempted to spend whole time analyzing a caption and less on the post.
One more thanks for the feature.
Interesting question for everyone. One of the things I appreciate about some of the helper applications for Steemit (such as Steempeak) let you know how long of a read it should be. My book chapters tend to run about 1100-1500 words long (not including after information) and Steempeak calls it a 10-minute read.
Formatting is key. Learn a little markdown language so that you can break up your post a bit. Adding bold text (** before and after the bold text), italics (* before/after the italicized text), headings (with #, ## or even ### plus a space before the heading text) helps to keep the attention of the reader.
Using an eye-catching image is important too. Just make sure it's free and sourced. (btw, Google images isn't a source - it's only an index for sources. Do your search, but use the "tools" to make sure it's free to use. Pixabay is a good source of free images.)
Anyway, I found your post from @macoolette's Pay it Forward curation contest entry. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for taking time to head over my blog, and encouraging me to keep penning down.
Lesson learnt, I should be linking the image not to the indexed search rather the exact location. Thanks for this too.
Eye-catching images, right, thinking of doing more colored pictures as they directly translate to getting full attention and of course with a good caption.
@macoolette such a wonderful being.
I'm always glad to help.
I judge for this contest now, so I really do look for these details. In addition to writing, I do photography and graphic art (as in for my cover art), so yeah, I really do take correctly-sourced and legally-used pictures seriously.
Thanks for the chat and for taking my advice to heart. It means a lot to me.
I fully agree with you. For Steem to have widespread adoption, we will need a variety of postings from writing/photos to just Dapps posting to the chain. Steem began as a long form blogging platform, but it does need to be something more accessible to become bigger... hopefully, HF20 has put the tools in place to do exactly that!
I have dropped by to support you as you were featured by @macoolette for the @pifc contest!
Let's get to see the goodies following along the great updates. Much is still needed.
It does take time to learn what followers are looking for in length, A few well placed pictures, or a few well place section breaks can add to the acceptable length level, sort of like a pause. I myself really have no idea how long is to long, I do have a too short line, that is a picture, no words no nothing no why. If I want to see a random picture I can type picture in google and click the image button, a gazillion will show up and be available to view, but like that single steep shot or picture only post, I will never know the why that picture.
I found the length of this particular post to be adequate, not to short, not to long, and unlike a lot of my comments pretty well thought out and organized.
Thank you for your views.
Pictures are a great resources to tell stories, a couple of lines hurts not as this serves as a clear explanation as to why certain picture is used and not another.
Very Nice to see a @PIFC member pick up on your post. They are a great group of people.
I myself like a nice medium length post most of the time. I do love a longer read if it is a work of fiction. Seems those always end too soon.
Sounds like you are putting a lot of thought into posting. It must be paying off because you were featured by @macoolette in this weeks pay it forward curation contest.
Ending too soon, I like that.
An idea, might be moving closer to fiction soon.
Fiction is a lot of fun. The five min free writes are a great way to do a short fiction post. @mariannewest puts out a prompt every morning for those.
Dropping by and supporting your post @murathe. It has been featured by @macoolette, as an entry into our Pay It Forward Community's weekly curation contest.
As part of the @pifc community, we would encourage you to check into it!
I appreciate your putting down your thoughts on this important topic for us all. How much is enough? How much is “over the top?” As you suggest, I think it depends on both what we have been inspired to write and then, as a result, who our intended audience is going to be.
From there, we are all uniquely created and will do what seems best (hopefully) to us, as individual expressions of who we are and our free will. In my opinion, that is a good thing.
The “free market” (the rest of us ...) will decide from there …
Thank you for your effort here to add value to our Steem blockchain!
Thanks for penning your opinion too.
Writing from the heart. Passing on a message and leaving it to the congregation to judge.
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