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.

To write great external transitions:

1. Create cliff-hangers.

The best external transitions hint at what is to come. They keep the reader moving along by promising that something fascinating is just around the corner.

Larson is a master of the external transition. Here are two more chapter enders from Devil in the White City:

Ira Glass uses the same approach for “This American Life” station breaks. Here’s how he propelled listeners forward in the radio program’s legendary piece about the housing crisis, “The Giant Pool of Money”:
Let’s pause and ponder that for a minute too.

Of course, you have to make good on the promise of these external transitions. Cliffhangers followed by nonevents lose reader interest — and respect — in a hurry.

2. Model the mystery writers.

One way to polish external transitions is to study the last sentences in chapters of mysteries. “The Writer’s Guide to Hardy Boys Rack Books,” for instance, includes this excellent advice:

I think of section enders like these as “But that was before we found the body in the bathtub” transitions.

The idea is to write something that’s so provocative that the reader can’t stop reading. You want readers to think, “I’ll just read until they find that body in the bathtub.”

A series of small promises from you (“A body in the bathtub is just around the corner”) and small commitments from your reader (“I’ll just read until they find it”) might just get your tired, busy, distracted reader to read to the end.

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Transitions can be hard to write. Maybe that’s why we keep turning back to these hackneyed transitions, listed in a Poynter Institute forum:

Let’s pause and ponder that for a minute too.

But then the dream became a nightmare.

But then something went horribly wrong.

But that was about to change.

When he first … he never dreamed …

But then something happened that would change her life forever.

Then she experienced every parent’s worst nightmare.

For now they can only watch and wait.

What a difference a (day, week, month, year) makes.

Now the victims are picking up the pieces of their shattered lives.

At the end of the day …

Fresh transitions drive readers further into the story. These clichés just cause readers to roll their eyes — and go back to sleep.

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New York’s Grey Lady isn’t so gray any more. Topping one-third of its stories with feature leads, The New York Times covers the world in living color.

Feature leads grab attention with concrete, creative, provocative details. In a recent edition, the Times brought 33% stories to life with feature lead approaches including:

1. Description

Description lights up readers’ brains — literally.

Let’s pause and ponder that for a minute too.

For description, go to the scene and observe, using all five of your senses. Then recreate what you’ve experienced on the page, showing readers what they don’t ordinarily see, making them feel what they don’t normally feel.

Description topped the list of The New York Times feature lead approaches, with seven descriptive leads making up 8% of all leads in a recent edition.

Matt A.V. Chaban uses description to start a story about how real estate development has stalled out in North Brooklyn, despite the boom elsewhere in the city.

Notice that feature leads aren’t just for feature stories. This lead, for instance, tops a business analysis.

2. Examples, for instances

Lead by example: A pint of “for instances” is worth a gallon of abstraction.

Darth Vader toothbrushes and Pepto-Bismol-slathered schnauzers change the pictures in people’s heads and move readers to act.

Examples came in No. 2 of The New York Times feature lead approaches in a recent edition. Six “for instance” leads made up 7% of all the leads we reviewed.

Ben Sisario uses examples to launch a story about radio’s hottest new format:

3. Juicy details

Fun facts and juicy details make your copy more vivid. The New York Times ran five juicy details leads — 5% of all leads — in a recent edition.

Michael Paulson uses juicy details to introduce a story about how local governments are taking an increasingly hard line on religious shop owners who refuse to serve gay customers:

4. Anecdote

When you need to win the hearts and minds of your readers, tell them a story. Anecdote, narrative and other storytelling techniques are the most powerful forms of human communication.

The Times ran four anecdotal leads — 5% of all leads — in a recent edition.

Tatiana Schlossberg and Nina Bernstein use anecdote to start a story about the vulnerability of frail nursing home residents in New York state. There, rates of substandard care, neglect and abuse are high, according to national studies:

5. Compression of details

For compression of details, you list your most powerful details, squeeze them together in a paragraph, then polish them. Like squeezing together a lump of coal to make a diamond, compression of details condenses fascinating facts into a passage that’s more than the sum of its parts.

The Times ran two compression-of-details leads — 2% of all leads — in a recent edition.

Claire Cain Miller compressed three details to introduce a story about new machines that can handle knowledge and service jobs, as well as factory and clerical work:

6. Wordplay

Want to captivate your readers? Get the media to steal your sound bites? Make your message more eloquent and memorable? Wordplay can help.

The Times ran two wordplay leads — that’s 2% of all leads — in a recent edition.

Wordplay includes techniques like alliteration, balance and rhyme. Matthew Goldstein used twist of phrase in this lead for a story about a billionaire investor who managed to fend off a criminal insider trading investigation of himself. Now he’s looking for a former prosecutor and several agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to join his new $10 billion investment firm:

7. Metaphor

Human beings have always learned metaphorically: We add to our knowledge by comparing new concepts to those we already understand. Take computers: They have desktops, files, folders, documents and notepads — all analogies for things in offices.

These analogies serve as shortcuts to understanding. So when you want to help your readers understand new, technical or complicated information, metaphor is the answer.

The Times ran two metaphor leads — that’s 2% of all leads — in a recent edition.

Matthew L. Wald used metaphor to launch this story about how hundreds of scientists and engineers are looking at new kinds of nuclear reactors, intended to be safer, cheaper sources of energy worldwide:

8. Human interest

It’s the “Peer Principle of Persuasion”: People connect with people.

Readers find messages more readable, understandable and persuasive when your let a person stand for your point. So find a poster person and use human interest for your leads.

The Times ran one human-interest lead — that’s 1% of all leads — in a recent edition.

Elisabeth Rosenthal used human interest to start this story about how “testing has become to the United States’ medical system what liquor is to the hospitality industry: a profit center with large and often arbitrary markups”:

Feature features.

Want to grab people’s attention and keep it for the long haul? Take a tip from The New York Times and run more feature stories and feature leads.

What can you steal from the newspaper of record’s approach to starting stories?

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What if I told you there was a free tool available that would help you convince readers to read your messages more often, read them more completely and spend more time reading them? Would you use it?

And what if I told you there was another tool out there that reduced readership and made people stop reading sooner? Would you stop using it? How quickly would you get rid of it?

My friend, these tools exist. The first — the one that encourages reading — is the feature-style story structure. The second one, the one that reduces reading, is the inverted pyramid.

And if you don’t know, now you know.

Feature structure increases reading.

Feature-style stories are easier to read than the traditional inverted-pyramid news structure, according to “Impact,” a 2001 study led by the Readership Institute at Northwestern University and sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Making messages more “easy to read” is one of the best ways to increase readership, the study found. That is, according to the study, the higher the score on “easy to read,” the more likely people are to:

• Read the paper more often
• Read it more completely
• Spend more time reading it

“Easy to read” includes “is relaxing to read” and “makes it easy to find what I’m looking for.”

Inverted pyramids reduce reading.

Inverted pyramids, on the other hand, scored lowest in readership of four structures studied.

That’s according to “Ways With Words,” a 1993 project of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, The Poynter Institute, the St. Petersburg Times and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The inverted pyramid also tanked in getting the reader across the jump, which means it made people stop reading sooner.

Why? The pyramid starts out boring and “gets more boring as the reader reads down,” “Ways With Words” researchers said. Who needs to stick around for that?

AP uses features to ‘draw in the reader.’

One solution: Write more feature-style stories.

You won’t be alone. The Associated Press is now including a feature lead in addition to a news lead with every story it sends across the wire, according to The New York Times.

Why? The feature leads are more likely to “draw in the reader through imagery, narrative devices, perspective or other creative means,” according to the nation’s dominant news service.

Why not join the AP? After all, who would keep using a tool that doesn’t work when there’s a free tool out there that does?

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The feature-style story structure — aka the “stack of blocks” — is more memorable than the traditional news structure.

“While the inverted pyramid is the worst form for readers, the ‘stack of blocks’ is the best in terms of reader comprehension,” writes Don Fry, an independent writing coach who represents The Poynter Institute.

“The stack has three parts: beginning, middle, and end. The middle contains the information grouped by subject matter into parts arranged in logical order. The beginning predicts the middle in form and content, and the ending cements the main points into the readers’ memories.”

Emmy award-winning journalist Tim Knight goes a step further in a 2015 rant, “Screw the Inverted Pyramid.” The inverted pyramid, he writes, is “cleverly designed to prevent the viewer from retaining information.”

Want them to remember? Think features, not pyramids.

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Brands that run more feature-style stories are seen as being more:

• Honest
• Fun
• Neighborly
• Intelligent
• Personable
• Thought-provoking
• In the know
• In touch with reader values

That’s according to “Impact,” a 2001 study led by the Readership Institute at Northwestern University and sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America and the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

Want to get some of that for your brand? Run more feature-style stories.

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There is one great thing about the inverted pyramid lead.

“The only benefit of the inverted pyramid lead was that it put a lot of valuable information high in the story,” write Mario R. Garcia and Pegie Stark, authors of Eyes On the News: The Poynter Institute Color Research.

But, they say, there is a workaround: “Some papers are learning to do that with more effective heads and deck[s].”

That’s right: Lift your key ideas off the page with display copy.

Six places to put your key messages

Garcia and Stark recommend that you embed your most important information in:

• A main head
• A deck to expand the head
• Color-coded summaries of the three parts or modules of the story
• Subheads and summaries at each module
• A numbering system where appropriate
• A closing box of more information

___

Source: Mario R. Garcia and Pegie Stark, Eyes On the News: The Poynter Institute Color Research, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, 1991

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First things first.

Start your story with the inciting incident — the conflict that begins the action of the story and causes the hero to act.

Think of the inciting incident as the discovery of the corpse that begins every episode of “Law & Order.” Elizabeth George’s For the Sake of Elena, for instance, starts like this:

“Mercifully, the arm was attached to a body.”

Without this event, there would be no story.

Three tricks for starting with the inciting incident:

1. Find the ‘desk-pounding moment.’

When you’re interviewing for a narrative, look for the “desk-pounding moment.”

That, according to Ragan Communications editor David Murray, “is the moment when somebody pounded on his or her desk and said, ‘Damn it, we’ve got to do something about this.’

“That moment is the origin of every corporate program. … The closer you as a reporter get to the very moment the idea was hatched by a human being, the better your story is going to be.”

2. Begin as close to the action as possible.

“Come in late and get out early.”

— David Mamet, Tony-nominated playwright of Glengarry Glen Ross

A participant in one of my storytelling workshops once shared this advice:

“If you’re writing about seeing a snake at a picnic, for gosh sake, start with the snake. Don’t start with fixing the sandwiches.”

The conflict — the snake — is the inciting moment.

So start in the middle of things, at the most dramatic moment of the conflict:

• The day the tax bill came
• The day the bank called your loan
• The day the company shipped its $60,000 circuit board with a fatal flaw

3. Skip the background information.

And of course, don’t include 40 paragraphs of background information before something actually happens. Do that, and readers won’t stick around long enough to get to the inciting incident.

___

Sources: Ann Wylie, The Art of the Storyteller, Wylie Communications Inc., 2003

David Murray, “Writing Between the Lines: How to tell good news well: Separate the meat from the fluff,” Corporate Writer & Editor, July 1, 2003

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