A serious question:
When you were taught to write, did your teacher or professor ever instruct you on how to:
- Engage your reader?
- Entertain your reader?
- Hold your reader’s attention?
- Keep them in suspense?
- Surprise them?
- Challenge their beliefs?
- Present an idea in an oblique way?
- Amuse them?
- Make them laugh?
- Maybe even make them cry?
Were you ever taught how to:
- Connect to your reader?
- Make yourself known?
- Express vulnerability?
- Tell a story?
- Make your words unforgettable?
If so, congratulations.
But if you’re like most people, your teacher or professor probably taught you how to write in complete sentences with clarity and maybe voice. They taught you how to structure a paragraph and an essay, and they probably taught you how to support your ideas and arguments through rhetoric, data, and evidence.
The problem?
None of that teaches you to write things others want to read.
In cooking terms, it teaches you how to make the dough and maybe bake the cake, but it never teaches you how to decorate that cake.
Successful writers — novelists, nonfiction writers, storytellers, comedians, columnists, playwrights, essayists, memoirists — somehow learn along the way how to engage an audience and entertain them.
Most of us understand a truth that I speak to students and clients almost every day:
No one wants to hear anything you have to say unless you give them a reason to listen.
The same applies to the written word:
No one cares about anything you write unless you give a reason to read.
Bestselling authors, award-winning speakers, and champion storytellers somehow figure out how to do the job because almost no one teaches them how to engage and maintain an audience on the page or stage. Somewhere along the way, they learn through experimentation, example, or sheer will.
Probably a combination of the three.
But you shouldn’t have to “figure it out.”
There’s no point in teaching someone to write well if you don’t also teach them how to make that writing interesting, entertaining, amusing, surprising, suspenseful, and compelling.
Teaching writing absent this makes no sense.
In cooking terms again, it’s like teaching someone how to operate a bakery but never teaching them how to attract customers.
So if you’ve dreamed of writing or speaking in a way that makes others want to read your work or listen to your words, but you can’t seem to capture an audience’s attention, it’s probably because you’re leaning on the lessons of the past without seeking out the strategies, techniques, and wisdom required to move beyond clarty, structure, grammar, and voice to work and words that are entertaining and compelling.
But it’s not too late.
Just like clarity, structure, and grammar, the strategies and techniques required to capture and hold a reader can be learned.
Take a class with someone who knows how to engage and entertain. Take as many as you can.
Study the work of writers, filmmakers, musicians, and playwrights who engage and entertain you. Ask yourself what they are doing to engage and entertain an audience, and then try to do the same.
Make lots and lots of stuff. Practice, experiment, and practice some more.
It may take time, but you, too, can grab the attention of readers and audience members if you want.
Anyone can.
