Wouldn’t you like to know how to hook anyone’s attention without having deep writing knowledge? Here are top-tier tips from Virginia Woolf. The previous two sentences were hooks designed to grab your attention. They use multiple techniques that I will hopefully teach you. These methods range from using engaging words, showing why you should be trusted, surprising the reader to pique their interest, clearly representing what they will be learning about, and many more. By applying these practices to your writing, people will most likely not be able to stop reading after the first few sentences.
Credibility
A very important factor in hooking people is credibility. Credibility is making the reader think that it is worth their time and effort to listen to you. You may provide a diploma, showing you’re sufficiently educated on the topic; an achievement, a representation that what you say works; the time you have spent on the activity, which makes the reader believe that you have experience. These work great, but what if you do not have any qualifications? Instead of using your name, you can use a high-performing individual’s name to add credibility. For example, I used Virginia Woolf’s name because she is a very well-known and successful writer, which makes these tips more trustworthy.
Value
You need to let the viewers understand what they will gain by reading what you write. This part doesn’t have to be concise; rather, it should be brief and crystal clear to the reader what they will be reading about. In addition to that, you should also state a counter-objection. This basically means that you should remove the “price tag” of whatever you are writing about. In the first sentence, I stated that you would be able to “hook anyone’s attention.” You would naturally think that this would require a profound understanding of writing and literature. To refute those kinds of thoughts, I add “without having deep writing knowledge.” Now, the reader is interested because such information will provide him with an edge over other people.
Emotions
Use exaggerated feelings when writing to intrigue people. You may use fear to strike them deeply: “What if I’m falling behind?” or “What if I’m missing out on crucial, groundbreaking information?” It is a psychological fact that people tend to react in a much greater manner when they believe they are losing something, in contrast to gaining something. You may also choose to surprise people. Making people go “wow” with interesting and unique facts will certainly keep them entertained and influence them to keep on reading. Another great way is to keep people curious. You could give vague comments about the results, but at the same time keep important details out to peak dopamine desire. Finally, sharing victories may also make other people feel compelled to participate in the celebration, increasing their attention span. Some types of victories are milestones, winning top prizes, or something simple like birthdays.
All of the topics presented are currently in use by many authors and are easy to spot once you know their intention, so by definition they work. Therefore, by implementing one or several of the methods described above, your performance will surely increase exponentially.
