Fifteen Ways to Lose Their Interest by Don Taco

 

Fifteen Ways to Lose Their Interest.

  My father used to tell a story about an old farmer whose mule had decided not to take another step, something mules are famous for, far from town on the old pass road. He had tried everything, including lightening the mule's load by shifting some of the goods to his own back. He was swearing and kicking at the animal, quite worked up, when an old padre came along. The man of God suggested that the farmer calm down, and told him that anger would only get him an ulcer, and that the beast needed to be talked to gently. The perturbed farmer suggested that the padre try that, whereupon the kindly old man of the cloth picked up a tree branch about the size of his arm, leaned back, and struck the mule across the nose with all his might. The padre then whispered something into the mule's ear, and the mule started plodding down the path to town. The farmer, quite astonished now, incredulously said to the padre, "I thought you said to speak gently to him!" The padre replied, "Well, yes I did. But, you have to get their attention first."

  Your audience has an attention span of about fifteen seconds. You have that long to get their attention. And get it you must. If you haven't written a good opening, the rest of your story doesn't matter. 

  But it's worse than that. You are still up against that fifteen seconds. You have to keep their attention. Maybe it's with the events of your story. Maybe it's with surprises, or changes in the direction of the story. Maybe it's by interspersing parts of concurrent events. Maybe it's simply with the beauty of the flow of your language and your turns of phrase. But if you bore them for fifteen seconds, they're gone.

  And that's not all. You still have to end well. If you just stop at the end of the story, or peter out, or trail off, that's the lasting impression you've left your reader with. If your ending is boring or trite or weak, that's how they'll feel about the whole story. This is why summing up, re-stating your premise, ending with a punchline, or ending with a moral are so ridiculously common. They are endings that work.

  And that's why your grade school teachers told you that a story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. Because it does. If you heard that and said, "Duh! Of course it does," you may have missed the point. The beginning isn't 'where the story starts,' and the end isn't 'where the story stops.' They need to be so much more than that. They have a job to do. 

  Hit them with the branch as hard as you can, and reward them with an apple when you get home.