14 Killer Ideas for Writing ‘Filler’ Stories
And why you need them to plump up your publishing schedule
I’m a firm believer in splitting my attention between two distinct types of stories in my publishing schedule: features and fillers.
It’s an old-school method of retaining the reader’s attention, developed by publishers with far more inside knowledge than I have.
Pick up any print magazine or newspaper. Every last one of them consists of a pleasant-to-peruse blend of features and fillers. Publishers figured out long ago that too many long-form pieces not only intimidate the reader but bore them. Too many short-form pieces encourage skimming.
But a mix of the two pulls both speed readers and deep readers into the blender like chocolate chips into cookie dough.
How to create the perfect mix to keep your readers hooked
While you toil over your fabulous feature stories — which should almost always take longer than a day to write, edit, polish and publish — you risk losing reader attention.
Look at it this way, when you publish a brilliant feature — the kind that lights up your existing readership base and even grows it — you never want to let that momentum slip for too long. You can hope…
