“Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job; it is always you versus a blank sheet of paper and quite often the blank piece of paper wins”
-Neil Gaiman
Words – Sometimes the arsenal, sometimes an impediment for a writer. While many a time, words don’t come by with ease, at times they are in abundance. And surprisingly, the latter is equally challenging to execute. When writing content with a smaller word limit (say 250 words), there are quite a few facets that need your attention; writing short and crisp, writing for the audience, picking the most relevant data from the lot and regulating your content are just a few ingredients that could challenge your prowess.
As a writer, you really need to hone your abilities to carefully select the appropriate matter and precise words ample for your topic and create a well composed short article. Following are four suitable techniques that will help you along the course:-
Draft and Organize
When words are in plenty and the content required is short, there is only space for vital information. So the first step towards achieving this is to organize the reference data at hand.
With an intent to offer your audience only the necessary information, sort out the most relevant data out of the lot. Making a rough draft of your content will help in figuring out what’s important and what’s not, thus allowing you to eliminate the trivial without compromising the crux of the content.
Stanza By Stanza
You may be restricted by words, but that nowhere connotes that your article should be anything less than professional. Dividing your article in a few subheaders formats the content and allows the reader to understand it better. Defining the number of subheaders beforehand also gives you a fair idea of the word-distribution in the content. So for e.g., you opt to include three subheaders for a 250 word article, you can allocate 60-70 words for each subheader, leaving the remains for the intro and conclusion.
Note :- Don’t forget to give intriguing subheadings to poke the curiosity of the readers.
You See The Point? Stick To It
We understand your need to experiment with bigger and better words while writing, but short articles are not the place to trout fancy words. You must formulate the content to dispense the information in the shortest way possible. Irrespective of the size of an article, don’t beat around the bush. With limited words in your quiver, rambling about the non-essential and unnecessary mollifying gobbles up the words meant for the pertinent. To avoid this, ensure that the sentence structuring is distinctive and as close to the subject matter as possible.
Be faithful to Proofreading
When writing a short article, proofreading plays a major role in cutting out the jargon. You are bound to come up with alterations that could help further shorten the content.
For e.g., the sentence “Without digital marketing, it is impossible for any business to survive today” could be further shortened to, “Businesses today cannot survive without digital marketing” Same meaning with an equal impact but the word count reduced to a little more than half. Similar refinements will come to light provided you give the content a dedicated proofread.
Following these instructions to the dot should help you deliver short and crisp content with the desired quality. Short articles in their own unique way help you enrich your competence as a writer. Besides, they are concrete proof that challenges come in different sizes.