How to turn your Threads, Bluesky, or X thread into a Medium story
Expand your sentence-long story into the Medium version
Many ideas can’t be conveyed in 140 (or 280) characters. So much so that almost all short-form social media platforms now offer a thread feature — a way to link a bunch of your single posts into one cohesive chain.
While this is great and useful, it has some downsides. For example, one link in the thread chain can be shared out of context, leading to misunderstanding. Comments to the whole idea sometimes get lost as replies to individual parts of the thread, or vice versa. Plus, there’s no single canonical link, making it hard to point to as a whole, fully-fledged idea in the future.
From an editorial perspective, when you try to cram long-form ideas into short-form media, things get lost in translation. Not many people write threads first as a Google doc, which they then turn into a thread. Normally people just post on Twitter as they have the idea. That’s convenient and quick. But it’s harder to edit, sometimes you have to circle back to older points as you think of new supporting ideas for them, and you miss things.
That’s why you might want to consider the Medium form for your idea.
What’s the Medium version of your thread?
What makes for a good thread-turned-Medium-story? It should be on a topic in which you have some kind of expertise. This can be academic or professional expertise, but also any kind of lived experience. It should also be complete. Threads are great for updating as you experience things — Medium stories are better for complete ideas.
Here are some great examples of threads-turned-stories:
- mo husseini’s 50 Completely True Things
- Dr. Jess Steier’s I’m a Public Health Scientist. Here’s What the Research Really Shows About Raw Milk.
- Gabrielle Blair’s Men Cause 100% of Unwanted Pregnancies
- Jeremy Littau’s On Ukraine: Words shape facts, shape understanding
Note: You can create multiple stories as a series if you want to keep running with an idea. For example, creative nonfiction writer Steph Lawson worked from libraries for 100 days and published her experiences on Medium in a series of 100 stories, starting with this one.
What doesn’t matter?
- Popularity. A thread need not go viral to be a great Medium story.
- Disagreements. If readers had critiques of your thread (useful or not-so-useful), turning it into a story is a great way to address those.
- Lack of an existing audience. One of the great things about Medium is you don’t need a pre-existing audience. Using tags and publications, you can still reach your readers.
Copy paste
Once you know which thread you want to turn into a story, you can copy-paste it into a Medium draft. Or you can use a tool like Thread Reader App and copy-paste the entire body of the text into a Medium story. If you don’t have a Medium account yet, you can quickly set one up by going to the Medium homepage and clicking “Get Started.”
Flesh it out
Threads often need a bit of fleshing out to be good Medium stories. Once you have all the bare text copy-pasted into your Medium draft, connect your ideas and fill them out with more detail. Normally, writers flesh out each tweet/post into its own paragraph with extra information.
You’ll have the opportunity to fix typos, change the order of your ideas so they flow more smoothly, add images, and do anything else you like to make it more polished and readable.
Read your story to yourself silently. Read it aloud, to yourself, your friend, your cat. If you need to, you can always redraft it. Don’t feel like you’re committed to exactly the same words or order of ideas as in your original thread.
Adjust the formatting
Medium has a few formatting options you can use to make your story look the way you want it to.
We have numbered lists:
- Like this
- And this
You can use bulleted lists:
- Like this
- Or this
Use drop caps like this to stylize the first letter in your paragraph.
We also have . . . separators to distinguish new sections.
Add italics and bolding to highlight specific ideas. You can also separate sections using H1 and H2 headers.
Here’s more information on how to format your story using the Medium editor.
Include any commentary
One of the advantages of republishing your thread as a Medium story is that you get the opportunity to address any feedback your readers left you. Did you get any particularly interesting comments on your original source material? Now’s your chance to include them, address them, or explain what the commenter is missing.
Optionally, you can add a disclaimer to say that this story was originally posted as a thread. We most often see this as a simple line at the top or bottom of the story that says “This idea was adapted from a thread here,” as mo husseini did with his story. This comes with the additional benefit of pointing any new Medium readers back to your original audience on Bluesky, X, Mastodon, or Threads.
Add pictures or images
Include any images from your original thread, or add in any you’d like to additionally throw in. On Medium, it’s customary (but not required) to add a feature image. When your story is published on Medium, our recommendations system will show it on the homepage, in email digests, and underneath other stories.
A feature image helps your story stand out and gives your readers some context on what it’s about in combination with your headline and subtitle.
You can use the Medium Unsplash integration which lets you search Unsplash directly from within the Medium editor. You can also use one of your own images or another image you have the rights to.
Find a publication
One of the great things about publishing on Medium is that you can submit your story to a publication. On Medium, any member can create a publication and run it how they want, publishing stories on a range of topics as broad as science to as niche as pets. When you publish your story in a publication, it will be recommended to the followers of the publication, even if they don’t follow you.
To find a good home for your story, you can browse our long list of publications accepting submissions. You can also check out the Chill Subs publication directory. Most publications have their submission guidelines pinned to the top of their homepage.
Or, you’re welcome to self-publish. Just press “Publish,” select relevant Topics, and you’re all set.
Paywall (or not)
No ads, ever, will show up next to or inside your story. Instead, Medium is 100% member-funded. Paying Medium members can read every Medium story. When they do, if the story is paywalled, a portion of their membership fee goes to that writer. Writers can choose to paywall their stories so only members can read them, or leave them freely available to everyone.
If you paywall your story, you’ll be able to earn money when members read your work. You can also choose to leave it un-paywalled. It’s up to you, and you can decide to paywall or unpaywall whenever you want.
Share it
To give your readers the gift of your essay in long form (or, ahem, Medium form), you can share a link to your Medium story on the original platform you published your thread.
You can also share a Friend Link if you paywalled your story, but still want non-members to be able to read. Here’s more information on Friend Links from our Help Center.
Last but not least, this is another great opportunity to ask for comments! On Medium, readers can leave comments on the whole piece, or highlight specific portions to leave comments on those ideas.
Come back to Medium for your next thread — or any story idea
When you’ve finished turning your first thread into a story, sit back and relax. You’ve given new life to your ideas, and now you have a single canonical link to point your audience toward.
And remember — you don’t need to start with a thread. Any idea can be turned into a Medium story. Just sit down and write.
