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.