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I have a friend who is a salesman in a high-end clothing store.
I recently asked him how he does it so well. He replied “Think of it like a sixth sense. I can tell how a person is feeling right when they walk in. In five seconds or less (usually less), I can tell if a customer is happy, stressed, or sad.”
How does he do it, though?
“I watch the way they walk. I look at their eyes. I can tell if they came in to browse, if they have something in mind, or if they want to talk. And I know just how to respond so I can make my commission.”
Compare this with an experience I had recently with a chatbot created for a national florist. A different friend had a good experience with it, and encouraged me to try it out. It took me through my order and was quite efficient about it. As I was taking out my credit card, it said “Have a colorful, fantastic day!
Ordinarily this would be considered friendly and perhaps even pleasing. Of course, I had just spent the better part of the last hour looking through floral arrangements … for a funeral.
Sure, this came from a chatbot hosted on Facebook Messenger. (edit: Since this writing, the company has taken funeral arrangements off of the chatbot interface. I did not contact them, so I do not think there is any causal relationship there.) It had no idea what actions I might have taken on the company’s website.
Chatbots are extremely popular right now, though, and more are coming. Facebook released the chatbot API in April 2016; in June there were over 11,000 chatbots on that platform alone. As of September there were over 30,000.
These bots are supposed to represent artificial intelligence. They don’t. Right now they offer scripted, highly structured experiences.
Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate for the florist’s chatbot to wish me condolences, after watching my shopping habits? This should be a no-brainer for ecommerce folks. It ought to be easy for a bot to see what I’m doing and respond accordingly
Of course this still wouldn’t be actual artificial intelligence. The easiest way to make this happen would be through a script. But still. When chatbots actually do get intelligent, things are going to get awfully interesting.
What happens when a bot can examine a user’s actions, derive their most likely mindset, and be able to respond accordingly?
Perhaps more importantly, what will happen when they can empathize with us?
The term “digital body language” refers to a person’s combined digital activity. My digital body language with the florist chatbot should have prompted an offering of condolences, as opposed to the cheery thanks it did offer. It’s hugely important to understand what users do online, and not just record what they say.
So why should digital body language be so important to ecommerce vendors and chatbot developers? Because digital interactions are based in large part on nonverbal communication, just like the real-world interactions we have every day. When interacting with people in the physical world, we continually assess and process thousands of nonverbal cues. Just a few examples include eye contact, gestures, tone of voice, and facial expressions. As anyone who has gotten into an argument over text knows, it’s impossible to know what an interaction truly means unless we have access to these signals.
In the burgeoning age of AI and chatbots, it’s just as important for a website — or a chatbot — to be able to interpret these signals.
Sadly, even as important as digital body language is, it is still underutilized by ecommerce. For the most part, it remains an umbrella phrase, covering profile-based personalization and after-the-fact analysis. Chatbot vendors have attempted to humanize their products, and they’ve as yet to succeed. To date they have failed to assess, examine and fully parse the aspect of human communication that’s most powerful and meaningful: The unspoken.
This is soon to change, however. Utilizing and exploiting the power of digital body language is hardly science fiction.
So what’s the breakthrough? It might sound like it’s science fiction, but it’s not. In the same way as we infer another’s nonverbal signals when we are in the offline world, we can use innovative customer experience technology that can infer the mindset of a customer. In real time.
With the help of these advanced solutions, it is possible to keep track of real-time digital activities, such as hesitation, click-through rates, scrolling speed, browsing behavior, navigation use, and more. This allows retailers to stay ahead of the curve and stop using behavioral models based solely on past behavior. Instead they can capture, utilize and respond to actual current digital behavior. They can quickly zoom in on the psychological needs of each shopper, in order to be more effective when assisting them with the decision-making and buying process.
Machine learning makes it possible to develop models which are able to assess and categorize the mindset each customer has when they visit the site. As they assess this per shopper data, these algorithms would be able to categorize a user’s intent. To do this, they would simply look at the user’s actions. Then using this knowledge, a brand can alter their offerings.
The answer is simple. If we can look at a user’s behavior on a website, if we can quantify their mindset — and if we can then offer the user customization based on that data, if we can then personalize their experience — then we can code a chatbot that will do the same thing.
Looking at the example with the florist, their chatbot would determine that it should offer me condolences, based on the fact I was looking at funeral arrangements. Not only that, but it would also assess the actions I took on the website — what page I visited, the movements of my mouse, which pages I looked at, which I passed over, which images I lingered on. It would use this data to infer my mindset as I browse.
A savvy chatbot would be able to see that I was simply looking at all the choices on the site, and offer to assist me by narrowing down my options. It would also be able to tell if a more focused user came to the site, ready to buy. It would then engage a subroutine to help guide them through the process as fast as possible. It may also be able to tell if a user would be open to suggestions on an order: For instance, if I might be willing to go with a wreath versus a more traditional arrangement. Either way, it would then suggest some popular options.
Simply put, a well-coded chatbot would be able to do what my salesperson friend can do with his customers. It would sense my mindset and be able to react to it. It would behave in an empathic manner, even if it is not able to empathize in the human sense.
My clothing store friend was not happy to hear about the information in this article. “Next thing you know,” he said, “chatbots will be able to tell your waist size, just by looking at you.”
Let’s face it: Most of the chatbot experiences today are pretty wretched.
They’re stilted, artificial and in some cases downright affected. Natural language processing is still in its infancy, and has a long way to go before sounding actually “natural.” Or truly understanding natural speech, for that matter.
This is due in part to the difficulty of designing a user interface around a conversation, which is non-hierarchical in nature. When talking to another person, the steps don’t always flow naturally from one to the other. This kind of design is also fundamentally different than either a mobile or web interface.
Additionally, we have yet to develop a general-purpose AI which can accept a user’s open-ended input. It is incumbent on chatbot creators, therefore, to pick out engaging patterns of interaction. Building on and around these will enable developers to create whole experiences that will delight the users.
So how do we work around the limitations of a conversational UI, knowing the above?
About the UI
Up until now, User Interfaces have been crafted for a linear experience, not a random one. In other words, after the user comes to the page, a specific sequence of events typically happen, at least in terms of ecommerce.
First they search for an item or two. Those items are then added to the user’s cart. They enter payment information, check out and leave the site.
A chat based UI is completely different from either a web or mobile interface. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is that the customer can initiate the procedure in different places. Say they want to buy tickets for a movie. The customer can ask a bot “What’s playing around 8pm?” Another valid starting point can be “I want three tickets to Trolls at the Regal on Little Texas Lane and Congress.”
So we see that a big challenge for anyone wanting to design a chatbot is that the path a customer will use to reach their goal (in this case, to purchase tickets) is not known beforehand. The chatbot has to assist the user and provide the desired answers without needing a discussion to progress in a straight line.
The next big stumbling block for chatbot developers is that a true AI that works on a variety of inputs is still a long way off. AIs themselves are not especially new, but they are new to the consumer marketplace. One AI-like construct that bot creators use a lot is the Simple Linear Tree, which forces the user down a predetermined path. New AI routines might also be used, but these are not true AI. They simply match patterns against pre-programmed conditions, in an effort to determine a user’s intent.
Generally speaking, these work well enough when there are a finite set of ways a user can interact with a bot. But as developers are finding out, user input can be totally random. This leads to situations where a bot can get unexpected input that it can’t handle. So without better tools, a better AI, it’s all a matter of hunt and peck. Or worse, finding the linguistic needle in a haystack of possibilities.
The Solution: Modify, Publish, Iterate, Repeat
So how does a bot developer succeed with the limited tools they have? The best path is not already defined, given the variety of inputs. Neither the number of inputs nor their content is known. There has to be a quick, iterative path to successful completion, and it has to be low-cost as well. A developer needs to be aware of how their bots are responding to the inputs provided by the user. With this knowledge, they can then iterate on what is already there. Any blocks between the user and their goal need to be addressed.
Experience has shown that the best tools for the iterative method are bot native. This means they are able to understand the complexity and nuance of a conversational interface, and are able to translate them into clear metrics. Conversely, it also means the user is not simply dumped into meaningless dialogues or dashboards.
Marketing teams can use these tools to pinpoint groups of similar users, then connect with them through personalized messages. Creative and editorial teams can use them to address messaging that may be off-brand or that doesn’t have the desired tone. Business leaders can use them to provide a detailed picture of their efforts without the use of an engineering team and a data scientist just to “run the numbers.”
It’s important to have a conversational UI that’s easy to understand. It’s also important to iterate quickly on this. Being able to do these things will assist business leaders to grow differentiated bot-native arms that can leverage the great power found behind the conversational interface./hea
Wow, y’all can be really wordy sometimes! (And I love it!)
Still, being wordy can be a bit of a turn-off. We’re all in a crunch for time. It’s like we all have have the attention span of a … ooh, look, a squirrel! … and we’re just itching for an excuse to move on to the Next Big Thing.
With so many businesses, people, friends, customers, and clients clamoring for our attention, we have to be “spot-on” with our messaging.
Mind Your Voice
Good, strong writing always uses the active voice.
Well, ok, almost always.
The active voice is positive. Strong. Concrete. More direct. The subject of the sentence is something or does something. The active voice uses a tone that is strong and clear.
When using the passive voice, the subject of the sentence is acted upon by the verb of the sentence. “Subtle” and “weak” are qualities often attributed to the passive voice.
Pop quiz: Were you paying attention? What “voice” did I use to write the two paragraphs immediately above?
Get a ⭐ Gold Star ⭐ if you said something on the order of “The active voice sentence used the active voice, and the passive one used passive voice.”
But That’s Not All
That’s not the only difference between the two voices.
When using the active voice, it’s easier to keep your word count down. This is because in the passive voice, the sentence’s subject is acted upon by the verb. This necessitates some form of the verb “to be” plus the past participle form of the verb, plus a preposition. Usually. (English is weird, I know.)
Let me share a small example. Active Voice: “David threw the ball” Passive Voice: “The ball was thrown by David”
Both sentences say the same thing. In both sentences, David hauls off and chunks a ball to someone off-screen. But one of those sentences takes 4 words, whereas the other takes 6. When considering just once sentence, 50% more words is no big deal. But in the context of a whole essay, it makes a bigger difference ❤
All that being said, sometimes the passive voice comes in handy. If you’re a politician, say — they seem to avoid the active voice at all costs! Later on I’ll talk about a few other situations where the passive voice would be appropriate.
Or let’s say you’re writing an essay about a llama. (Yes, I know that in the visionary group we tend to write about things other than llamas. But that’s all I got for right now!). In that case, the sentence “The llama was lloved on by the llemur” is appropriate.
Why? Because the subject of that piece is the llama. Thus the active voice sentence “The lemur loved on the llama” might not fit as well. It brings too much attention on our lemur friend.
Those last three words — “by the lemur” — is a short prepositional phrase that identifies who is performing the action. But even though the lemur is the one doing the loving, he’s not the grammatical subject any more. Using the passive voice enables you to drop poor Zoboomafoo (the lemur) from the sentence entirely, as “The llama was lloved on” also makes sense.
Generally speaking, the active voice is more appropriate, more useful. But the passive voice has its uses too. Do write most of your sentences with the active voice, though, unless that sentence won’t make sense any other way.
Other Occasions
The passive voice is not “incorrect.” Nor is it “bad” or “wrong.” At the same time, though, it tends to sound dishonest. Stiff. Evasive. Even less trustworthy than it possibly could sound. That’s why politicians use it a lot.
But who wants to do business with someone who sounds dishonest? Who wants to work with people that avoid taking responsibility in their words? After all, if they avoid responsibility in their words, it’s likely they avoid it in their actions and business practices as well.
Face that responsibility head on. Own it. Take charge of it.
Passive Voice: “An error was made on your account.” Active Voice: “We made an error on your account.”
Put another way: When using the passive voice, it’s easy to muddy the waters. It’s easier to obfuscate the subject, as it’s typically not specified.
When using the active voice, you have to identify the subject. In the passive example just above, an error was made. Great. Who made the error? Who is responsible? We just don’t know.
In the active voice example, it’s clear that “WE” made the error. And sure, that pronoun can refer to just about anything, but that’s the subject of a different essay.
In Conclusion
This is English we’re talking about here. So there are no “hard and fast” rules.
At the same time, though, you’re better off using the active voice when you’re writing about a definite subject that’s performing a definite action.
In other situations, the passive voice works well. Like in scientific contexts Or in reports of incidents in which the agents are unknown. Or if you want to emphasize the action itself, and the agent of that action is distracting or irrelevant.
Now get out there and write! I love reading your essays 🙂
No, “showing and telling” isn’t a reference to what you might have done in elementary school. Then again, there are some parallels. Read on to find out what they are.
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass.”
— Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright, 1860-1904
The quotation above is a maxim of writing you’ll hear again and again: “Show, don’t tell.” It doesn’t matter if you’re writing an essay for the Visionaries, working on a novel, or even a narrative podcast. “Show, don’t tell” is still one of the primary guidelines for writers both new and experienced.
But what do I mean by this?
I’m glad you asked.
Let’s Break It Down
Put succinctly, when a writer ‘tells’ us something, they’re summarizing or using exposition to tell the reader what’s happening. Telling is sometimes required, yet it often feels flat and lifeless.
On the other hand, when a writer shows the reader something, they describe what’s going on. They use action to help the reader paint a picture in their minds. Use your words well, and you’ll enable your reader to craft a movie in their heads.
Confused yet? Here are some examples.
Telling: Fred was sad when his girlfriend left.
Showing: Fred tried to hide his tears as he watched his girlfriend board the train back to college.
Here’s a longer example, especially crafted for the season we’re in right now:
Telling: The house felt spooky.
Showing: Lit by a single candle, the room flickered with uncertain shadows. The house smelled like rotting wood and decaying meat, with a bright metallic overtone which made Fred think of blood. The walls were arrayed with strange taxidermy: a buck with crazy eyes, a grizzly rampant in frozen fury, and an owl in mid-flight, its talons molded into a cruel shape.
Granted, these examples lean more towards the fictional. But in the essays we write for this program, as we use examples from our own lives, and as we use concrete examples (both subjects I’ve written about before), we want to create similar experiences in the minds of our readers.
Indeed, creating experiences in the minds of our readers is one of the best ways we have of teaching. And in so doing, we don’t have to make our readers live through the same experiences that we did!
How to Show and Not Tell
In the examples above, showing is more descriptive. It makes the writing vivid and clear. Showing enables the reader to experience what’s going on for the writer, by letting them interpret the descriptions the writer provides.
Consider the “telling” examples. They’re boring, aren’t they? Flat, too. Telling limits the reader’s experience. It gives them but a single way of understanding the story.
So how do you show us things, if you’ve been telling about them for so long? There are at least four ways to do so.
Use dialogue. Even if you don’t remember a scene from your own life that well, use dialogue to recreate a sense of it. ” ‘Don’t you dare walk out that door!’ Fred yelled’ is more effective than “Fred was angry.”
Use clear adjectives and specific nouns. Use them to paint a descriptive picture for your reader. Don’t just tell us that Grandma baked a pie. Describe the golden crimped crust of Grandma’s famous apple-cinnamon pie cooling on the windowsill.
Include sensory details. Yes, it’s entirely possible to give us too many details — just ask Stephen King. Still, it’s usually better to err on the side of ‘too much’ than ‘not enough.’ Show us the sounds, the tastes, the smells and sights of your subject.
Use strong verbs. Don’t say “I walked to the store.” Show us how you skipped, sauntered, strolled, ambled, or even galloped to the store.
An Exception to Every Rule
I get you. Here in the Visionary Program we’re writing about ourselves and our internal narratives. In times like these, it’s usually better to tell and NOT show.
Internal narratives are crucial, since they help us comprehend what made the writer react the way they did in a particular situation. One of the best parts about reading is getting to walk around in another character’s head for a while. To only show everything is to deprive the reader of that pleasure.
So yes, I’ll admit it: Sometimes telling is a better technique than showing, at least when it comes to writing internal narrative.
Why is that? Because showing relies on actions.
“I remember a time when I was angry,” you might say. “I shoved my chair back, leaped up, and pounded my fist on the table.”
This shows us that you were angry, but we don’t know about the nuance of the feeling. Maybe you were hiding a core of fear. Maybe you were internally happy about how things were going, and only pretending to be outraged.
We won’t know unless you tell us.
Most of the time it’s preferable to show us how angry you were by describing what happened to the table when you hit it, or how the room shook when you slammed the door on the way out.
But sometimes, you just gotta tell it like it is.
Conclusion
So there’s no hard-and-fast rule to this stuff. It’s all subjective, and it’s all relative to what you’re trying to do.
But one thing is universal: We all love stories. When you’re writing these essays, whether you realize it or not, and however small it is, you’re telling us a story. And when telling stories, it’s usually better to show us what’s going on, rather than just telling us.
Visionary Writing Techniques Essay #13 by John Onorato
We humans love a good story.
Consider the success of a few movies: Star Wars. The Hunger Games. The Color Purple. Titanic. Gone With the Wind. Jaws.
Now consider a few books: Don Quixote. Alice in Wonderland. The Wizard of Oz. Harry Potter.
What do these books and movies all have in common? I’ll give you that the commonality might not be easy to pick out, but if you think about it …
If you think about it, it’s really pretty simple.
They have great stories.
The Other Commonality
Granted, these stories have gone through endless amounts of refinement and re-jiggering. Every stray word, every misplaced image, every character that doesn’t serve the plot ends up on the cutting room floor.
I wouldn’t presume to think we have that kind of time or person-power as we craft our essays.
Now, I’ll be writing another essay on using Story at a later date. But in this moment, I’d like to draw your attention to another thing these stories have in common:
They engage our emotions.
Yes, we humans love a good story. And we engage with those stories through our emotions. Our essays are stories, and a story without emotions seems flat. And even lifeless.
“But John,” I can already hear you asking. “How do we create emotions in our readers?”
Easy-peasy! You evoke those emotions with emotion words.
It’s All In the Words
It’s easy to classify emotions as “good” or “bad,” positive or negative. Yet those words are not specific enough to elicit an emotional response from our readers.
An aside: There are many different “emotion wheels” and methods for refining basic emotions. They’re all valid and all useful. This is just one of them.
According to the Junto model, there are six “basic emotions.” There’s love, joy, and surprise. And there are the less positive ones, or fear, anger, and sadness.
Let’s look at Love. The basic emotion of “Love” can be further refined into “enchanted,” “romantic,” “affectionate,” and “sentimental.” The emotion named “euphoric” inhabits a space between Love and its neighbor “Joy.”
These emotions can be further refined into different words with slightly different connotations. (Remember, a “connotation” is the undercurrent of a word, the feeling that it invokes in addition to its literal meaning. This literal meaning is also known as the denotation.) The word “enchanted” refines into “enthralled” and “rapturous.” And from the word “sentimental,” we get “tender” and “nostalgic.”
Here’s the Trick
So that’s the groundwork. Here’s the trick to generating greater engagement with your words, no matter if you’re writing a Visionary essay, copy for your website, or a letter to your Dad:
Use the words.
That’s it. Just use them.
The verb forms are best to use. If you say “Fred came into the room,” that’s flat and lifeless. The reader is confused because there are a zillion different ways someone can come into a room. There’s no telling what the writer had in mind, so the reader will create an image in their head that makes sense to them. But it might not be in line with the original intent.
The writer then has to do more work to provide relevant information as to how.
On the other hand, if you say “Fred exploded into the room,” you already know that Fred is enthusiastic and energetic (at least in this instance). It’s a safe bet that Fred is a positive, happy person.
Now let’s look at Claude, who is terminally depressed. We can say “Claude is depressed,” but again, that’s lifeless. Flat. (As per the nature of depression itself!) But if we say “Claude skulked into the room,” we can tell there’s something up. He might have some nefarious motive. He might be sad. We don’t know yet, but we WANT to know.
In other words, we’re engaged.
We can also use adverbs to display emotion. Adverbs are words that typically end in -ly, and they modify verbs. As in: “June ran happily.” Or “The movie ended abruptly.” Or “Her mod outfit displayed Brigit’s delightfully quirky personality.”
Conclusion
To recap, we humans love stories. And we love it when our emotions are engaged. One way to engage our readers’ emotions is through the use of emotion words. Words like love, joy, and fear are good, but too general to make much of an impact. Instead, use more specific words. Using emotional adverbs is a good idea, yet an even better one is to use precise verbs.
So I challenge you: In your next Visionary essay, use emotional words. And see what kind of engagement you get 🙂
At this point, I’ve read a lot of your essays. Maybe not every single one, but close 😉
Pretty frequently, I’ve observed that the beginnings of essays tend to feel clunky and unrefined. But about halfway through, everything starts coming together.
It often feels like the writer took a little while to “get up to speed.”
Ultimately, though, they “hit their stride”, and they lead us across the finish line with them.
Sure, sometimes that introductory material is valuable. Sometimes it provides context and/or data needed to fully understand the material in the second half of the essay. Sometimes it serves as a prologue, or a ramp-up to the final paragraph or two.
And other times the last few paragraphs of an essay function very very well — as the first few paragraphs of a different essay.
Dump Your Brain Out
So I invite you to freewrite. Do a brain dump. Get all your thoughts out on paper (or on a screen, as the case may be). When you’re done, walk away. Don’t think about your essay for at least a few hours. Give your brain a chance to rest.
After a while, come back to your piece. Re-read it. And no matter what it’s like, love what you’ve written. It’s perfect just like it is. You know how I know? Because that’s what happened.
It can still be better, though. It can still be improved. That first draft? That’s your block of marble right there. Then act like you’re Michelangelo carving David out of that massive block. Cut away anything that doesn’t serve your stated purpose or intention for the piece.
You might well find that the first few paragraphs don’t serve you any more. You might well find the last couple of paragraphs work much better.
So cut away the first paragraphs. Get rid of them. Start your (new) essay with the last couple of paragraphs you wrote for the (old) essay.
Why? Because they work better. And because you wrote them when you were on fire for the assignment.
In the first few paragraphs, you’re just getting that fire started. You’re fumbling around with kindling and matches, setting up the logs for optimum burning, making sure there’s airflow, and so on.
It’s in the latter stages of an essay that we’re actually on fire for what we’re writing. It’s only in the latter stages when everything starts coming together. That’s when the fire starts burning merrily. We no longer have to blow on it to make sure it catches. It’s caught, it’s burning, and now we’re all looking around for the S’Mores.
That’s when it all starts working together right.
In other words, once you have everything out on paper, take what’s last, and make it first.
Sure, this might change the reasoning and tone of your essay. It might make a completely different essay. But here in the Visionary Program, we’re used to change. After all, change is the only constant.
Bringing It Home
This is a technique I use myself. As I start my day as a freelance writer, I will frequently “warm up” by working on writing tasks that are relatively unimportant. I might work on emails or other correspondence, or I might write a journal entry. Just to get the creative juices flowing. Just to get in Flow.
I start on the important stuff only after I’ve lit my fire.
I do this because I’m a professional. So I know that in any given day, the first few words out my my fingers are going to not be worth much of anything. I don’t work on client projects first thing. Because client projects are important to me; they’re how I make my living, so I have to make a good showing.
Granted, you might not make your living with your words. But you’re in the Visionary program for a reason. Why not make the best showing you can?
And this is one way you can make that good showing: By putting your last words first.
We all want our readers to feel excited when they start reading our essays. And if not actually excited, we at least want them feeling interested.
But how do we ‘make’ our reader be interested in what we’ve poured our efforts into?
We do that by grabbing their attention with a good “hook.”
A hook is a bit of writing at the top of your essay. Also known as the introduction, a hook is meant to engage a reader’s curiosity.
As writers, we want our readers to read our pieces all the way through. We want them to wonder what happens next. And the best way to do that is with a good hook.
There are several different types of hooks. They are:
Quotation Hook
Description Hook
Story Hook (a favorite of mine)
Metaphor or Simile Hook
Facts and Statistics Hook
Declaration Hook
Interesting Question Hook (another favorite of mine)
Quotation Hooks
Some of you are using quotations already. This is awesome!
With this kind of hook, you draw your reader in with a quotation. It can be from someone famous or well-known, but it doesn’t have to be. Just be sure to attribute the quote — tell us who said it, even if it was you.
You can quote anyone, so long as it connects with the rest of your piece.
Do this: “It will be done with you when you are done with it.” — Jonathan England
Not this: “When you’re done with something, it’ll be done with you.” — Some guy I know
Descriptive Hooks
Use a vivid description to pull readers into your writing. Good descriptive hooks make readers want to know what comes next.
Writing an essay about Ego? Hook us with your description of how you’ve fought your own Ego. Writing about Integrity? Hook us with a description of how Integrity shows up in your own life.
Story Hook
Stories draw readers in. Humans are natural storytellers — all of us are! — and we love reading and hearing the stories of others. How did they surmount that Ego challenge? How did they offer Acknowledgement to other people? How did this writer display Integrity?
Readers love memorable, well-written stories. Just be sure the story you tell is related to the topic at hand.
This type of hook is typically a bit longer than other kinds of hooks, but can be even more effective when used well.
Metaphor and Simile Hooks
I love metaphors and similes. They get readers to think about the topic in a different way, not the “usual way.” Your readers will wonder what you mean, and how you can compare this thing to this topic, even when it seems unconnected.
A quick review: Metaphors compare two seemingly unrelated things to one another. One example is “Jonathan is a shining light.”
Of course, he’s not really a light. He doesn’t have a filament growing out of his head. But he acts like one.
Two things about similes:
they use the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ to connect the parts
they are typically not as strong as metaphors
The above statement can be rephrased as a simile: “Jonathan is like a shining light.”
Facts and Statistics Hooks
Here in the Visionary Program, most of what we deal with is highly subjective. Thus, Facts and Statistics type of hooks might well be wildly inappropriate. Still, they do offer objective information about a topic, and readers love that. So you can still conceivably use this type of hook.
All you have to do is provide facts that are interesting, reliable, and accurate. Make sure your source is credible, too — not just something you read one time here on Facebook or saw on YouTube.
Strong Statement Hook
Also known as the Declaration Hook, this kind asserts a claim about your topic. It shows the overall importance of what you’re about to say.
It doesn’t matter how your reader might feel about your statement. What they’re interested in is reading how you support that statement.
One example of this kind of hook is “Ego has been the bane of my existence for 48 years of my life.”
Ego might have played a similar role in your life, or you might have it well under control. Either way, the bold statement piques your curiosity about what the writer might say next.
The Question Hook
People are curious. Inquisitive. We love reading questions, and finding out the answers even more. If you ask a question, that spurs the reader on. They’ll try to find the answer to the question you ask later on in your text.
Just be sure to ask questions which relate to your topic. Asking unrelated questions only serves to confuse the reader. Was this essay about Acknowledgement? Then why did the writer ask a question about Ego?
Conclusion
These are not the only types of hooks. These are not the only ways to draw readers in. Yet they are some of the more effective ways. I know that if I was reading essays, I would like being “hooked” by one of these methods.
Let’s get out there and hook our readers! Let’s get folks to read our words like the professionals we are!
There’s a lot of writing advice out there. Some of it works, and some doesn’t. Like with the other articles in this series, though, I’m going to address some fundamentals — address these issues, and watch your effectiveness with the written word soar.
As you know, I’m a professional freelance writer. What follows are several short tips that improved my writing immensely — and they can work for you as well.
Let’s dive in.
1 — “Shorten Your Opening Sentence.”
Is your opening sentence compelling? Check. Is your opening sentence short? Check. Is your opening sentence conversational? Check.
Does your opening sentence go on and on and on, seemingly without end, finally collapsing, exhausted, right next to the dustbin of failed sentences that might be run-ons but maybe not?
I reckon you can do the math on that one.
Example: “This is a post that’s going to help you become a better coach.”
This becomes: “I can help you.”
See? Shorter. Punchier. Better all-around.
2 — “I think”
Almost universally, this phrase adds exactly Zero Value to your writing. Delete to make your point stronger.
Saying “I think” is the literary equivalent of adding a question mark to your sentences.
In our daily speech, we say “I think” when we don’t know a thing for sure. But if you’re writing about it, it’s better to give the impression you know what you’re talking about. Hence, drop the “I think.”
Example: “I think I slept poorly last night.”
This becomes: “I slept poorly last night.”
The latter form sounds more assertive, doesn’t it?
3 — “Running, Jumping, Climbing”
You can also drop words that end in “-ing.” Also known as gerunds (or verbs that function like nouns), the suffix makes the word softer. At the same time, it adds little value. Although proper use of gerunds can lend writing a lyrical quality, generally speaking your writing will read better if you avoid them.
Example: “The forms we’re seeking are often disappointing and underwhelming.”
This becomes: “The forms we seek often disappoint and underwhelm.”
Notice how the punchier sentence has fewer words? It often works out this way 🙂
4 — “That”
This is a word which makes sense, but around 90% of the time you can omit it. Doing so will instantly make your sentences stronger.
Example: “You thought that I was sleeping, but I wasn’t.”
This becomes: “You thought I was sleeping. I wasn’t.”
Sure, you can use this word to “pad” your word count, but do you really want to?
5 — “Short paragraphs. Shorter sentences.”
Most sentences you can cut right in half, immediately making them punchier and stronger. Having a two or three word sentence is not a crime.
At the same time, vary the length of your sentences in order to keep interest.
A good rule of thumb is to keep each paragraph to three sentences (or less.)
Remember: Readers LOVE white space.
So. Five tips, five opportunities to make your writing better. Let’s get out there and make the most of our words!
When we use strong language skills — whether in writing or in speaking — we have a much better chance of getting what we want and need from people around us. Not only that, we have a much better chance of understanding … and being understood.
One way of examining the language you use is by its “concrete-ness.” Another way of putting this is Generality vs Specificity.
One of these kinds of language is likely to be understood. And the other is more likely to be MIS-understood.
In other words, the more specific and concrete your words are, the more vivid and clear the understanding of your reader.
Concrete and Abstract Terms
Abstract terms refer to concepts and ideas. They have no physical referents.
Please re-read that definition. It is vague and boring — and this is by design. Even if you do find it interesting, it will be hard to pin down why. We need examples — concrete examples to make this abstract language clearer.
“Love” is an abstract term. So is “freedom.” The words “something” and “someone” are similarly abstract. Yes, we generally agree on what they all mean, but the specific meaning for individual people is difficult to pin down, because it changes over time. A teenager will not have the same definition of love as a senior citizen who has been divorced twice already.
We need abstract terms, however, because we frequently talk about these concepts and ideas. Thus we need terms to represent them.
At the same time, long chains of abstract terms can be tiring. Boring. They’re useful in introductions and paragraph topic sentences. But they’re not going to make points clear or interesting by themselves.
Abstract terms name things unavailable to the senses, while concrete terms refer to events and objects which can be sensed. Examples of concrete terms include:
Fork
Countertop
Eyebrow Ring
Superhero Mask
Cold
Running
The meanings of these words are pretty stable, as they refer to objects we can hold and events we can see. I can pick up a fork and hand it to you, but I can’t show you a Freedom. I can’t point to a small Love crawling on the wall. I can measure air by weight or volume, but I can’t collect a liter of love or a pound of moral outrage.
Nailing it Down
Take the assertion “We all want success.” You may understand, and you may even agree with me. But success means different things to different people, so you can’t be sure about my precise meaning from the abstract term. On the other hand, if I say “I want a yacht and a mansion with two staircases,” you know exactly what I mean. At that point, you know if you agree with me (or not).
Can you see how concrete terms are both clearer and more interesting than abstract ones?
As effective writers and communicators, we need to use fewer abstract terms, and more concrete ones.
Specific Terms (and General Ones)
“Abstract” and “concrete” are opposites, more or less. But there is a significant range between “general” and “specific” terms.
Take the word “vehicle.” This is a very general term. Many different possibilities are contained within. Can you form an image of “vehicle”? You might see an ocean liner or an 18-wheeler. You might see your personal car, or the bike you rode this morning.
Even if you can create a distinct image in your mind, how likely is it your reader will come up with the same one?
“Vehicle” is a concrete term, as it points to an object we can see and feel. But its meaning is difficult to pin down, because the group is so large.
We can shrink the group with a more specific word: Boat. It’s still pretty general, as it still refers to a class of objects, rather than an individual object. Still, it’s easier to picture a boat than it is to visualize a vehicle.
The next step is “rowboat.” Our picture is getting clearer now. The images we form are likely to be fairly similar, and we’re likely to have similar associations (safety, smallness, has oars, used for fishing, etc). So this more specific term communicates more clearly than the less specific terms “vehicle” or “boat.”
We can get even more specific. Your boat can be a sailboat. It can be a blue and white sailboat. It can be a blue and white sailboat named “St. Marne.” It can be a blue and white sailboat named “St. Marne” that berths four people and has a Barbie doll lashed to the prow, like the figureheads of old.
Do you see how, by the time we get to the last description, we’re talking about an individual vehicle? A single, specific boat? Note how easy it is to see THAT boat in your mind.
In Other Words
In short, when you rely on general terms, your writing will be vague, lifeless, and dull. As your words become more specific, however, your meaning becomes clearer. Your writing becomes more interesting. When your writing is interesting, it’s more likely to be read.
And isn’t that what we all want?
You might wonder if you now have to stuff your writing full of detailed descriptors. Short answer: No. You don’t need modifiers to identify individuals: Mention Eckhart Tolle or Oprah Winfrey, and everyone knows who you mean. So too with Steve’s Suburban or the scar on Harry’s forehead.
Also, not everything needs to get the individual treatment all the time. We might need to know that Fred crossed the ocean in a boat, but we don’t always have to know what that boat looked like.
It’s all a matter of discernment at this point.
To Sum Up
I invite you to think back on what you’ve just read. What do you remember about it? Odds are you’ll recall the yacht and mansion, and the sailboat named “St. Marne.” Why is that? Because their meanings are clear. They create clear images in the mind.
Human brains are like that: It’s easier for them to recall images when they are linked with a distinct sense impression. This is why it’s easier to recall how you learned to swim than it is to remember when you learned about World War One.
Through our senses, we experience the world vividly. As infants, and before we learn words, we sense soft and rough, hot and cold, loud and silent. Our earliest words also also concrete: ball, nose, cup, Mommy. And we teach using concrete terms: “Where’s baby’s hand?” “Where’s the doggy?”
So why do we turn to generalizations and abstractions while we write?
Part of this answer has to do with our desire to pass on ideas and conclusions. We want to efficiently share the knowledge we’ve gained through hard work and pain. We don’t want to see others suffering, learning the same lessons we’ve learned the hard way. So we make generalizations: Instead of detailing all the trauma we’ve endured, we tell our children “You can’t always trust everyone.”
You went through a lot of pain to learn that lesson. You endured a lot of experiences both specific and concrete, yet you pass that lesson on with a few general words. Sure, we think we’re doing it right by passing on the lesson without all the hurt we endured to learn that lesson.
But I would posit that pain is a great teacher. The hurts teach the lesson, not the general terms.
Thus, “You can’t always trust everyone” might be a great phrase to use. It may be all you want your child (or reader) to grasp. But if you want to make that lesson clear, if you want to see your reader actually learn from your words, you have to relay the concrete, specific experiences.
I know a way to make your writing even better than it already is.
You just have to do one simple thing. ✅
And I’m about to tell you what that thing is.
After I tell you how to make your writing better than it already is, I’ll share a very personal reason I use this exact tip myself.
Now, I’m sure you’ve read thousands of examples where they “tease” some juicy tidbit (like I just did), then they make you endlessly doomscroll before they let you know what that tidbit is …
… and then what they have to say is so basic, it feels like a complete letdown when they do share the tidbit.
I’m not going to do that, though.
I’m going to share my juicy tidbit here in the first page.
You ready to make your writing even better than it already is?
Read on, then. It’s at the head of the next section, I promise.
About That Secret
If you want to 10X your writing, all you have to do is step away from your computer.
That’s right. All you have to do is step away from the computer.
I did this a year or two ago, and it’s one of the best things I could have ever done for my writing.
All you have to do is step away from your computer, and get some paper.
Get a pen, too. Or a notebook and a pencil. It doesn’t matter. What we’re going to do here is write by hand.
“But John,” I can already hear you wail, “we never learned cursive!”
Really? You didn’t? That’s a serious shortcoming of most modern schooling, in my opinion.
But Why?
Why should you ditch the keyboard for your pre-first drafts?
First off, because writing by hand engages a completely different part of the brain. Writing via typing is great, and at least for me, it’s much faster than writing by hand.
Note that “writing via typing” means “writing on a keyboard.” Given that typewriters are no longer really a thing (unless you’re part of Austin’s own “Typewriter Rodeo“), writing via typing usually means you’re on a computer.
Besides that “different part of the brain” thing, notebooks offer no distractions. Facebook doesn’t bother you when you’re working with a piece of paper.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that as a freelance writer, speed is often of the essence for me. So many of my articles — like this one — are written direct-to-keyboard. But I have developed a pretty good method for keeping my focus where it needs to be.
Still, it’s not a perfect system. Besides, the majority of my Really Good Articles saw their origins in one of my notebooks.
Another benefit is that writing with your own hands helps you retain and use information — even if you never pick it up again later.
See, when you’re writing on a keyboard, you’re basically just transcribing your own thoughts. You’re not really working with them. When we write by hand, we do it much more slowly. Therefore, we end up being more selective, choosing only the most important points to write down and use.
This causes you to craft your content more efficiently.
Writing by hand also causes you to recall information easier. I’m willing to bet you don’t remember many of your friends’ phone numbers, even if you call them frequently. That’s because you’ve typed them into your phone, and the phone remembers them for you. I’d also be willing to bet you can remember phone numbers from your distant past — when you wrote them down by hand.
When writing by hand, you are having, by default, a richer experience than you would at a keyboard. When we are performing a sequenced physical activity that uses muscles and nerves in a complex pattern, our brains love it. Doing that, our brains are awash in rich sensory and motor feedback. And the more feedback we get from an activity, the easier it is for our brains to form and later retain those memories.
Thus, the mere finger-tapping of keyboards offer our brains a much more sparse experience than the complex patterns involved in handwriting. In other words, keyboards are much less stimulating than moving our hands in the intricate patterns required when writing by hand.
In Conclusion
I’ll close with another reason to write by hand. This is my reason, and it waxes far more personal.
My father writes me letters. (He’s single-handedly saving the Post Office, don’t ya know.) Many of those letters he used to write by hand. So there’s a certain sense of nostalgia for me in there.
Perhaps more importantly, though, as I started to write by hand more often, I observed many similarities between my father’s handwriting and my own. It was all in the loop here and the swash there; as I watched my letters forming on the page, I could see echoes of my father’s writing.
Thankfully, my father is still with us. But the days of him writing much by hand are long behind him. I will always treasure the letters he wrote to me in his own hand.
Maybe that’s a gift you can give your own kin. I invite you to do exactly that. Physical letters, especially those written by hand, will forever occupy a special place in my heart — one that can never be taken over by another activity.
So — to make your writing 10X better, all you have to do is start away from your computer.
About Me
I'm a freelance writer, editor, ghostwriter, and all around mensch. My specialty is helping conscious business leaders, owners and coaches who are so busy changing the world, they don't have time for writing.
I've written B2B, B2C, press releases, blog posts, articles, essays, long form, short form, you name it. I can write eloquently on any topic you might need.
