- #THE AUTHOR HOOKS THE READER BY ASKING A QUESTION THAT HOW TO#
- #THE AUTHOR HOOKS THE READER BY ASKING A QUESTION THAT PROFESSIONAL#
However, the story you’re telling – even if it’s your own personal experience – should not be only about you. Using your own recollections, fieldwork, or research stories is a great way to introduce your topic and argument to a general audience. What follows are some general tips for using the personal touch in the opening section of your essay.Įven if it’s about you, don’t make it all about you. If it isn’t done well, it can come off as rambling, self-absorbed, or even egomaniacal. It should interest readers from the get-go and make them feel a connection to you or the topic.Ĭaution: Using short anecdotes, stories, or vignettes isn’t as easy to pull off as it might seem. Typically, it is a personal anecdote or something specific and compelling from your research. So if you have a timely topic for an 800-to-1,200 word nonacademic piece, and you want to grab an editor’s attention, the first thing you should be thinking about is the “hook” for your lede. Editors can usually tell if they’ll accept your piece after reading your lede alone. In other words, it’s not for a general audience. The writing is too dull, too dry, too navel-gazing, too “academic,” or it’s all four of those things put together.
One of the biggest reasons that an editor will pass on a scholar’s submission is – and prepare yourself for some tough love here – it’s more than a little boring.
#THE AUTHOR HOOKS THE READER BY ASKING A QUESTION THAT PROFESSIONAL#
Competition is fierce and a lot of professional writers are your direct rivals for space. The only trouble: Op-eds and short essays are likely to get turned down in today’s saturated market. Because of your credentials and research, you’re probably the perfect person to write it. You may already have a terrific idea and a topical subject. If you’re reading this, my guess is that you’re at least interested in writing op-eds or short essays for places like Slate, the Huffington Post, or The Wall Street Journal. Ultimately, there is only one basic rule to writing a great opening paragraph: “Don’t be snoozy.” (I stole this phrase from a former journalist, Will Harper, who once gave a lecture with this gem at its center.) It’s where you grab your readers and it’s how you keep them. The purpose: to drill into our neophyte heads that the lede is the single most important part of any story. We studied the openings of Pulitzer-Prize-winning stories, looking at the writer’s mechanics. We scribbled and rewrote our introductory paragraphs.
#THE AUTHOR HOOKS THE READER BY ASKING A QUESTION THAT HOW TO#
Back when I was getting a degree in journalism, we spent so much class time talking about how to write a good “ lede” that the subject should have been its own minor.
0 kommentar(er)
