Short-form writing #1

An intro and a challenge

For a long time I’ve been gripped by the idea of short-form writing, even before I gave it a name. When I was a schoolteacher, for example, I was of the opinion that if a student couldn’t explain what a concept was in 140 characters (the length of a tweet at the time), they didn’t really understand it. When I was at university, studying Economics, a lecturer set us an essay on the differences between monetary and Keynesian macroeconomic policy — in no more than 500 words.(I’ve done that since, in the form of a blues song. See the footnote in this post.)

It takes work to write short. Mark Twain famously apologised to a friend for writing a long letter, “because I didn’t have time to write a short one”.

I thought in this section I’d explore different kinds of short-form writing, and set a challenge.

Short-form writing

There are loads of different kinds of short-form writing, such as drabbles, dribbles and many more. I find writing short-form enjoyably challenging, but I also very much enjoy reading short pieces too — and not merely because they’re short.

For instance, the book reviews in the Briefly Noted section in the New Yorker are only around 50 words long, but they tell you enough. My reviews in Teach Secondary magazine have a 150 word limit, which was enough to have earned the ire of the books’ authors in a couple of cases.

I don’t want to say too much more because a long article about short-form writing would be an example of a concept I invented called “presentational dissonace”. This is where the way a thing is talked about is completely at odds with the thing being talked about, like a 90 minute lecture I had to endure about the importance of interactive lessons.

If enough people respond to the challenge, I’ll do a round-up post of some sort. By “enough people” I mean at least one. If nobody takes up the challenge, I shall content myself with being Billy no-mates, and answer my own challenges myself.

The challenge

This will be different each time, obviously. And when I say I’ll do a round-up post I reserve the right to not include stuff that is potentially libellous, illegal, obnoxious or unreadable!

I’m afraid this opportunity is open to paid subscribers only. Read on for today’s challenge.