One might lament that modern communicators are bereft of journalism backgrounds and don’t know how to write a lead. But evidence shows me lately that communicators are bereft of conversational backgrounds.
At least the ones promoting themselves on LinkedIn, with opening gambits like these, the likes of which I’ve read just in the last couple days:
“Early in my career, I had a job that made me miserable …”
“Nonfiction readers, I have a question for you. Why do you read nonfiction?”
“If I had a dollar for every time a speechwriting client asked me for an opening joke …”
A busy reader—and every reader feels busy—has to know right away why she or he is reading this right now. Has to know that at the very least.
I mean, even a companion on a car ride wants to know why you’re bringing something up, and if you’re compelled to introduce something off topic, you apologize: “This is apropos of nothing, but …”
For half the LinkedIn posts I read, that ought to be the headline.
The problem is, the writer knows why the reader is reading this right now. It’s because the writer privately committed to publishing a blog post at nine a.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and it is Wednesday at nine a.m. But your need to put some more wood into the content chipper doesn’t equal my need to read.
Your lead doesn’t have to tell the reader, If you don’t read this right now you’ll be totally out of the loop on a matter of great national importance.
But it’s bare minimum—even if you have regular readers who are in the routine of bagging what you’re mowing—to say: Hey, here’s why I’m writing this today.
Here are the last three rather un-earth-shattering leads on Writing Boots that nevertheless anchor us in the moment:
“On Thursday, I’m recording an interview about Soccer Dad with former soccer dad and now prominent sports parenting podcaster Todd Merkow …” (I went on to give my reaction to an interview Merkow did with his daughter awhile back.)
“In response to my Thursday piece about Axios, CEOs and AI, my friend, the Des Moines bar impresario Jeff Bruning wrote: ‘AI is like the electric wheelchair for the mind. It’s good to use when you really need one, but if you use one because you’re lazy you’re heading down the road of atrophy.'”
“They had an eclipse in Europe this week. Legendary Chicago weatherman and Chicago treasure Tom Skilling … had a powerful emotional reaction to a similar event a few years ago, in the Midwest …”
Unless you are Robin Williams reincarnate, here are the only three situations I know of that you can get someone to listen to you gas on about something just because it popped into your head: on Hour Twelve of a road trip, on Day Seven of a night watch on an ocean crossing in a sailboat, and in Year 32 of a marriage.
Once, my wife and I were sitting quietly in the family room.
“Hey,” she said. “I went to a powwow once. Did I ever tell you that?”
“Huh. No, I don’t think you ever did.”
“Yeah. My grandma took me.”
“Huh.”
Silence.
(But come to think of it? We were watching a documentary about a Native American tribe at the time.)
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