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014 Six Proven Ways to Open an Article With a Bang

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Previous Episode: 013 How I'll Make You Read Every Single Line of This Article More Episodes Next Episode:015 David Sedaris' Guide to Writing Brilliant First Sentences

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096 Why These Famous Time-Management Techniques Are Ruining Your Productivity

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094 How to Avoid Obscurity by Misusing Language

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093 A Creative Email Trick for Becoming a Plain Spoken Writer

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092 Let This Stupid Machine Read Your Copy Out Loud

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091 This Free App Will Help You Write Bold and Clear Copy

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090 Four Writing Lessons I Learned from This Depressing Music Project

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089 The Clear-Copy Rule of Writing for the Web

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088 Three Ways Writers Must Adjust in a World Dominated by Social Media

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087 How This Social Media Thing Kicked Web Writing Right in the Feels

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086 An Elegant Story on Outsmarting Career Obsolescence

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085 Raise the Stakes! 13 Writing Ideas That Really Work

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084 The Two Things That Make a Dull Product Irresistible

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083 Proof That Stories Can Increase the Value of Even ‘Worthless’ Items

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082 Could Podcasting Make You a Better Writer?

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081 When Do You Abandon the Editing Process?

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080 Four Ways to Get Attention by Rocking the Boat

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079 A Brief Introduction to the Art of Catching Hell

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078 Six Storytelling Lessons from a Famous Urban Legend

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077 Vexed by Your Bankrupt Vocabulary? Listen to This

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076 Why Writers Need to Develop a Sense of Humor

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075 Listener Challenge: Could You Read 100 Books in a Year?

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074 How to Get Massive Attention with a ‘High-Concept Pitch’

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073 A Lesson in Swagger from a Wooden-Legged Civil War Soldier

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072 Six Ways to Becoming a Completely Original Writer

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071 The Oldest Writing Trick in The Book

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070 Eight Things Every Writer Should Know about Landing Pages

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069 The Fascinating Truth about Boring Topics

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068 How to Craft an About Page That People Actually Read and Share

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067 The Psychology Behind Winning Email Subject Lines

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066 All Great Writing Boils Down to These Four Emotional Appeals

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065 A Mildly Spooky Illustration of “Reason Why” Copy

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064 A Mild Warning for All Headline Writers

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063 How Every Creative Must Think about Marketing and Advertising

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062 Do Millennials (Really) Hate Long Copy?

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061 These 4 Sales Principles Can Improve Anyone’s Writing

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060 How to Use the 5 Stages of Audience Awareness to Dominate Online

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059 Why The Most Hated Headline Structures Work So Well

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054 A Straightforward Research Method for Finding a Potent Hook

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052 Three New Ways to Write a Headline (and When to Use Each)

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050 The Curious Secret to Building Trust and Credibility

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049 My Second Most Favorite Copywriting Formula in the World!

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047 My Favorite Copywriting Formula … Ever!

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046 How to (Rapidly) Build an Audience with Content Syndication

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043 The Oddest Story About Overcoming Obscurity You’ll Ever Hear

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042 10 Odd Books That Will Improve Your Writing

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041 How to Read a Book in 2 Hours

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040 The Shocking Way to Master Any Book

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039 Nine Copywriting Books for Web Writers

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038 The 8 Rules of Ruthless Editing from David Mamet

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037 Revealed: The Perfect Blog Post Length

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036 The Aggressive Work Ethic of Highly Creative People

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035 The 10 Rules of Rough Drafts

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034 5 Ways to Create the Perfect Ending that Your Content Deserves

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033 6 Simple Rules For Writing Effective Dialogue

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032 Use Internal Cliffhangers So People Never Stop Reading

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031 226 Transitional Words and Phrases Every Writer Should Know

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030 The Great Paragraph Hoax

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029 5 Ways to Write a Seductive Sentence

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028 How to Be Smart in a World of Dumb Verbs

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027 How the Perfect Article Is Framed by White Space

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026 The Best Articles Always Have This (and a Great Headline)

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025 The Anatomy of a Hyperlink That Woos Readers

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024 The Beginner’s Guide to Writing Bullet Points That Work

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023 How to Create Exquisite Subheadlines

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022 Four Safe Ways to Find Your Writing Voice (and One Dangerous One)

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021 The Two Kinds of Knowledge Every Writer Needs

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020 The Crazy Thing Writers Do to Become Exceptional

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019 How to Answer the Most Important Question About Becoming an Exceptional Writer

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018 Four Things That Can Make Writers Famous

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017 A Small Gift for Your Dark Days as an Obscure Writer

April 7, 2015

016 Steal This Episode

April 6, 2015

015 David Sedaris’ Guide to Writing Brilliant First Sentences

April 2, 2015

014 Six Proven Ways to Open an Article With a Bang

April 1, 2015

013 How I’ll Make You Read Every Single Line of This Article

March 31, 2015

012 The Ugly Truth About How People Read Online

March 30, 2015

011 The 3 Pillars of Great Web Writing

March 26, 2015

010 How to Use RSS to Write Better Headlines

March 25, 2015

009 How to Write Headlines that Get Results

March 24, 2015

008 Where Headlines Have Gone Horribly Wrong

March 23, 2015

007 A 12-Minute Crash Course on Link Building (Ugh)

March 19, 2015

006 An Idiot-Proof Guide to Writing Blog Posts That Google Loves

March 18, 2015

005 Keywords: Your Love Affair With the Language Your Audience Uses

March 17, 2015

004 How Search Engines Work, Part Two

March 16, 2015

003 How Search Engines Work, Part One

March 3, 2015

002 The Unbreakable Law of the Web

March 2, 2015

001 Two Challenges All Digital Content Must Conquer

April 2, 2015

014 Six Proven Ways to Open an Article With a Bang

Master these six principles on first sentences and you’ll not only grab people’s attention — you’ll keep it.

Master copywriter Eugene Schwartz often spent an entire week on the first 50 words of a sales piece —- the headline and the opening paragraph.

Sound excessive?

Well, just imagine how disappointed you’d be after reading a killer headline for an article only to lose momentum and interest on the first sentence.

Trust me. It happens (listen to episode 12 if you don’t believe me). Here’s how not do that.

In this 11-minute episode you’ll discover:

  • The solitary purpose of your first sentence
  • How using quotes to open an article can make you look stupid
  • When statistics don’t work
  • The $80 book every writer needs on his bookshelf
  • The magic a question about truffle-hunting pigs can do for your article
  • Demian’s favorite metaphor for explaining who he truly is

Listen to Rough Draft below ...

014 Six Proven Ways to Open an Article With a BangDemian Farnworth
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The Show Notes

  • Here’s How to Answer the Most Important Question in Life (and Make a Living from It)
  • Breakthrough Advertising
  • 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post with a Bang
  • How to Nail Your Opening
  • “Hang in There!” – Arthur Schopenhauer
  • Advertising Secrets of the Written Word
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The Transcript

6 Proven Ways to Open an Article With a Bang

Demian Farnworth: Hi, welcome to Rough Draft, your daily dose of essential web writing advice. I’m your host, Demian Farnworth, Chief Content Writer for Copyblogger Media.

And thank you for sharing the next four minutes of your life with me.

Episode 14 is called “6 Proven Ways to Open an Article.”

Now that we’ve explored some good theory. Let’s dig into some deep tactics.

This is next in line because how you start your article — the first sentence, the first paragraph — next to the headline, is the most important piece you have to get right.

Because a great headline with a lame sentence is sort of like inviting someone to your party — but slamming the door in their face.

Let’s not do that.

I have to remind you that this episode is brought to you by Authority Rainmaker, a carefully designed live educational experience that presents a complete and effective online marketing strategy to help you immediately accelerate your business.

It’s a single track, curated marketing experience.

We are holding it in May of this year, in beautiful Denver, Colorado at the stunning Ellie Caulkins Opera House.

The lineup of speakers is equally as stunning. We’ve got author Dan Pink, punk legend Henry Rollins, fascination aficionado Sally Hogshead, the omnipresent Chris Brogan, Sean D’Souza, Pamela Wilson, our very own Brian Clark, Sonia Simone, and Jerod Morris and, so on.

But a person that I think you need to learn more about and I want to introduce you today is, Bernadette Jiwa. And I did an interview with her a few weeks ago and it’s called “How to Answer Life’s Most Important Question (and Make a Living from It).”

That’s a bold claim. But she delivers. She delivers. In this interview she gives:

  • Guidance to people who feel like their careers are going no where
  • Advice to people who think they are unoriginal — and think they can’t do anything about it
  • How to stop falling for the popular myth about scaling your business
  • How we don’t need more marketing

So what is it we need to do more of? Well she answers that question because she is such a generous and smart person.

You can only see Bernadette this May at Authority Rainmaker. Get all the details right now at rainmaker.fm/event, and we look forward to seeing you in Denver, Colorado this May. That’s rainmaker.fm/event.

Now on to the show.

The Solitary Purpose of Your First Sentence

Quick quiz: See if you are paying attention. What’s the second most important part of your blog post after the headline?

I hope you said “the first sentence.”

Master copywriter Eugene Schwartz often spent an entire week on the first 50 words of a sales piece — the headline and the opening paragraph.

Why?

Just imagine how disappointed you’d be after reading a killer headline for an article, only to lose momentum and interest on the first sentence.

Why Statistics Don’t Work

Think back to the research we talked about in the last episode. On average people have time to read only about 20% of an article.

You have to make sure your first sentence does not suck.

What we are going to do, we are going to look at a Brian Clark’s wrote called “5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post with a Bang.”

Will capture the reader’s imagination and pull them deeper into your content.

1. Ask a Question

What’s the number one reason men fail at relationships? Did you know latex gloves will give you cancer? Did you know they use pigs to hunt for truffles?

They do. It’s on the internet.

2. Share an Anecdote or Quote

Mark Twain. Steve Jobs.

There is a warning when you use Brainy Quotes.

“Hang in There!” by Mark O’Connell

Arthur Schopenhauer—the 19th century German philosopher for whom human existence was a perpetually swinging “pendulum between suffering and boredom,” and the world itself a hell in which “human beings are the tortured souls on the one hand, and the devils on the other”—tends to get pigeonholed as a fairly downbeat guy.

Just don’t jump on to Brainy Quotes. Make sure you have a good source.

3. Invoke the Mind’s Eye

By using words like “imagine,” “picture this,” “do you remember when,” etc. This also works well for dates: November 14, 1986.

4. Use an Analogy, Metaphor or Simile

Her heart was like a hard-boiled egg. I am the tofu of the human race.

5. Cite a Shocking Statistic

Three thousand million Marketing messages we are exposed to every day. How many blog posts published every day. Heard those so often they are no longer shocking.

Make sure it’s unique. Original. And actually shocking.

But those are five …

The single greatest tip when it comes to openings has to be this idea that your first sentence should be short.

This idea, I think, originated with Joe Sugarman.

He had this idea that your headline should stop your reader in their tracks with a captivating promise. Get people to stop, and then your opening is where you convince them to continue to read.

Sugarman’s view was that he treated it as a slide.

The purpose behind the headline is to get you to read the first sentence. The purpose of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence.

And so on.

If you examine his work, he usually starts with a simple sentence.

It could be a one-word, two-word, three-word, four-word sentence. Five, six is probably pushing it. But just that one word.

And the goal behind was to shock, to awe them, to make them laugh, get them in a state of kind of expectancy and anticipation.

The $80 Book Every Writers Needs on His Bookshelf

His book, “Advertising Secrets of the Written Word,” good luck finding a copy for less than $80. It’s worth the investment in the ads in the back of the book.

For example, he’s got an ad called ”The Nose.” It’s a smoke detector.

And he opens that ad by simply saying “It’s proven.”

The ad for Blueblocker sunglasses. “I’m about to tell you a true story.”

There was this product called “Bone Fone.” It’s a boom box that wraps around your neck like one of those neck pillow things. Clearly that one didn’t last but he opens up that article by saying, “You’re standing in an open field.”

He does it all with wonderful first sentences.

So get in the habit of agonizing over headlines and first sentences. And to help us learn more, in the next episode we are going to look at the first sentences of David Sedaris.

Many of you probably know David have read some his books. His collections of essays. His collections of autobiographical essays.

  • Me Talk Pretty One Day
  • Naked
  • Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

He was a master of the first sentence. Study a few of these sentences. Including what I think to be his single best one.

Until then, take care.

And oh yeah, Ginger reminded me to tell you to jump over to iTunes and subscribe if you haven’t. Leave a rating, too. It will make her very very happy.

And tell your friends about the other shows in our network. The one that I’m digging right now is by our Editor in Chief, Stefanie Flaxman. it’s a show, no surprise, called “The Editor-in-Chief.” What I think is even more surprising is unusual way Stefanie looks at her job. And how that can make your life as a writer better, too.

Take care.

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