Have you ever wondered how it is to write in such a way that all your readers will intrinsically be hooked to your unstoppable flow of words and totally immersed in the depth of your undeniably profound concepts and ideas, in such a way that, if you meet with them 20 years from now you will be both struck with awe, not only by the coincidence of meeting someone after such a long time, but also by the affinity of your thoughts and ideas, by the continuous movement of the universe, the stars and the planets and all the green fields that were once even greener, which causes you a deep crisis of melancholia, right now, right here.

Please raise your hand if you read the entire paragraph above.

Now please raise you hand if you actually understood something from it.

I don't see you - obviously - but I can predict with 99% accuracy that you won't raise your hand. Because the paragraph above is an example of how not to write. How not to create what I call palatable text.

Welcome to the fifth session of our story-telling crash course here on Steemit.

The 4 Pillars of Palatable Text

You can't eat more than your mouth can hold at once. Subsequently, you can't reach to your audience if you try to put too much on their plate, at once. This is the basic concept of palatable text. Define your audience and the optimal size and structure of your content, so they will actually read it.

There are 4 rules that you should keep in mind. Not to be applied constantly, because a little deviation every once in a while could account as a innovation, but to be followed as guidelines.

1. Adapt to your audience

Know your readers. Understand what they usually read, how they read and why they read that. And then be flexible. Each community has biases and hidden agendas. Each community has a specific type of content that is more popular than others. Do some trial and errors until you find out which is which.

For instance, Facebook is sensitive to medium length posts, between 10 and 20 sentences. Medium, on the other side is more prone to moderately long articles, 40 to 60 sentences. Beyond size, there are also topical differences. Facebook might be more biased towards news like posts, while Medium is geared towards more personalized content.

2. Temporal coherence

In the first paragraph of this article I slipped a bit of a temporal dissonance. I jumped from an undefined present time to 20 years from now, than back to an undefined temporal definition, "right here, right now". You may not realize these differences on the spot, but this will add a layer of fuzziness that will affect your overall understanding of the text.

Try to maintain a temporal coherence of your text, both at the grammar level and at the story level. Again, some deviations from the norm may account as innovation, but until you reach the level where you can play with time in your writing, play safe. As Picasso said: "you need to know the rules perfectly if you plan to break them".

3. Sentences, paragraphs and other visual marks

Be consistent with the size of your sentences. The first paragraph of this article consists of a single sentences. If I would continued with the same size, probably nobody would have read it at all. Short, understandable sentences are easier to digest than long, convoluted phrases.

The same thing applies to paragraphs. Keep a consistent size and shape. This will induce a state of flow in your readers, which will soon float along in the rhythm of your writing. Again, any disruption here should be voluntary and should mark some semantic change in your message.

4. Concept coherence

If possible, try to keep the topic of your writing very specific. Touching multiple concepts in the same physical writing unit may create confusion. It may also dry the attention of your readers. In the first paragraph of this article I did everything but this: I talked about writing, then about meeting with your readers, then about a state of melancholia. Weird.

Assignment: write a piece in which you apply consistently the 4 pillars. The topic may be whatever you want it to be, as long as you respect these 4 guidelines. Don't forget to leave me a comment here, as I may overlook the article if you're just tagging it with `challenge30` and `story`. You have 24 hours.

Looking forward to read your stories!

This is a 15 sessions story telling crash-course I'm doing on Steemit, the goal being to improve the writing skills of all members of this community. You can see the launch post and a curricula including all sessions here. Each session contains an assignment for which you have 24 hours. I will read and review all the assignments, and award a symbolic prize of 1SBD to the "winner".

Links to previous sessions:

Let's tell some stories and have some fun!

image source - Pixabay

I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

You can also vote for me as a Steemit witness here:
https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Story Telling Crash Course - Session Five: Define and Create Palatable Text