Padding a feature on purpose (a little trick)

Does your paper have the once a year expanded edition? Sometimes it called Progress or some other name, but it's the biggest paper of the year and they actually ask for longer features.

 

But if you write to the length you're supposed to write, you won't have to worry about what's being cut.
Seriously, if we sit down before you start writing and I say 40-45" and you give me 55", I'm tossing it back and telling you no more than 40.
Then, because you've wasted your time and mine by not being able to do what you were asked to do, the next big piece is going to someone else.

 

I agree. I used to work with a guy who would write every single gamer at 20-25 when the paper asked for 12-14. Every stinking time. And every single game he covered was the greatest game ever played and how could he not get this stuff in there ...

But remember - not every editor says, "Write to 45." Some say, "Write it as long as you need to and then we'll take a look."

Some editors compulsively want to cut stories, just like some writers compulsively want to write longer than they have to. It's a give-and-take.

 

Bad editors do that.

 

Well, look at the guy on here who said that 50 inches was "overboard."

Yeah, if it's bad it is. But to sit there and say no newspaper should run 50 inches unless it's practically Watergate Revisited? That's not right, either.

 

A great story is as long as it needs to be. Whether it's 100 inches or eight.

 

They do a progress section in news. I don't think any stories in it are that long. I think they tend to do a lot of shorter stories.

 

I probably overstated it before. I do think stories could be that long. I should have said, "At my paper, they wouldn't run a story that long unless it were the life story of Lance Armstrong or Michael Jordan."
We had a directive a few years ago not to make anything longer than 15 inches. That didn't hold up, but it says a lot about the mindset of our higher-ups.
They believe readers will drop out if the story gets very long. I believe they will drop out after the story bores them, so the story should be written as long as it deserves.
But I also think it seldom deserves 50 inches.

 

I don't know about the whole extra 10 inches thing... I get what you're saying Waylon, but I'm not sure what my reaction is...

At my last stop, I had an editor who really stressed to me the idea of making every word count. Whether a story took 6 inches or 30, he really beat into me the idea of looking at every sentence, every word, to make sure it was written as effectively (and effectively doesn't neccessarily mean concisely in all cases) as possible. He'd give me an inch count before 99.9% of my stories and tell me to go to work, but because I was always watching my word choice and thinking about my sentence structure etc., I found that, as long as I did a good job, when I went over the expected inch count, he almost always found room for it.
Granted, I didn't always do a good job. There were times he'd hand a story back and tell me it was shit.

I guess my point is that I think a story should be written exactly as long as it needs to be told effectively. Not a word more, not a word less.

(and I definately violated all my former editor's advice about effective word choice in this post, haha)

 

I wrote a 50'ish-inch story last week and UTshooter did a spot-up job showing me where to edit things out or tighten other ideas. Cut out 8-10 inches. The idea is to turn in what you think is right, then work with an editor. Teamwork.

 

Yep, Xan: An editor should be viewed as another tool that can make a writer be the best he can be.

 

nah, it's the publishers who are tools! ;D