#52 “Your First 10 Words Are More Important Than the Next Ten Thousand”

Issue #52 – Tuesday, April 16, 2019

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2019/04/52-your-first-10-words-are-more.html

Posted by Denny Hatch

“Your First 10 Words Are More Important 
Than the Next Ten Thousand”

What triggered this post were two of many bizarre news releases that recently landed in my Yahoo in-box. The first paragraphs are weird.'

Amandari Karaca

To Denny Hatch

Apr 5 at 11:27 AM

Hi, Denny – Any interest in why AI is the new Sterling Cooper for online retailers? As one-to-one hyper-personalization kicks in, content creators must take a cue from Mad Men if they want to create authentic customized experiences for users...
 

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Tom Careless

To Denny Hatch

 Apr 12 at 6:24 AM

Hi Denny,

Hope you are well, I thought you might be interested in the below news?

In response to rapid transformations in the way people consume content and interact with media across multiple devices, Globo has undergone a radical face-lift of all elements of its brand, including the logo, typeface, and company signaling [sic]...

= = = = = = = = = = = =

If the purpose of a news release is to provide something valuable for me to pass on to my readers, these sad sack efforts fail miserably. I don’t have a clue who they represent, what they are talking about or how any of it is relative to my readers. 
     This is Smartypants M.B.A. mumbo-jumbo gibberish.

All writers are in the business of selling.

Your one single objective is to sell the reader in going on to the next sentence, the next paragraph and all the way to the end of whatever is being written. This is true of every literary form—letter, résumé, memo, white paper, business plan, article, press release, advertisement, non-fiction book or novel.

The place to start selling is the lede.
What's a Lede? 

The introduction to a news article is called the 'lede' and is usually in the first paragraph as in an essay. The 'lede' is a deliberate misspelling of 'lead' to prevent confusion in the days when printing was done with lead type. The lede not only tells what the story is about, it also invites the reader to read further. —St. Petersburg College Libraries [First Known Use: 1976]
 

Many writers start off by clearing their throats, rolling up their sleeves and rubbing their hands together. By then the reader is on Page 2, with nothing to show for the time spent.

     Create a lousy lede and chances are the reader will go no further.

     In a Capitol Weekly column, titled, “Please just give us the news and spare us the anecdotal lede,” Will Shuck wrote:
 

I am sick to death of the anecdotal lede, that annoying habit of news writers to start a straightforward story by painting a quaint little picture of everyday life.

     If the story is about a bill requiring pet owners to spay or neuter their dogs (just to pick an imaginary example), the anecdotal lead first tells us how much Janey Johnson loves Missy, her Cocker Spaniel.

     No doubt Janey and Missy are a lovely pair, but a lot of us have jobs and kids and commutes and precious little time to muse about Missy’s reproductive potential.

A Sampling of Truly Dreadful Ledes

 

Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

     This whimsical literary competition challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.

     Named for a minor Victorian novelist, the contest memorializes—and expands upon this iconic lede sentence:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the dark darkness.

—Paul Clifford, a novel by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1830)

Recent Winners of the Bulwer-Lytton Contest

There’s was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city, their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped “Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, NJ.”

—Garrison Spic, Washington, D.C. (2008)

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.”

—Molly Ringle, Seattle, WA (2010)

Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.

—Sue Fondrie, Oshkosh, WI (2011)

As he told her that he loved her, she gazed into his eyes, wondering, as she noted the infestation of eyelash mites, the tiny demodicids burrowing into his follicles to eat the greasy sebum therein, each female laying up to 25 eggs in a single follicle, causing inflammation, whether the eyes are truly windows of the soul; and, if so, his soul needed regrouting.

—Cathy Bryant, Manchester, England (2012)

I once sent the first couple of chapters of a novel to former colleague Robert F. Scott with a check for small sum of money and asked him for a critique. In the 1970s we had been book club directors at Macmillan.

     For the start of this novel I thought I had created some very well-written prose to set the scene. However I had a lurking fear it might be boring. My fears were justified. Bob’s suggestion:
 

What you should do with your lede is upset a bucket of gore in the reader’s lap and then spend the rest of the time cleaning it up.

David Ogilvy told of a Harvard history professor who walked into the first day of class and silenced the rowdy room with just 22 words:
 

Cesare Borgia murders his brother-in-law for the love of his sister, who was the mistress of their father – the Pope.

I was schooled in direct mail copywriting. The linchpin is the letter—an intensely personal and intimate me-to-you message designed to crystalize what this product or service will do for you—the reader.

     Whenever I sit down to write anything—fiction, non-fiction, advertising or blog, Pat Friesen’s inviolable rule of letter writing is always in the front of my brain:
 

Your best lede is to be found somewhere on the second page of your first draft.

“Get to the Point!”

It may once have been that you had plenty of time to develop a creative story line in a direct mail piece; not so today. You have to get to the point and let readers know where you’re taking them—and you have to do it quickly.

     Most readers—with the possible exception of devotees of “thought magazines”—simply won’t stay with you through a leisurely development of a creative idea. They’re the Type A people behind your car at the stoplight; they beep their horns the minute the light turns from red to green.

—Richard Jordan, Freelancer

Elmer “Sizzle” Wheeler

In 1960 I went to work for Prentice-Hall book publishers as an apprentice flak. One of our leading authors was Elmer “Sizzle” Wheeler, who had created a mystique by billing himself as “America’s Number One Salesman.”

     Wheeler’s most famous book was “THE FAT BOY’S BOOK: How Elmer Lost 40 Pounds in 80 Days,” published in 1950. We used to joke about Wheeler, but had to take him seriously. He sold ton of books on salesmanship—and the language of selling—to a regular following who bought every title Prentice-Hall published.

     Since all writers are in the business of selling ourselves in print, Wheeler’s words are worth noting.

          

Three Wheelerpoints

1. Don’t Sell the Steak – Sell the Sizzle!

What we mean by the “sizzle” is the BIGGEST selling point in your proposition – the MAIN reasons why your prospects will want to buy. The sizzling of the steak starts the sale more than the cow ever did, though the cow is, of course, very necessary.

2. “Don’t Write – Telegraph.”

“DON’T WRITE – TELEGRAPH” means get the prospect’s IMMEDIATE and FAVORABLE attention in the fewest possible words. If you don’t make your first message “click,” the prospect will leave you mentally, if not physically.

3.  Your first 10 words are more important than the next ten thousand.

You have only ten short seconds to capture the fleeting attention of the other person, and if in those ten short seconds you don't say something mighty important, he will leave you — either physically or mentally!

Takeaways to Consider

• Do not repeat your headline in your lede. A powerful hed captures the reader’s attention. If the lede is the same as the hed, the reader will say, “I’ve seen this before,” and go elsewhere. Instead a riveting hed plus a potent lede are a lethal combination.

• “Your first 10 words are more important than the next ten thousand.”

—Elmer “Sizzle” Wheeler

• “I am sick to death of the anecdotal lede, that annoying habit of news writers to start a straightforward story by painting a quaint little picture of everyday life.”

—Will Shuck

• “What you should do with your lede is upset a bucket of gore in the reader’s lap and then spend the rest of the time cleaning it up.”

—Robert F. Scott

• “Your best lede is to be found somewhere on the second page of your first draft.”

—Pat Frisen

• “Most readers—with the possible exception of devotees of “thought magazines”—simply won’t stay with you through a leisurely development of a creative idea. They’re the Type A people behind your car at the stoplight; they beep their horns the minute the light turns from red to green.”

—Richard Jordan

• “DON’T WRITE – TELEGRAPH” means get the prospects IMMEDIATE and FAVORABLE attention in the fewest possible words. If you don’t make your first message “click,” the prospect will leave you mentally, if not physically.”

—Elmer “Sizzle” Wheeler

• Short words! Short sentences! Short paragraphs!
—Andrew J. Byrne, Freelancer

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Word Count: 1665