How can one reach an audience with great information when people tend
to avoid reading? Simple: one “buys” them!
A long time ago, I learned about technical writing – documentation,
reports, articles and other pieces that were notorious for being ignored.
“You can write masterpiece after masterpiece,” my manager told me when
I complained after finding another report had gone unread, “but people
only want to know the report is there if they get into trouble. They’ll
then find someway of showing that it was not their fault.”
“But…”
“No buts. People don’t read much. They never have and never will! Get
used to it. Writers are either unread or they write fiction. Want to be
read? Then write a novel!”
Since those days, I’ve looked at anything dealing with writing and
reading. I’ve never quite accepted the coach’s advice. I won’t say that
everything I’ve written has been read from start to finish, but I have had
many people comment on how easily they understood my reports, manuals
and articles.
The secret? It is simple: I try to write the way people read. That way,
I buy their time to get them through the whole piece, no matter how
long (in words) it was.
How do people read, especially non-fiction?
They read in short bursts. To an observer, the reader seems to “scan”
through an article, but what they are doing is reading small parts. If
they “buy” into that small part, they read a longer part, which leads
them into another section, and so on, until they reach the end.
The funny thing is that they have a very strong comprehension on those
parts that “buy” their time.
If they don’t “buy” a segment, then they skim through the rest, at
least until they find something else that catches their attention. However,
the chances are that, if they have skimmed through the piece, their
retention of the article’s facts is extremely small; often they remember
practically nothing, except that the writer did not tell them anything
and reading was a waste of time.
What are these time segments?
The most important is the headline, the first one to two seconds.
Like most writers, I’ve been trained to think in word counts. The word
count is what editors consider when looking at an article, especially
the number of words that will fill a certain space in their medium.
How many words are two seconds?
On average, reading speed is between 200 and 300 words per minute.
Therefore, one second is approximately three to five words, and two seconds
are seven to ten words.
Readers will gladly give you those two seconds, so use them well. Hone
your words down to as few as you can. Do not be cute or misdirect your
readers; they do not appreciate finding that you are playing tricks
with words.
If you do this well, you will buy between ten and fifteen seconds more
of the reader’s time. Using the same yardstick for converting time into
words, they will read 50 to 75 words more of your masterpiece.
This is where you outline the gist of your article. You tell them what
you are going to tell them and why they should read further. As with
the headline, use as few words as possible. Make it a “teaser”, if you
can, but make sure that it really does tell them what you will have in
the main body.
Do it right, and you have bought a whole minute of their time - between
two hundred and three hundred of your words!
These words are where you get across your basic message. Once they
finish reading these words, they will have the most concise version of the
information you want to give them. They will start to remember what you
have written!
You might use a narrative approach at this point, something that
“disturbs” or that fits with the reader’s likely experience in the area, but
keep it all within those two hundred to three hundred words.
The reader is still not committed to reading your whole piece, but they
are much more open to let you buy another two minutes of their time –
that’s four to six hundred words more!
When the reader finishes with these two minutes, he/she should have a
very good understanding of your message. Not only that, the reader will
be able to tell others the main content of what you have written.
>From there, readers are effectively hooked. They have the main
meaning, and they want is the detail to go with it. They are willing to give
you as much of their time as you need to make your mark in their minds:
you have “bought” (and earned!) that time.
Surprisingly, the “body” of the article does not need to be as rigorous
in purchasing time as those first three minutes and seventeen seconds.
It does need to be reasonably well written, and it does have to deliver
what you promised. It has to be worth the investment you have gained.
Nevertheless, in essence, your reader has accepted what you have
written.
How do you end the piece?
To a large extent, you reverse the process. You summarize the body in a
different way, and use a minute (two hundred to three hundred words) to
solidify your message in the readers’ minds.
Then you repeat the message in some fifty to seventy five words, in an
easy-to-remember way.
Finally, you end with a catchphrase, similar to your headline.
There is no set length for a good piece. The time slice approach works
with a piece of any length, especially the one thousand to three
thousand words that many editors and publishers find most useful. For longer
articles, you may need to use multiple time slice sections, but that is
another article.
The result: readers have your message in a painless and easy way that
they can understand and remember. They feel that you have given them an
excellent return in investment of their time and effort. They are ready
to go out and use it.