When is too much too much?

Reporters early in their careers often error in writing too long. I'm seeing some examples of this in the Future. So how long should a story be? Well, it depends. Stories longer than 500 words should have a good reason for being longer. Most basic event preview or recap stories do not need to be more than 500. Nor does a meeting story. Nor a story announcing that someone won a grant, or a scholarship, or any other type of recognition.

When can a story be longer? When it involves a compelling narrative. Even a personality profile begins to wear out its welcome after 500 words. All stories need to give the reader a reason to keep going -- because the easiest thing for a reader to do is stop reading. Strong anecdotes, solid narrative scene and action description, sources that are adding to the narrative -- these are all hallmarks of a story that will hold a reader's attention for more than 500 words.

Page designers also hate long stories, especially if there is little or no art to accompany the story. You'll know when you wrote too much when you open up the paper the next day and you see a huge gray block of text staring back at you. When even you don't want to tackle that story to see what the editors changed, you know you wrote too much.

Other ways you know your story is too long:

• Your story doesn't even hold the attention of your parents.
• You can't read your entire story during a Gray's Anatomy commercial break.
• The subject is only of interest to the people in the story, especially after 500 words.
• You can lay your foot-long Subway sandwich on the story and it doesn't touch any art or headlines.
• None of your friends can tell you what you wrote after the jump.

If you ever work for a community or metro paper, in all likelihood, your editors will tell you how long to keep a story when it is assigned. If you turn in something longer than they request, you will be told to cut it, or to prove to them why it needs to be that long. So start developing your ability now to write concisely. It will save you some embarrassment when a hiring editor takes a look at your clip portfolio, arches an eyebrow, and says something along the lines of, "Well, you're certainly not leaving anything out of these stories."

A final note: I'm not opposed to long stories. In fact, I love reading long stories ... when they are well-written, when they tell a story, when I can empathize with a character, when I find myself wanting to read the next paragraph to find out what happens. Write that story, and you'll have me to the end.