External transitions move readers from section to section
Talk about a transition. Here’s how author Erik Larson ends one chapter of Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America:
Transitions like Larson’s thrust the reader forward — from the end of one section to the beginning of the next. And that’s the job of external transitions: keeping the reader’s attention beyond a natural stopping point.
That means external transitions need to work harder than internal transitions, which just move the reader from sentence to sentence or paragraph to paragraph.
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Think Outside the Pyramid
Increase engagement, readership, sharing and more
“Everything that happens in the world is absolutely fascinating,” says an Associated Press reporter, “until you read it in the newspaper.”
Until, that is, it’s been boiled down into the hierarchical blurtation of facts that is the inverted pyramid.
Why do communicators continue to use a structure that makes fascinating messages dull? After all, there is another option — a structure that’s been proven in the lab to grab readers’ attention, keep them reading longer and leave them feeling more satisfied after they’ve read.
At Master the Art of the Storyteller — our two-day creative writing master class on Feb. 23-24, in Los Angeles and Sept. 25-26 in New York — you’ll learn a structure that can help you make all your messages more fascinating and engaging.
Specifically, you’ll learn how to:
- Organize your story in six easy pieces with our fill-in-the-blanks template.
- Test your lead’s attention-getting power against our checklist of elements of a great lead.
- Walk away with award-winning lead examples to model.
- Avoid the “muddle in the middle” with five ways to organize the body of your piece.
- Leave a lasting impression with our three-step test for writing a satisfying ending.
This is the only writing workshop we have planned in Los Angeles in 2017. Don’t miss out on your chance to Master the Art of the Storyteller in Los Angeles. Register now.
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Polish your skills at these Master Classes
Learn to Master the Art of the Storyteller, Catch Your Readers, Get Clicked, Cut Through the Clutter and more
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