Do you ever catch yourself saying “long story short,” making sure your audience knows that you know it’s a long story but you’re doing the best you can to sum it up?

Maybe you should write a book …

The problem with thinking that you can just luxuriously take all the pages you need to tell that story instead of keeping it short is that you need to consider a few things to keep the story on point–no one wants to read a story that drones on and on, right?

Here are my best tips to decide if the story should be short, long, or somewhere more direct.