Do some weekly topics work better than others? Some ruminations after 4 topics so far…

So far we had 4 topics of the week:

1.  Moving

2.  Unpaid roles

3.  Imperfections

4.  My first thought was to say no, but I said yes and what followed changed my life…

I noticed many people wrote about “Moving” (though maybe that could be due to it being the maiden topic of the week). Similarly for “Imperfections” - I wrote 3 posts from it myself! But what’s interesting to see if how people had interpreted the topic broadly and offered their own take. For example, for “Moving”, it was moving from city to city, or about health and exercise. Being broad and vague lent itself to more creative interpretations it seems. 

Another interesting observation: the longer the topic, the lesser posts there were. Correct me if I’m wrong (maybe there’s data about it @baz?), but it seems the more words there are, the lesser people wrote about it, am I right? I say so because the latest one - my own contribution which got selected as the weekly topic - ended up being something I couldn’t even write a post for. Too specific and therefore restrictive perhaps. I struggled to think of one incident where I experienced that sentence (first thought no, then yes). The irony! It felt like a cool topic to write for that the moment of suggestion, but it turned out pretty hard!

Lastly, I wonder if verbs are easier to write since it’s about an action around something, anything, while nouns are fixed descriptors of things and tends to be more specific? It felt like there were more stuff written for “Moving” than say for “Imperfections” and “Unpaid roles”, so maybe there’s a pattern here too.

So what’s the magic formula for a great and engaging weekly topic? Probably something that is:

• Broad and vague that can be interpreted a myriad of ways

• One word seem to work better than long sentence(s)

• More verbs, less nouns

What do you think? Are there other useful guidelines for a weekly topic that I missed out?