How Great Writers KILL Their Reading Audience.
Attention span limitations don't ONLY plague those with ADD traits!
I began reading an utterly delightful post today, that held my rapt attention for about a third of the way through. It then got exceedingly tangential~ and lost me. It’s not that the additional material wasn’t brilliant in its own right. It’s that it became arduous for me to continue on, and track with. I run away from sensations of overwhelm, not toward them~ and I think most humans are similarly oriented.
I’m absolutely certain, some of my own readers have likely experienced ‘emotional cutoff’ with lengthy topics I’ve posted, and may in fact experience the kind of mental overwhelm I’m referencing here. I know full well, I can get profusely tangential at times (even in my YouTube videos), and stray from the beaten path I’ve initially launched myself (and you) into.
When I begin expressing a hyper-stimulated train of thought or concept, I’m like a runaway train going 1000 miles per hour! But what actually happens to those who take the time to READ all that stuff, whether it’s my own precious gems I’m casting out into the ‘webasphere,’ or someone else’s?
I have attention deficit traits, and while I’m not clinically diagnosable as such, I’m sure there are a whole lotta folks today with very similar symptomology, that aren’t either. I wrote an entire article on this topic a long time ago, and hope to get it published in book form, long before I’m hairless and toothless. But I’ve digressed (yet again!).
The point is, some of the people I subscribe to on Substack, seem to have no sense of an average human’s attention span, and its significant limitations. In my view, these are utterly brilliant minds, and I’m happy they share themselves with me thru this venue~ but most the time, it’s just far too much text for me to assimilate and integrate, and we both lose out. (Are you listening, Robert Malone?)
My internist one day stated that the average human attention span is only 20 minutes long. Personally, I think it depends on the subject matter, and how stimulating it is to us, so I’ll take her comment with a grain or salt (or two). But I think as writers, perhaps even GREAT writers, we must consider a more empathic approach when sharing our insides with others, and practice some restraint.
Bottom line, I think it can be far more impactful to offer a hearty plate of bread crumbs to our literary consumers, than placing an entire loaf of bread in front of ‘em, hoping they’ll be able to ingest, savor and appreciate it.