Quite often, my clients ask, “How can I make my writing more engaging and hypnotic?”
To which I reply, “Create a world they want to visit and your writing will enthrall throngs of readers.”
But how do you make your writing more hypnotic? How can you create an addictive quality, so that readers will seek out every page you type?
The secret is in creating worlds in which your readers can get lost. Whether it’s fiction, nonfiction, or even a medical text, by making yourself both the writer and the reader, you stand a better chance of enveloping your reader in the warm and comfortable quilts of your words. Your words should be a comforter, and a mosaic that takes them out of their own head and into yours.
All too often, inexperienced writers especially, will forget that there is a reader at the other end of their communication wanting to drink the nectar of their writing acumen.
So am to engage imaginations, intellects, and enjoyment. It’s not about how long, verbose, or stylistic it is. It’s about storytelling, the transmission of your mind to someone else, and the creation of the experience the reader has while consuming your ideas.
Your words are the tracks upon which the train travels.
Your choice of words is less important than the ideas, imagery, and journey on which you take them, but your words are the tracks upon which the train travels.
A journey need not be long or complex. A simple joke is as much a story as is Huckleberry Finn. A riddle can be as enthralling as Ulysses. A song lyric can transport a heart and a soul further than the most powerful rocket ship.
Don’t let your keen vocabulary or erudite concepts distract from your larger points. It’s important to remember that the reader wants your information, until you prove to them it’s not worth their time. Challenge your reader to keep up with you by including twists and turns.
Tapping into the imagination is the key.
But the question remains, how do you build worlds with words to engage and capture your reader’s attention and desire? It has more to do with your ideas and your relatedness than the fluff you tend to include. Tapping into the imagination is key.
Fiction
When writing fiction, I always try to include the emotional inner workings of the protagonist, and not dawdle with extraneous info that offers nothing to the subjective interpretation. Without an emotional connection, it’s just data, and the reader does not relate to data the way they connect to an emotional experience.
When I write drama or in the crime-detective genre, I delve deep into the minutiae. The subtle sound a baby’s cry from across the alley can be as important as a character’s name.
Nonfiction
When writing nonfiction, I seek to weave story into the piece, so as to engage the reader’s imagination as well as their analytical mind. Connecting the imagination with information is a proven strategy for engulfing your reader into the journey you’re creating.
I seek to write with a rhythm, so that, much like the waves beneath a boat ride, my travelers feel a gentle, subtle, yet consistent pull-push up-pull down as they read.
Rewriting
And finally, remember that good writing is rewriting, and great writing is more rewriting.
Michelangelo was once asked how he carved such a perfect statue of David. His response remains a clarion call for all good writing. He replied, “I took away anything that wasn’t the finished statue.”
My very first professional writing job was with The San Francisco Chronicle as a copy boy. I wrote fluff. I wrote the kind of stuff that is short and gets no byline or recognition.
However, my first boss, Ramone Chavez, a youngish, short, thin guy with a wire mustache and a penchant for speaking fast like Cary Grant, would bleed red ink all over my copy, and then bark, “Get it back to me in fifteen!”
My next professional writing job was as a news writer at KMDY Radio in Thousand Oaks, California. My boss was Ken Jefferies. Ken was a big guy, and a great trainer to this burgeoning and eager wordsmith.
I’d write the news, weather, sports, traffic, Entertainment Report with Laura Denny, and public service announcements. During commercial breaks, I’d hand over my copy for the next segment, and Ken would also bleed red ink all over the paper.
Then, just like Lou Grant on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, he’d throw the paper into the air and bark, “Get it back to me corrected by next commercial break.”
He’d then go back live on the air, and I’d have to fix what I wrote, and also write the news for the following segment. This taught me to be concise, fast, and detached from my work for the betterment of the finished product.
It only matters if it’s good enough to read.
