An open letter to the Substack developers.
Hello, and thank you for creating this environment for us all. I’m still new to Substack but it seems like a very welcoming place for writers and readers.
As a budding Substacker, I just have one niggle. Well, two. One niggle, which isn’t the focus of this post, is that on the app I can only see where to write a new note, but not where to write a new post.
The main niggle I have is that when I write a post (on the desktop version), the title and subtitle elements come first.
As a personal preference, I prefer to write my post first then add the title/subtitle once I know what I’ve written. I can use the body of the post to get ideas and clarity on my message, free-styling my post as I go or following a general thought I had.
Now, I know this isn’t true for everyone. Especially professional writers who probably have templates and hooks and idea generation sessions. They probably come to this with the post pretty much already written, perhaps already written elsewhere first.
Yet for the newbie or casual writer, this may be quite an alien way of writing. So business-like and direct. You have to know how you’ll finish before you’ve even started.
My proposal? A choice.
Writers could choose if they want the title/subtitle elements to come before or after the body. Just when writing, obviously. When published, the title and subtitle would still appear at the top of the post.
This would be a great addition to all the different settings and functionality of Substack.
Thank you for hearing me out :)
Here here!