{"id":382,"date":"2012-01-14T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T23:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=382"},"modified":"2012-01-14T12:00:05","modified_gmt":"2012-01-13T23:00:05","slug":"rule-number-one-keep-the-reader-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=382","title":{"rendered":"Rule number one: Keep the reader reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>For me, one of the hallmarks of good writing is that each sentence, each paragraph, leads the reader to want to read more.\u00a0 This is as true of a commercial pitch document as it is of a short story or a novel.<\/p>\n

Robert Drewe\u2019s novel Our Sunshine<\/em>, a fictionalised account of the life and death of Ned Kelly, begins with the sentence: \u2018The lion is out of sorts.\u2019\u00a0 And immediately we want to know more.\u00a0 Which lion?\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 And what does a lion have to do with Ned Kelly?<\/p>\n

Jeremy Clarkson begins one of his weekend newspaper columns with the words \u2018Making Top Gear<\/em> used to be easy.\u2019\u00a0 And we think: Used to be?<\/em>\u00a0 Are you saying that it’s\u00a0not<\/em> easy anymore?\u00a0 Why not?\u00a0 Tell us more.<\/p>\n

Corporation X, on the other hand, begins a recent pitch document with:<\/p>\n

\u2018Corporation X is a leading international provider of proven custom-tailored customer-centric solutions to large and medium sized businesses seeking to utilise leading edge technologies to extend their influence and market share within specific chosen markets and regions both locally and globally.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

Suddenly the room seems stiflingly hot.\u00a0 Our eyelids become heavy. \u00a0And we fight to stay awake.\u00a0 And, as one of my colleagues has been known to say: \u2018Nobody buys much while they are asleep.\u2019<\/p>\n

A study by The Pelican Partnership found that fewer than one in ten senior executives reads all or most of documents they receive from organisations that want to sell to them.\u00a0 Several reasons were suggested.\u00a0 But, in most cases, it boiled down to the fact that the intended readers didn\u2019t expect the experience to be rewarding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018I have better things to do with my time,\u2019 one senior manager said.<\/p>\n

And yet most of the managers admitted to reading all or most of at least three novels a year, as well as countless magazine and online articles.<\/p>\n

I think there\u2019s an important lesson here for writers of pitch documents: Your competition is not Corporation Y or Corporation Z.\u00a0 Your real competition is Robert Drewe and Jeremy Clarkson and every other writer who understands how to keep the reader reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For me, one of the hallmarks of good writing is that each sentence, each paragraph, leads the reader to want to read more.\u00a0 This is as true of a commercial pitch document as it is of a short story or … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,5,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":388,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions\/388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}