Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Post 22: 2,000 Characters

While I do have quite a few characters (in general, not main) for all my stories, and it isn't a total stretch of the imagination to imagine 2,000 of them, that isn't actually what this post will be about. This post will be dedicated to the daunting, stress-creating 2,000 character limit, almost as daunting as the 250 word short essay.

Now, there are probably many people who find 2,000 characters an easy thing to stay under. I am not one of them. As someone who not only likes to write and write...and write some more, keeping things under a limit can be quite a challenge for me.

Why has this come up? Three words. LinkedIn Profile Summary. Three more words. Loss for words.

I wrote the most beautiful profile summary ever. It was witty, it was well-written and it was informative. It covered my strengths. It covered my background. It was perfect. Except it was 5,000 characters. It didn't even seem that long, but it was.

So, what did I do? I tried to cut it down. I took out the extra bits, the details and specificities. 4,000 characters. I took out the descriptions, a lot of my background and some general information. 3,000 characters. Then, I took out the jokes and witticisms. 2,000 characters. The perfect length.

Except now it was less interesting than reading the phone book. And that can be interesting when you come across unique names or names of people you know.

It doesn't help that I'm not good at describing myself either.

And they say 'tell a story', how am I supposed to do that with 2,000 characters?

Do you have difficulties with word and character maximums?

Do you use LinkedIn?

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