This one is for all the shortys

Author

Swanagan Ray
April 09, 2024

Are y’all familiar with Seth Godin?

If not, fix that error. Like, right now.

The guy is literally a machine.

He’s published over 148 books, 21 of which have been best sellers.

And he has published a blog post EVERY DAY for over 8,500 days!!!!

Insanity.

I was listening to an interview with him on the Tim Ferriss Show podcast while I was mowing the yard yesterday.

(side note, pollen is CRAZY here right now and my head feels like a hot air balloon)

But I digress…

Seth was talking about his blog streak, and he said this:

❝

So the shortest blog post I ever wrote, which I’m really proud of, is first line is, “You don’t need more time.” So that’s an assertion. It’s controversial. People who feel overwhelmed want to challenge it, and then the delivery is, “You just need to decide.” So that flips it upside down, takes the blame off the system and the people who are making you busy, and puts it right back on you, giving you agency and authority and responsibility to simply decide, and then get back to what needs to get done.

And so in just a few words, that’s an example of a short Seth Godin blog post. And a longer one is one where I will try to teach somebody details about something they didn’t know, but frame it in a way that they’re comfortable with because that’s how they might’ve framed it as well.

Seth Godin

Seth’s blog posts are no longer than 100 words in a lot of cases.

But it’s always the right amount.

He gets his idea across but he leaves a little bit to the imagination.

He makes you connect the dots.

He takes this idea from the book Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. In the book, Scott says that comics work because something happens between the panels.

“In panel one, Superman sees a problem. In panel two, Superman is with the villain. We don’t see how Superman got from panel one to panel two. That happened in our brain.”

Powerful right??

So this is the takeaway for you…

Don’t write 5,000 words if you only need 1,000 words.

You don’t need exposition on every single detail. A little bit of Googling or ChatGPTing is good for your readers. They’ll learn more.

Word count can be a vanity metric.

Get your main point across and get out.

Peace,

Swanagan