Be unexpected
Use surprise and curiosity to engage your audience
How do we get people’s attention? And how do we keep it? These are key questions when it comes to communication, from books to sermons to prayer letters.
Get their attention
One way to do this is with surprise. But be careful not to slide over into gimmicky writing or “click bait”. To use the unexpected well, make sure it feeds into your core message. Consider what’s counterintuitive or odd in what you want to communicate. How can you use that to grab your audience’s attention? The first article I wrote for Japan Harvest was called “Crying in the snow”. That title immediately grabbed people’s attention: why was she crying? And why in the snow?
For example, if you’re writing about your children’s ministry, perhaps you could start with a story where a child (or parent) did something unexpected or humorous. This writing tool will help you grab people’s attention in a world where so many others are trying to do the same thing.
Hold their attention
And then you need to keep your readers’ interest. To do this you need to get your audience curious—create a little suspense by showing them a gap between what they know and what they want to know. If you can get them asking “What will happen?” or even “Was I right?”, you’ll have their full attention.
One way to do this is to bookend your writing with a story—tell the first part of the story in your introduction and the conclusion of the story at the end. However, this can go wrong. I was once tormented by a speaker who told us about a family car accident, without telling us how the story finished until the end of the talk. In the middle while she talked about the Bible for many minutes, my mind kept being tugged away from her helpful points back to the car accident story. You don’t want to distract people like this. Be careful not to create so much suspense that your audience turns to the last paragraph and misses the content in the middle.
Unexpectedness is one of six principles in a book called Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. It’s a very helpful book for learning ways to communicate ideas that stick in people’s heads.
Surprise and curiosity. Both of these are tools we can use to grab and keep people’s attention.