Keep It Short, Stupid

or, you know, don't

Have you heard of the Wadsworth Constant? It states that the first 30% of anything online can be skipped.

(I was going to give a more detailed intro, but then, well, you know . . .)

It started in a 2011 Subreddit about a YouTube video about how to fold a fitted sheet. (Don’t we all just roll these up in a quick tumble in our arms and then stuff them in the closet? Just me?)

One user called Wadsworth pointed out that the first 40 seconds of the video was pointless. And they went on to say when they open any video they immediately fast forward to about a third of the way through, to get rid of the unnecessary intro.

While I only learned of the term Wadsworth Constant this week, I think about this principle a lot when editing copy. It appears to be a subset of the theory of linguistic minimalism (ie Keep It Short, Stupid) that is very much en vogue right now.

A theory that I kind of hate. (Insert gasps from readers of Eddie Shleyner’s Very Good Copy here.)

Brand voice is not just choosing a different word to your competitor. It’s about choosing pacing, asides, and turns of phrase that both make you sound human and uniquely your brand. When we all follow the rules of Hemingway, we shorten our sentences, use fewer types of punctuation, follow the same sentence structure, and before you know it — Boring Central.

One of the first fiction writers I fell in love with was Terry Pratchett. His Discworld series delighted me in ways I didn’t know books could. Because it wasn’t just that they were good stories. It was that he was telling me these good stories. The puns, the tension between something outrightly silly and then intensely serious, the satirical metaphors, my God, the footnotes.

The thing is, Eddie is right; good copy is often sparse. With our unlimited digital ‘pages,’ and an external demand for ever more content, we often create flabby writing to fill a void. And even worse (and this is where I find it really hard to hate the KISS method), when writing is flabby, readers skim or stop reading altogether.

Why the Wadsworth Constant is really an author problem

Because it’s making it all about you. And your readers care most about what’s in it for them.

We were talking to Mel Barfield yesterday in our Brand Voice Visionaries course and she mentioned the advice she gives to cut “We are delighted to announce that . . .” from posts.

Her recommendation — just start with whatever comes next — is a classic example of ditching the Wadsworth Constant.

What it’s also doing is ditching the bit about you.

You’re delighted.

You’re announcing.

But does your reader care about any of that? (Tbh, do they care about what comes next? You should think about that seriously, but that’s for another post.)

Are you writing to think or writing to communicate? Another author problem

I learned about the Wadsworth Constant this week in this Substack article. Here’s Adam’s piece of writing advice that blew me away:

Somehow, whenever I finish a draft, my first few paragraphs almost always contain ideas that were necessary for writing the rest of the piece, but that aren’t necessary for understanding it.

Once again, this is placing the writer and their processes on display, usually before they’ve even provided the value to the reader. Does the reader need to know how you came to the realization you want to communicate? (Sometimes. But probably less often than you think.)

When we start a piece of writing about ourselves and not the reader, it’s likely we are producing naval-gazing, flabby copy. We’re putting ourselves center stage and expecting the reader to sit through our self-aggrandizing until we turn the spotlight (finally) on to them.

And dear writer, nobody got time for that shit today. They’ll look away. They have their own flashlight readily available on the back of their phone. They’ll use that to go find something more interesting to them.

The reader is always right

So, we need to keep the spotlight on the reader, and that is where the KISS method can really help clear the self-indulgent clutter.

I’ve spent the last year editing letters that an insurance company send to their policyholders. I’ve had to take corporate, jargon-filled templates and ‘Gill them up’ as it’s called in the office.

What that really means is I deeply connect with the reader. The claims manager is picking up the 3rd folder on their stack at 9.18am and filling out a few blanks in a template before hitting print then turning to the next in the pile.

The person on the other end of that letter? They might have been waiting weeks or months for this decision to be made. They might be sick, in terrible pain, unsure if they will ever be able to work again, unsure if they will get the medication or surgery they need.

They pull the letter out of the mailbox, stamped with the branded logo. And the panic rises. The moment is here. Life as they know it will change based on the results of this letter.

So we make it as easy to read as possible. We ditch the Wadsworth Constant. The reader usually doesn’t need to know how we came to the decision, at least not at first. JUST TELL ME IF YOU APPROVED MY CLAIM.

We tell them in the first line. Bolded at the end of a paragraph, if it really must come later. In the subject line if at all possible. Short sentences. Short paragraphs. Bullets where we can.

Maybe we need to explain process later. Maybe they’ll need to understand that as they decide what to do next. But that’s not why their hands shake as they open the letter.

This brand voice focuses on being understandable above all else. So the KISS method rules triumphant in my edits.

A yes/and confession

So, how do we balance the need for content to be unique to a brand or writer but not flabby? Is there one Constant to rule them all? Ehm, no.

The one reader I’ve been picturing in my mind (and putting the spotlight on) as I write this is Eddie Shleyner. Champion of the KISS method.

I love Eddie’s writing and style. I’ve bought his course and book. If you don’t follow him already, I highly recommend you go do so.

But also, when I read his articles that strongly advocate for a sparse writing style, I can feel myself bristle. Something has never felt quite right about it, but I’ve struggled to explain it.

Because he’s not wrong. We need more disciplined writing that spotlights our readers and makes them want to read on.

But also — we need brand voice. We need our audience to feel who we are at our heart (or values, whatever a brand has where a heart should be) as we talk to them.

The reason I still devour all Eddie’s content is because I think a writer should be able to write short, disciplined pieces. To look at a piece and see the Wadsworth Constant of it. To trim the fat.

But sometimes the fat makes the meal. A lean piece of meat is not always the tastiest. Is this purely for sustenance or do you want your readers to savor what you wrote?

By understanding where the fat lies on your piece, by doing the hard work of trimming it and learning to write lean, then you become truly skilled at your job.

Then you can discern when to leave a piece with a succulent fatty edge or even marbled throughout.

Stuff I’m reading-watching-listening to

• 📖 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders. I bought this thinking it would be a great way to build my fiction writing skills. But my word, almost every lesson applies just as strongly to copywriters. (I will be doing a paid workshop on this at some point, going through the lessons from a copywriting perspective. If you’re interested in that, email me.)

• 🎥 Heat (1995). I remember watching this when it came out. And it’s still just as strong a movie 30 years later, even with our reduced attention spans. It’s on Netflix right now and is a storytelling and structure masterclass.

• 🎧 Telepathy Tapes. I was intrigued by this podcast about whether non-verbal people with autism could communicate via telepathy. It was ultimately a DNF for me as I became skeptical of the results. (If you’ve listened and want to know why, email me.) But the way the piece was structured was fascinating. There is a lot of complex science (or ‘science’ depending on how you view it), and it used a lot of asides and splitting explanations up to help thread the narratives with the dense stuff.

It’s time for recess

Let’s trim some fat. Take a piece you’ve written recently. Could be for you or could be for a client. First, let’s get the gym bro boiled chicken and rice version of it ready. Spot and trim all that fat. Don’t delete it though — highlight where you would cut it.

Next, let’s make the slow-roasted crispy pork belly version of this meal. Which of your highlighted versions would you want to keep to retain brand voice? Or what could you add back in, like small marblings, to give us a sense of brand voice throughout the piece without making it flabby?