What is the longest article you ever wrote?

Back at the Phoenix, I did several 100 inch plus stories. Alternative weekly format, after all.

 

This is what design is for.
Crops to break up gray space, infoboxes, charticles.
A lot of different tricks you can use. Don't be so rigid.

I like tight writing.
If I want something broken up into "episodic" baby-bite-sized pieces I'll read a comic book.

 

If I don't locate the germ of the piece or some sort of signposting within the first 250-300 words, I'm out like a fat chick in a two-piece.
Writing is meant to be directing the reader somewhere.

 

So I guess you've never read a book with these things called "chapters?" Subheds don't work in all stories, even all long stories, but I argue for them when they work well.

And some stories are best told in vignettes, like when you're weaving together disparate experiences of the same moment. In most cases those work a lot better as vignettes than they every would as a single story.

 

Can you please stop following me from thread to thread like a dog in heat?

 

Don't flatter yourself. I was reading and thought your comment deserved a reply. Would've said it no matter who posted it. I was making a statement about the role of subheds in stories.

 

Just finished an investigative piece in the last month that was 3,200 words. I went to several different people to try and trim it where possible, but it was still north of 3,000 when it ran.

Also wrote a 75-inch feature on a wrestler at the local University that was an Iraq war veteran. That I totally overwrote and I would do things much differently now. It totally depends on what the subject is and what kind of info you have. But like others have said, I still think there's a place for long-form pieces in newspapers.

 

In sports, rarely wrote more than 1,500 words for a single story. In news, my share of 1,500- to 2,000-word articles. Topics were more complex, too much to go over.

Problem with some features are they're too long because the writer is trying to stretch it, make it seem like a bigger deal, didn't do much reporting beyond interviewing two people, don't know how to write two paragraphs next to each other that don't contain a quote. Ugh, I hate stories that are paragraph-quote-paragraph-quote. It is possible to write quite a few paragraphs without a single quote (most of which aren't that great anyway) if the reporting is there.

 

I differ with the keen minds of the longform club on this and other related subjects.
Hope that's OK by now for you in your life's development - being disagreed with, and all.

 

The folks saying, "NEVER do this!" or "NEVER do that!" are way off base. Like anything in life, there's a time and a place for everything. The genius is knowing when to use the right technique and tool for the job.

 

Exactly what I've been trying to tell Fart Boy.

 

That's pretty funny. In the same post, you tell me not to be so rigid, then insist certain approaches to writing a story should never be done. You are contradicting yourself.

The thing you are missing is that you can have tight writing in a very long story. It takes a tremendous amount of work in research and reporting, but it can be done.