This handout accompanies a training session -- Writing short AND well -- taught by Rosland Briggs-Gammon at Illinois NewsTrain on April 1, 2022. It includes information from a 2018 Phoenix NewsTrain session of the same title by Arizona State Professor Fernanda Santos. Rosland Briggs-Gammon is the director of academic programs and excellence initiatives at Alverno College in Milwaukee. For more information on the News Leaders Association's NewsTrain, see https://www.newsleaders.org/newstrain.

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Writing short AND well
Rosland Briggs-Gammon | @rbgmedia
and Fernanda Santos | @ByFernandaS
Here are tips and strategies to help you write short and well, and links to give you inspiration and
prove that, yes, it can be done.
Action not only drives the story, but it drives readers to the story. Before setting out to report on a
story, ask, is this action story-worthy? If it is, is there enough going on to justify the story length?
Characters are the driving force of your story. At its most basic, narrative story begins with a
character who wants something, meets a challenge or complication, and moves through a series of
actions – the actual story structure – to overcome this challenge or complication.
Narrative stories have plots, and plots are more than a sequence of events. Rather, they are
events organized in a way that give purpose and meaning to your story. This Stuart Tomlinson story is
a perfect example of that.
If you’re looking for a good book on narrative storytelling, try “Storycraft: The Complete Guide
to Writing Narrative Nonfiction” by Jack Hart, a former managing editor and writing coach at The
Oregonian.
This story, “After the sky fell,” by Brady Dennis in the St. Petersburg Times, now the Tampa Bay
Times, is a masterful example of the power of writing tight. It is part of an occasional series called
“300 words” because, well, the length of every story was 300 words. Here’s an archive of those 300-
word stories.
• Here’s NiemanStoryboard’s take on what makes “After the sky fell” so good, and
• Here’s Brady Dennis on how he got that story.
Sunday Short Reads email: Need inspiration? Every Sunday, CreativeNonfiction.org emails you a
flash essay of no more than 1,000 words. Subscribe.
How to write short, by Hannah Bloch for NPR Training.
How to stop doing so many stories, by Stephanie Castellano for the American Press Institute. Tips on
analyzing audience data; see whether short and long stories perform better than the “muddy middle.”
Self-editing tips
How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times, a book by Roy Peter Clark
Cut Big, then Small, article by Roy Peter Clark, Poynter.org
Twitter thread started by Karen K. Ho:
“Editors: what are your tricks for cutting down words and streamlining sentences? I often
struggle with the last 50 to 100 words to cut in my copy to fit an ideal word count.”
Exercise on removing wordiness and the answers