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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43578
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43578
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Sometimes editing to fit a requirement makes you a stronger writer. And sometimes the onerousness of the requirement means you're in the wrong genre.

If you said you have a 750 word limit and sometimes you push 1000 words, then we could give you all sorts of advice about how to trim things to make it work. But 3000 to 750? That's not trimming. That's changing your format.

My suggestion: Find places that accept 3000 (or maybe 2500) word pieces.

If that's not possible, then break your stories into parts.

If you can't do that, then you will have to focus each story on something far more narrow than you're doing now. For example, instead of documenting someone's journey with diabetes, focus on their diagnosis, or on their dietary changes.

You can still be proud of more narrowly focused articles. There is an art to capturing the feel with only a piece of the story to work with. Which approach you take depends on what options are available to you and the details of who you are writing for (your publisher and your audience).

Don't think of it as trimming (which simply isn't possible when you're cutting 3/4 of what you've written). Try not to simplify: you just can't document a large journey in 750 words. Instead, focus. Narrow the scope and then fill it out from there.

Original score: 3