You know I’ve never read an article by Gwern that made me feel like he was sensitive to this idea, one that in my head essentially breaks down to the use of narrative and the leverage of “stakes” that inform the reader of kinds of conflict that make a narrative special.
I’m reminded of a remark made by David Foster Wallace (on KCRW? Or oft-repeated elsewhere) about how he had to come to terms with the purpose of writing not being to show off how smart you are to the reader. Instead your writing has to evince some kind of innate investment to the reader that piques their genuine interests and intrigue.
A lot of writers are tainted by the expectations set in grade school. Write for a grade and good writing is what yields a good grade according to the standards set by the subject which often is not ‘Composition’ but more like ‘Prove to me that you remember everything we mentioned in class about the French Revolution’.
I’ve never felt drawn into an article by Gwern at least not in the way that I have been by some writing by Maciej Cegłowski, for example. Reading Gwern I am both overwhelmed by the adornments to the text (hyperlinks, pop-ups, margin notes; other hypertext doodads and portals) and underwhelmed by the substance of the text itself. I don’t consider Paul Graham a literary griot either. But I find that his own prose is bolstered by a kind of clarity and asceticism that is informative and not entirely void of good style and form.
Lawrence McEnery of the University of the Chicago contributed a lot of good thinking to this kind of stuff though.
This wasn’t meant to be a criticism of the author of this post’s own work. But here that’s how it’s left. I haven’t come across any writing of his that’s as intriguing as "Empires Without Farms: The Case of Venice” seems. If anyone has any recommendations, do share.
This is something I find fascinating about TikTok: on that platform you literally get a few seconds to catch the attention of your audience before they skip to the next video.
You can't just find one hook that works and reuse it forever because people will get bored of it - including if that hook is heavily used by other accounts.
This makes TikTok a fascinating brute-force attack on human psychology, with literally millions of people all trying to find the right hooks to catch attention and constantly evolving and iterating on them as the previous hooks stop being effective.
>TikTok [is] a fascinating brute-force attack on human psychology
Security researcher once told me that he sees social media as a distributed hacking attempt on the human mind.
I think it's a genetic algorithm. You try random stuff and when something works you clone and mutate and crossbreed it.
There almost is no hook, the hook is that the time investment for each video is so small your brain doesn't even need to think about whether it should watch or not.
This is part of why I hate TikTok so much.
I recently started doing SiriusXM again a lot. The reason I do this is actually specifically because it gives me less choice than something like Spotify or YouTube Music.
A lot of time when I do the autoplay of YouTube Music, if I don't like the song in the first 15-20 seconds, I skip it to something else. I eventually realized that a lot of songs that I end up really liking require you listening to the entire song to come together. The inability to skip to the next song on SiriusXM forces me to listen to the song, and I've found a ton of songs that I likely would have otherwise skipped with anything else.
I feel like with TikTok, we're effectively training ourselves to ignore things that don't immediately grab our attention.
Maybe this is just my "Old Man Yells At Cloud" moment though.
Check out KEXP and SomaFM. KEXP in particular is a great way to discover new music that you might not normally listen to.
I'd say streaming radio in general is low profile in how it lets you discover new things. I use the search/directory built into foobar2000 or apps like radiodroid, but there are sites like https://www.radio-browser.info/ for the web. It's an interesting and low cost way to find things you wouldn't otherwise be exposed to and likely curated by whoever is running the station. What really stood out to me is how different countries or regions have their own tastes, or at least are likely to be playing something different to local broadcasts.
> I recently started doing SiriusXM again a lot. The reason I do this is actually specifically because it gives me less choice than something like Spotify or YouTube Music.
No, I think you're right.
I'm old enough to have swapped pirated cassettes of whatever was doing the rounds in high school. I remain convinced that Appetite for Destruction can only be listened to the way it was intended to be heard, if it's been copied onto a ratty old TDK D90 that's been getting bashed around in your schoolbag for months by your mate's big brother who has the CD and a decent stereo.
There's a lot of stuff I listened to that I probably wouldn't have if I'd had the selection that's available on streaming services. When you got a new tape, that was Your New Tape, and you listened to it over and over because you hadn't heard it a thousand times yet. Don't like it? Meh, play it anyway, because you haven't heard it a thousand times yet.
I got into so much music that's remained important to me because of a chance tape swap.
Maybe Spotify et al needs instead of unskippable adverts, unskippable tunes that are way outside your usual range of tastes. "Here have some 10,000 Maniacs before you go back to that R'n'B playlist!"
Pretty sure it destroys something in you as well. So many context changes with no relation whatsoever and regular hooks that give you a pinch.
We haven't evolved for that. Our brain is trying to figure out a narrative between two things following each other. It needs time to process stuff. And there is so much shock it can absorb at once. So many "?!" and open loops in a day.
I made a TikTok account to at least know what people were talking about. After 3 months, I got it.
And I deleted it.
I felt noticeably worse when using it, in a way that nothing bad for me, including the news, refined sugar and pron, ever made me feel. The destruction was more intense, more structural. I could feel it gnarling.
In a way, such fast feedback is good, because it makes it easy to stop, while I'm still eating tons of refined sugar.
It’s so addictive but so soul destroying. I feel dirty after spending time on that platform. The term brainrot fits perfectly.
I've started using these platforms for learning (stretch exercises, argentine tango patterns/technique/musicality I might want to lead, etc) and am finding the experience to work better in those kinds of situations. Agree it can be brain rot if using it for entertainment, politics, etc.
It is still doing the same thing, the dopamine hit is just feeling like you learned something instead of seeing something funny/shocking/etc.
The idea you can gain any kind of actual experience/knowledge about a thing through a series of 30s clips that are competing with millions of other 30s clips to grab you is folly.
Yeah, I had to get rid of my youtube plus subscription because I was getting too addicted to the shorts.
You say "human psychology", but there are a ton of people who can't stand any of that shit and see it for the tarpit that it is.
It's not very effective at doing anything but making lowbrow content slightly more appealing.
I keep seeing people complain that the internet isn't as weird and fun as it used to be. The weird and fun stuff is all on TikTok!
Here's a guy who rigged a theremin and a hurdy gurdy up to Singer sewing machine and performs spectacular covers on it https://www.tiktok.com/@singersoundsystem/video/751772710192...
And here's someone living my dream, he moved to the Scottish Highlands to start a workshop creating mechanical sculptures inspired by my childhood heroes the Cabaret Mechanical Theater and he just made a piece for them! https://www.tiktok.com/@mechanicalcreations/video/7598189362...
I wrote my story and titled it, "My experience at work with an automated HR system". I sent it to a few friends, only a couple of them read it.
A week later, I renamed it to "The Machine Fired Me". That seemed to capture it better. The goal wasn't to make it click bait, but it was to put the spoiler, and punch line right up front. It blew up!
I had just read Life of Pi, and one thing I like about that book is that you know the punch line before you even pick up a copy. A boy is stuck with a bengal tiger in a boat. Now that the punch line is out of the way, the story has time to unfold and be interesting in its own merit. That's what I was trying to recreate with my own story.
Okay, because no one seems to be answering the Venice question:
- They had a strong navy (and shipbuilding capacity), making a blockade difficult
- They traded with many nations, so no one group could cut off their food supply
- Fish
- They had a near monopoly on the trade of salt and spices, the former of which was important to everyone and the latter of which was important to aristocrats
(note: I read a few sources but this is not thorough research)
> When writing, first, make the reader care, one way or another. Because if I am not hooked by the first screen, I will probably not keep reading—no matter how good the rest of it is!
Keeping the reader glued to the screen is not the primary goal of writing. This artificial goal pollutes the connection between writer and reader. It makes them buyer and seller and rewards sales tactics. You don't write for the reader. You write for yourself first. Readers sometimes, just happen to appreciate it about as much you do.
I agree with your first assertion but not so much on the rest. There is more than one reason to write and for many it is about communication, they have something they want to express and you would be wise to consider your reader if that is your goal.
Hooking the reader with the opening page is swinging to the other fence of having a terrible opening page that no one will get through, generally not good to swing to the fences. I think the writer should be honest and upfront with the reader, the opening pages should be representative of what is to come, they should represent the whole and not just the beginning.
> Keeping the reader glued to the screen is not the primary goal of writing.
This is common advice in English classes and it predates the World Wide Web (and likely the Internet).
Hook them in the first few sentences or lose them.
And yes, of course, it does depend on who the intended audience is. You wouldn't do it in The New Yorker.
> You don't write for the reader. You write for yourself first. Readers sometimes, just happen to appreciate it about as much you do.
Depends very much on the medium. It's definitely not true that most professional writing is written for the author's sake. It is for an audience. Read books on writing and you'll often find the advice to cut out things if they won't interest the reader - no matter how valuable it is to you.
I myself struggle with this. Some years ago, I took a trip to my childhood home in another country after being separated for decades. Almost none of my friends from the time have been there in decades either. I made notes during the trip, and when I got back I started writing what I saw, and shared it with my friends who grew up with me. How various neighborhoods have changed. Anecdotes from my childhood tied to those places. And a lot more.
I got 30% done, and then decided to hold off sharing till I'd written the whole thing. I now have a first draft. It's the size of a proper book. It contains a lot of stuff that is of value to me, but likely not to most of the (small) audience. I know if I share it with them, chances are high no one will read it.
On the one hand, the stuff I wrote is highly valuable to me - it's become an unintentional memoir. But on the other hand, I do want to share quite a bit with my friends, and I know they'll value it if they actually read it.
I'll either have to cut a lot out, or write two versions (impractical).
The point being that even when you have a very limited audience, it is important to care about them and sacrifice your needs to an extent.
The primary goal of writing is communication. If you are trying to convey information, you need someone to actually sit down and read it. Most of the time, this isn’t a problem, you’re writing for someone you have a pre-existing relationship with and they want to read what you have to say, whether that be a friend, a coworker, or your future self.
Problems arise when you move from one:one, to one:many communication. If you are trying to pass knowledge on to people you have no prior relationship with, you do need to attract their attention in a sea of options. If you actually have something important to say that other people need to hear, it does nobody any good for you to go unnoticed. In those circumstances, I don’t see anything wrong with taking Gwern’s advice.
I think "Just… start with the interesting part first" is quite different, and actually much better advice than "make me care". I'm more than done with stupid hooks and attention grabbing techniques, just plainly and honestly state at the outset what the point is of what will follow.
Yeah, there are two basic schools.
1. Broadcast what the article is about to let the interested readers find it easier
2. Trick people into reading as much of the as possible through any means possible
The first makes sense if you want readers. The second makes sense if you're counting page impressions.
I have often thought that all good fiction is mystery. This is obviously an overstatement, but I think it’s not too far off. Humans are mystery solvers. If I don’t have a compelling mystery to solve—something like the “what’s going on beneath the surface in this town?” that David Lynch does so well—when I’m reading your book or watching your tv show or playing your game, I’m usually out unless I have a strong prior interest (which simply means that I brought my own mystery).
This article succeeded spectacularly in making me want to know all there is to know about medieval Venice, that's for sure.
It's really too bad it's not a quote from an actual book.
"First, make me care" is exactly right. But I also know that anytime you have narrative non-fiction on here, someone without fail argues that the author didn't get straight into the details.
Someone may have already been curious about the topic beforehand. I’m guessing they already have some kind of itch or curiosity. For example, someone who is interested in reading a dense technical textbook that gets straight into the details likely has a preexisting question waiting to be answered, which is why they care. That’s what motivates them to keep reading, even when the material jumps directly into the details
Know your audience: Technical people want the details.
Most people aren't technical.
This is why good writing on the web is broken up into multiple posts split by concern, and with links to the others at the top of the article.
The real problem is when they SEO the shit out of it and replace those links with irrelevant trash meant to steal your attention and people only want to share the "make me care" posts.
The writers stop bothering even posting details when they have them. They bury the lede because it's what the "make me care" crowd forces them to do.
This was quite a good article. It could have been excellent if it answered its own hook somewhere the piece though.
I came away not having a resolution to the hook - violating the articles second principle.
10 reasons why clickbait is good for you:
1)
Counterpoint.
People our so tired of sensational intros and baiting questions which bury the actual lede up to the point where you discover it requires an annual subscription to find out the actual answer, that now it's actually counterproductive to start with an interesting "question".
It's facts first or gtfo. Prove to me that I'm not going to waste my time until you deliver what you promised, by delivering enough of that relevant background up front, otherwise I don't have time for your shenanigans.
Starting with the point (a.k.a. the inverted pyramid) is actually a pretty good way of finding readers that care[1]. I fairly often often put the conclusion in the title, and must have been on the HN front page over 20 times by now.
This is obviously not the only way to construct an article (nor the only one I employ), but it is surprisingly reliable, and will attract and retain the readers who are actually interested in what you have to say, while letting those that aren't interested find something else.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
And thus "question-bait" was born.
"When writing, your first job is this: First, make me care."
It really depends on who the audience is...
Understanding your audience is your first job as a writer or communicator.
Speaking to them and making them care is job two.
This insight is what caused the rise of the clickbait headline and its predecessors in eras past. You need a hook or there's no point reading the tale.
Suppose you fed this article into an LLM, along with whatever other documents you had, and asked it to come up with some good candidates for opening sentences? And picked one, and let it take it from there?
I assume you'd get a mess, but it might be an interesting mess.
I disagree with the stated examples and literally quit reading there.
The hook was great, but article was mediocre. I glazed over at the mention of LLMs in the second paragraph, skimming the article through to the end didn't improve things.
If your readers now care, don't disappoint them...
Chuunibyou-tier slop.
Probably should be marked (2025).
It literally says 2026 in the URL. Perhaps it was written before the new year and published now, but that doesn't seem particularly relevant to the advice given anyway.
I can’t click on any links on pages (the header works).
Using brave on iPhone.
Firefox and Safari works…
Zeroth, proofread.
Eh, if your hook is interesting and your writing is generally solid, I'm not about to begrudge a few typos
True, but any re-reading will let you pick up a lot of the typos. If you write it once and ship it unedited, then you weren't interested, and the reader likely won't be either. Typos clue the reader into that early.
This didn’t make me care
Agreed, because it's not very actionable advice. At best it provides some examples of what not to do.
The example leads to one classic bit of writing advice: tell only the very most important things and omit everything else. Start the story as late as you can and end it as early as possible. This applies to nonfiction just as much as to fiction.
aaand, how to apply this technique to a CV?
prepending a one-liner-about-some-feat that might interest that particular company, before the usual cv afterthat?
hmm. made me think..