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You'll Never Believe This Story – But It's True!

Quick: When you see headlines like this, do you:

• Click on them immediately to learn this exciting and valuable information?
• Yawn?
• Snort with anger/disgust at these cheap attempts to get your attention?

Attention-grabbing headlines like this are annoying. You and I both know they aren't going to tell us anything of interest. The writer just wants to make us click on the next webpage, so the company can get its Adsense revenue. Bah and phooey. So why do they keep doing it? Because it works. Lots of web users experience a Pavlovian response to words like 'incredible' 'rich', or 'successful'. Hope springs eternal. Maybe this time, there will be actual content…

Now, I'm not suggesting you indulge in bait-and-switch tactics to spice up your writing. No, indeed. But I am suggesting that you owe it to the reader to make what you write more interesting. And you can do this by getting their attention in entertaining, though honourable ways. The entertaining part is obvious. The honourable part comes in when you deliver on your promises.

Where do you want to do this?

• In Post articles.
• In Guide Entries. (Oh, yes.)
• Any time you're writing fact-based stuff.

The Hook

What is a hook? It's an attention-trapping device. In education, we use it all the time.

In the mid-1500s, it was said, a squirrel could climb a tree on the New England coast, and go all the way to the Mississippi without touching ground. Two hundred years later, the squirrel was out of luck. He would have to navigate around buildings, cross roads, and dodge farmers' ploughs. What brought about this revolution in North America's landscape?

You see what I did here? I used an image to conjure up a mental map of North America. I hope I made you chuckle for a second. Then, I asked a question. Are you poised to find out what I'm going to say next about landscape change during the Colonial period?

It's not a cheap trick. It's playing fair. You have to give the reader some help to get into the topic. You have to tell them why they're reading. And this part should be fun. Okay, maybe not 'Wheee! I'm going to Disneyland!' fun, but entertaining, nonetheless.

Headline Fun

Tree Rings and Jesus' Underwear: The Missing Dark Ages

I once used a headline like this in Peer Review. They all flocked to snigger. The BBC changed that headline to 'The Phantom Time Hypothesis'. The Guide Entry sank without trace. I wonder why?

Tree rings and Jesus' underwear sound a heck of a lot more interesting than some old hypothesis. I delivered, too. There is actually something about tree rings and Jesus' underwear in that entry. But the BBC didn't like it. That's because their editors are addicted to SEO.

What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization. That's geek-speak for the no-brainer idea that if you want mouseclicks, you front-load your copy with common search terms. That way, your item will appear high on the search engine list, people will click, and you get ad revenue or statistics to show your boss. That's fine, as far as it goes. But what about cluing the reader in? Let's leave SEO to the ad folks, and think about ways to get attention.

It's a good idea to include a searchable term or two in your title, sure. In addition, though, try to use titles to indicate the tone of the piece. The 'Jesus' underwear' crack indicated that I was going to be arch, flip, and generally snarky about medieval historiography. This might be welcome news to the reader, who might otherwise dread the onslaught of eye-glazing boredom. In other words, reader, this is not going to be a BBC documentary on Castles I Have Known.

This works for short stories, too. I've got one in the archives here called Ghost Shouter. Now, guess what that's about? How do you know, from those two words? Your own experience with the term 'ghost whisperer'. You can use cultural baggage to make titles more relatable.

Questions, Questions

About a million years ago – well, okay, in the early 1970s – Elektra and I did a weird thing. We were undergraduates at a large university¹. We founded a science journal with the highly original title of Eureka! The purpose of the journal was twofold: to inform students about the work our top-flight science professors were publishing, and to give our pre-med friends an extracurricular activity that looked really cool on their resumes.

Our faculty advisor was a brilliant woman named Lois who worked as a freelance technical writer. She'd taught Elektra, and I kibitzed on her homework. This lady was savvy, and laced her practical instruction with a generous dollop of humour. She was also on hand to help with the editing.

For each issue, we sent our science reporters out in the field – our campus – to interview professors and collect information. They brought their articles in to the group meeting in the Student Union building: There, we'd edit, and discuss strategies, and work on images. Image-finding was difficult in those days, because there was no internet. We had to get real photos. We either took them ourselves, drew sketches, or borrowed photos from the ever-obliging NASA. Then we did our layout with an X-acto knife and glue. Ever wonder where the term 'cut-and-paste' came from? It used to involve real cutting and pasting, kids.

One of Lois' suggested strategies for beginning an article was to use provocative questions. For example, you might say, 'What happens when you mix baking soda and vinegar? How quickly do you have to duck? Are there other uses for this chemical discovery than annoying your science teacher with yet another erupting volcano?' See, it grabs your attention. However, this only one of the many ways you can get someone's attention. The key is variety.

At one memorable meeting, I realised how seriously the writers took Lois' instructions. As the writers – pre-med students and chemistry majors all – handed me their copy, I glanced through the opening paragraphs. At first, I chuckled. Then I groaned. Finally, I gave up and guffawed. Every single article for the next issue began with a series of rhetorical questions.

I shared this discovery with the team, and we spent about half an hour executing change-ups to the openings. Lois laughed heartily. For weeks afterwards, our running gag around campus was to make up a series of questions. Then we'd quip, 'These and other questions will be answered in the next issue of Eureka!'

Moral of the story: you should have more bows to your quiver. But a provocative question or two is a good attention-grabbing device. Look at the way this recent Guide Entry starts.

What can you do when your government's trying to kill you? Leave the country? What about the world?

The Entry goes on to explain that it's about nuclear deterrence and citizen protest. But the questions are an attention-grabber. They make the reader want to know – at least, the author (me) hopes they do.

So what have we learned?

1. Be kind to your readers. Give them a reason to want to know what you want to tell.
2. Put this incentive up front. Start with an attention-grabber.
3. Use your titles to clue the reader in, not baffle them. And don't get so completely tied up in SEO that you forget to be interesting.
4. Remember that the opening paragraph is like the teaser to a TV show. If you haven't been interesting before the first commercial break, they're likely to tune out. Convince them they'd not rather be watching Strictly right now.

Is this insulting, to you or the reader? Not at all. It's a way to play fair with your audience. Their attention is valuable. Otherwise, you wouldn't be trying to get – and hold – it. Show respect for that attention. Give it something to go on. The reader will reward you by wanting to know what you have to say.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

10.02.14 Front Page

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