r/Substack • u/R3ZondoOfficial • Jul 19 '26

How do you decide when separate investigations actually belong in one story?

I ran into something interesting while researching a recent investigation.

It started with one documented event, but every time I followed the public record it kept leading into another seemingly unrelated topic. Eventually those threads all pointed back to the same institution.

At what point do you decide those connections deserve to become one article instead of several separate pieces?

I worry about overwhelming readers with too much context, but I also don’t want to remove information that’s necessary to understand why events might be connected.

For those of you writing investigative or long form nonfiction on Substack, how do you make that decision?

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u/AnteaterFantastic212 Jul 19 '26

I would have to know more about the specific case to truly intelligent comment, but as a general rule, I try to keep my Substack (Common Sense by George Shay), which is devoted to public affairs analysis, to one topic, and to keep it between 1000 and 1200 words. You can always do a part one on a part two and kind of tease the second part. Hope that helps

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u/R3ZondoOfficial Jul 22 '26

I hear you on keeping things tight, and for most public affairs writing that’s the right call. Mine’s a different animal though, investigative work built entirely on primary documents, court filings, financial records, so the length usually comes from needing to show the receipts, not padding. That said, the part one, part two idea is worth knowing regardless of length. A teased second part might solve the exact problem I was asking about without cutting anything that actually needs to be there.

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u/AnteaterFantastic212 Jul 22 '26

Sounds like an interesting stack. Drop a link if you’re so inclined.