301. 1,500 Words on Writing a 5-Word Tweet

<p>Writing a tweet is a microcosm of <a href= "https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/how-to-write-a-book/">writing a book</a>. If you think deeply and carefully about every word in a tweet, and what the tweet as a whole communicates, you can extend those skills to all your writing. In this article, I’ll break down how to think about every word in a tweet, nearly tripling its performance.</p> <h3>Step 1: The first-impression tweet</h3> <p>The tweet we’ll work on came to me like most tweets, a thought that popped into my head. It was this:</p> <blockquote> <p>Ironically, strong opinions are the ones that are easily argued against.</p> </blockquote> <p>I could have just tweeted that. But I’ve made a habit of instead writing down my first-impression tweets in a scratch file, and later working on them before publishing. Here’s what my thought process looks like.</p> <p>As a tweet, this phrase is a little wordy, and weak. It starts somewhat nonsensically with an adverb: “Ironically.” What action is being performed ironically?</p> <h3>Step 2: Improving word economy</h3> <p>There are also some extra words that could be cut out. Do we have to refer to “strong opinions” again, by using the word “ones”? The word “that” is often not necessary, and it doesn’t seem necessary here.</p> <p>If we cut out all those extra words, we end up with:</p> <blockquote> <p>Strong opinions are easily argued against.</p> </blockquote> <h3>Step 3: Adding back in meaning</h3> <p>That’s shorter, more elegant, and economic. But now it’s weaker. It’s a simple statement of fact, without presenting what’s remarkable about that fact, or how anyone should feel about it. At least when it said, “ironically,” it pointed out the irony that strong opinions are those that are easily argued against.</p> <p>Also, since I’ve removed the second reference to “strong opinions” by removing the word “ones,” the statement no longer pits “strong opinions” against other types of opinions. Before, I was implying the existence of opinions that weren’t strong, and describing wha