Seven Stages of Writing An Instagram Caption

You just took a flawless picture that you’re ready to let all of your friends see on Instagram. It’s perfect. You picked the perfect filter, shadowing, brightness, etc. that makes the picture even more amazing (not that it really needed it). You think the hard part is done. Wrong. That was the easy part. The hard part comes up right after you hit the second “Next” button but before you hit "Share."

You have to come up with the perfect caption to go with the perfect picture.

Here are seven stages almost everyone goes through when thinking of the perfect caption.

Stage One: Starting to think of the perfect caption.

Do you want to be funny? Is your picture serious and you want the caption to be serious? What about song lyrics that describe how you’re feeling or helps describe the moment? These are all questions people ask when choosing a caption.

Stage Two: Writing your caption.

You decide on how you want your caption. You begin writing it, making edits and changes along the way.

Stage Three: Staring at your phone and re-reading it over and over.

You have to make sure it’s perfect. If it’s not, it just won’t do. The caption is part of the reason people will like your photo and you want them to enjoy reading the caption.

Stage Four: Re-writing your caption.

You were going the serious caption route but now you want it to be funny. You want to be clever and make your followers laugh while enjoying the picture that accompanies the caption. Or the last caption you wrote was just horrible and you needed to start over.

Stage Five: Re-writing your caption again.

Okay, you still want to be clever, but the last one wasn’t clever enough. After all, the caption has to be perfect.

Stage Six: Deciding on a caption.

You finally decide on one caption out of the ten rough drafts you’ve already written. You choose the one that best suits the picture and will grab people’s attention. It’s not the picture that grabs the attention, it’s the caption am I right? It’s finally time to hit that "Share" button.

Stage Seven: Reading your caption and staring at your picture over and over and over again.

You’ve finally shared your photo with the best caption you could think of. It may be original or it may not be, but it fits your photo perfectly like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. After wondering if it really was the best for about five seconds, you congratulate yourself on a great post that you won’t stop looking at it for the next two days.