11 March 2013

Short Note on the Nut Graph

When writing for any browsable medium, whether news or online forum, you should use a Nut Graph. Where the first two sentences of your piece explain as succinctly as possible the reason why someone should keep reading at all.

It's an old news writing trick that more people ought to employ when writing for G+ and other places where people are far more apt to skim than to read something top to bottom.

The idea is simple enough, but it's not exactly an introduction. In a news article, you put the most important things first and then tapper them down to the bottom with the least important information. This serves two purposes, the first is that a reader will likely get the best details before they have finished reading the article, and second, editors trim from the bottom first when it comes to space issues. Thus the verdict, or the outcome isn't left to the reader's imagination.

But for those who write fiction, this seems tantamount to ruining their work. Like those pesky readers who flip to the last page of a mystery so they don't have to feel the anxiety of not knowing what's going to happen.

However, you're doing yourself and everyone else a favor when you use a Nut Graph to introduce what you're talking about, and a surprises first approach to the article. More people will read you, and better yet, more people will get what you're trying to tell them as well.

No comments:

Post a Comment