600 words. It sounds like a lot to some people, but may actually end up meaning something else to another. In the 6 1/2 years that I've been here, I've been able to "read the room" and get the pulse of the community here on what is now Hive.
If you're a writer with a fertile mind that proliferate words like a rabbit, 600 words is like a short walk in the park. In fact, I consider anything under 1000 words to be a short post. From 1000 to 1500 words, That's a middling post, anything over that, and you're entering long territory.
But then again, I like to flesh things out an will often go on deep dives as I did in my last post about being a contrarian. That article topped out at around 1200 words, but to me it didn't "read long" you know what I mean?
I tend to tinker with my writing and tighten things up over several revisions. Now, while many of those long, epic posts rarely get read here on Hive, I believe some tales need to be told in either one long post, or at most, split up into two.
More Than "Just A Number"
But I've found that he magic number is 600ish. If you can keep your Hive posts somewhere around that number, you have enough "read time" to get to the meat of the matter in one fell swoop.
It's not a low effort post, but it's also not so long as to attract only the most devoted readers to peruse it.
A well-written article seems to naturally have a beginning, a meaty middle, and you can usually feel the ending more as you near that oh-so-natural conclusion.
Its odd that a person like me can be so wordy when it comes to text, while being generally taciturn in life (unless I like you and/or know you well).
Every once in a Blue Moon, I'll write what I call a "shortie" which is a post of around 200 words or so. To me, anything lower than that isn't a post at all, and starts to resemble something more like a tweet instead of a real blog post.
I write this as a reminder the next time someone says a post is either too long, or low effort. Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, 600 words is not too little, not too much, but just right.
Please check out my recent posts:
Image Credit: 1
All total this post had only 487 words (according to my text editor) including the links and image source! I was excited that it would be at least 600 words... now I am a wee bit deflated!
All joking aside I like it and although I cannot concur on the actual numbers used... I get it!
Oh no, this post wasn't supposed to be 600 words it was just about the concept in general. But when I was done, i thought "Wouldn't it be funny if it was exactly 600 words?"
Any thoughts of making it so were interruped minutes later (after I'd checked the word count in Open Office, and found out it wasn't 600). A person arrived who I'd been waiting for for a week, so I published stat, so I could take care of that. But I did think of it. lol
Isn't that the way things always work out! Thanks for the belly laugh!