Beginnings

It’s starting the article, or book, or essay, or whatever you’re trying to write, it’s the beginning that’s hardest. You’ve done your research, you’ve found your angle (see Part One), and you’ve set down a course of action. But, how do you start?

As any good journalist knows, it’s all about the hook. Your beginning (and your title) should have a hook that makes the reader say, “Ooo, this looks interesting”. You want the reader to be pulled in and compelled to read what you have to say. Like catching a fish – thus, the “hook”. Once the fish is caught, you want to drag him to the shore, or the end. You don’t want him wriggling loose, so you have to put some barb into the hook.

Crafting the hook is usually the hardest part. Some people are really good at it, but very few will tell you that it was easy.  There’s a few freakish anomolies out there that find this easy, but most of us don’t.

The important question to ask yourself is: What can I say that will make a potential reader want to know more? You can go about this is a number of ways – relating, exploiting, sensationalizing, using fear or avarice, or curosity. You can say something that nearly every person on the planet will relate to, e.g., Have you ever found yourself wondering why your socks disappear? Where do they go? How can I get them to come home?

Every subject, no matter how dull it may seem, has a point that we can all relate to. As I’ve written articles on plumbing, insurance, greeting cards, security, vitamins, food, education, and more subjects than I can actually remember, I always look for the human element. We are, after all, all people with needs, desires, fears, curosity, and faults.

When you construct your hook, you want to set up your piece so that it relates to the human factor. When was asked to write 1500 words about greeting cards, I was initially stumped. I could have written about the business, or its history, or something equally boring and uninteresting. Instead I took a look at the human side of it. What exactly do greeting cards do for people? They make them feel good. Why? Because they show a certain amount of caring, and essentially, kindness.

Using kindness as my guide, I pumped out those words around how greeting cards expressed a freely given act of kindness – and there was my hook. A simple act of kindness.

Creating a good hook that appeals to our human elements is the hook that will sell and that others will relate to.  It’s not always easy, and sometimes it’s as obvious as a stain on a white shirt. Use your angle, boil it done to its most basic element, and you’ll have a good hook.