How to tell a compelling story in a 2,200-character Instagram caption

10 highly subjective tips for storytelling on a word budget

There’s something weirdly freeing about boundaries. Whether it’s a six-foot fence between you and your overly chatty neighbour or an immovable social media character limit, boundaries help us find structure and freedom within healthy constraints.

The beauty of the Instagram caption limit is that you simply can’t include everything. It forces you to get really freaking clear on what you’re trying to say before you say it. If, like me, you sometimes struggle to decide what the one thing is that you want to say, writing for Instagram is a great way to practice brevity.

Here are my own, highly subjective tips on how to tell a compelling story in a 2,200-character Instagram caption.

1. Get it all down. Caption writing is like any creative process that begins with a brain dump, before extracting, forming and extending one idea that really matters right now. But ideas need to be written through to figure out where they’re going. Get the shitty first draft down. Then you can figure out what the story really is.

2. Pick one story. Once you’re through the brain dump, find the thread that runs through the whole - the one that really excites you. Don’t try to do it all, to tell it all, in one post.

3. Start with a big idea. Something that truly grabs you and you think will grab your reader. A big idea doesn’t have to be world-changing. It can be your-world changing. It might be sparked by something global that has a very real, very relatable effect on a small part of your life. Or it might be a very personal and pivotal idea around which your own world currently revolves.

4. Make it yours. Once you know your big idea, find the smallest, most human version of that idea. How does your story hold the essence of that big idea? People respond to people. Find the one moment that matters - the one lesson you took from this experience. Why does this matter to you?

5. Begin with the end in mind. You don’t need to know the end before you begin, but once you’ve worked out where you’re going, make sure your ending brings us back to the beginning. Perhaps I should say, end with the beginning in mind. Reference your opening at the end and bring us full circle.

6. Make it visual. A picture paints a thousand … yeah, yeah, we know the old adage. Turn this around. Paint a picture with your words. Not a thousand of them though. Remember that character count?
   
   Challenge yourself: how few words can you use to paint a vivid picture? Use adjectives, but use them sparingly. The most evocative descriptions are often the simplest. Don’t just make it visual - appeal to all the senses. Draw on your own memories of smell and taste and touch to paint the scene.

7. Find a simple structure. Whether it’s a hero’s journey in miniature, a three-act structure, or a simple beginning, a middle and an end, structure works. The human brain looks for and feels comfortable with a recognisable pattern. Even the flashiest of flash fiction, the six-word story often attributed to Hemingway, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” contains an entire narrative arc, from hope and expectation through trauma to a tragic end.
   
   A simple structure that works in short caption stories is “say what you’re going to say, say it, say you’ve said it.” Introduce your big idea in your opening. Refer back to it at the end. And in between, tell us why you’re telling us about it.

8. Write your opening last. Once you know where you’re going, come back to the beginning and rewrite it. Only two lines of text (between 10 and 20 words) are visible when users scroll through their home feed. Make that opening punchy. Grab our attention. Give us a reason to click more.

9. Edit, edit, edit. Remove secondary stories and observations that pull away from the primary story and push you over your character count. Delete filler words and phrases. Ditch the jargon. You don’t need to tell us that this is “in your opinion” (we know that) or preface your observations with a needless “needless to say”. Delete three times as much as you keep. But save what doesn’t make it this time for future posts. There’s gold in those ramblings. Save them, give them their own space and let them sing their own solo.

10. Stop editing and just freaking post it already! This is as much a note to myself as to you. I am a compulsive editor and can easily edit the life out of a piece. Knowing when to stop is as important as the editing itself.
    
    This post is an exercise in exactly this. It’s been written as part of a “Substack Soireé” challenge to write, edit and post an article in 60 minutes on a live call with Sara Tasker and Keeley Rees. In case you’re wondering, no I didn’t quite make it.
    
    This should have been posted last night, but my editing gremlin wouldn’t quite let me let it go at that point. I’ve spent probably an additional hour editing today, in between vet and grooming appointments for a poorly pooch. Even so, this is waaaay less than the many, many hours I would normally spend in the elusive pursuit of perfection. So yeah, whether they’re physical, time-bound, or word counts, boundaries are freaking awesome.

One thing to be aware of, if you weren’t already. Line breaks consume characters. Every line break uses 10 characters. If you use a double return so those breaks are actually visible, that uses a whopping TWENTY characters. Which is a right bugger. I like line breaks because I write visually and breaking up text makes it easier to read. Just think of the line break issue as part of the challenge.

I’m thinking of writing a series on how I turn an observation or memory into an Instagram caption, giving a line-by line structural breakdown of posts that elicited the most responses. If this is something that would interest you, drop a comment below.

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