The Ideal Length and the So-What Test

Everybody who writes short eventually asks me the same question, and it’s always the wrong one. How long should it be. They want a number they can hit and stop thinking. A target. Set the destination, fill the bar, ship.

There isn’t one. There’s a range with guardrails, and I’ll hand it over. But the number was never the thing. A tight 400-word piece walks all over a bloated 800 every time, and the only way to know you’ve hit bone is two gates. One proves you have a point at all. The other decides whether the last line sticks to the reader or slides off like water off a hood.

This is the lesson where the whole course comes home, so I’m not going to waste your lunch break getting there.