Zeroth, proofread.
First, make me care
11–20 of 262 posts
Re: First, make me care
#12This article succeeded spectacularly in making me want to know all there is to know about medieval Venice, that's for sure.
Re: First, make me care
#13"When writing, your first job is this:
First, make me care."
It really depends on who the audience is...
Re: First, make me care
#14This is something I find fascinating about TikTok: on that platform you literally get a few seconds to catch the attention of your audience before they skip to the next video. You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever because people will get bored of it - including if that hook is heavily used by other accounts. This makes TikTok a fascinating brute-force attack on human psychology, with literally…
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Re: First, make me care
#15I have often thought that all good fiction is mystery. This is obviously an overstatement, but I think it’s not too far off. Humans are mystery solvers. If I don’t have a compelling mystery to solve—something like the “what’s going on beneath the surface in this town?” that David Lynch does so well—when I’m reading your book or watching your tv show or playing your game, I’m usually out unless I have a strong prior interest (which simply means that I brought my own mystery).
Re: First, make me care
#16This is something I find fascinating about TikTok: on that platform you literally get a few seconds to catch the attention of your audience before they skip to the next video. You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever because people will get bored of it - including if that hook is heavily used by other accounts. This makes TikTok a fascinating brute-force attack on human psychology, with literally…
This is part of why I hate TikTok so much.
I recently started doing SiriusXM again a lot. The reason I do this is actually specifically because it gives me less choice than something like Spotify or YouTube Music.
A lot of time when I do the autoplay of YouTube Music, if I don't like the song in the first 15-20 seconds, I skip it to something else. I eventually realized that a lot of songs that I end up really liking require you listening to the entire song to come together. The inability to skip to the next song on SiriusXM forces me to listen to the song, and I've found a ton of songs that I likely would have otherwise skipped with anything else.
I feel like with TikTok, we're effectively training ourselves to ignore things that don't immediately grab our attention.
Maybe this is just my "Old Man Yells At Cloud" moment though.
Re: First, make me care
#17"When writing, your first job is this: First, make me care." It really depends on who the audience is...
Understanding your audience is your first job as a writer or communicator.
Speaking to them and making them care is job two.
Re: First, make me care
#18Zeroth, proofread.
Eh, if your hook is interesting and your writing is generally solid, I'm not about to begrudge a few typos
Re: First, make me care
#19This was quite a good article. It could have been excellent if it answered its own hook somewhere the piece though. I came away not having a resolution to the hook - violating the articles second principle.
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Re: First, make me care
#20The hook was great, but article was mediocre. I glazed over at the mention of LLMs in the second paragraph, skimming the article through to the end didn't improve things.
If your readers now care, don't disappoint them...