November’s writing yoga

Did you know that most journalists don’t write the actual headlines for their pieces? Somebody else does—because headline writing is a specialized skill.

Creating a knowledge gap

A good headline not only tells you what the piece is about, but it gets you interested in the topic. It sparks your curiosity.

Headline writers often entice us to click by creating what’s called a knowledge gap, making us think that there’s something that we don’t know that we now want to know. And they do this by using one of four levers to activate our curiosity:

1. Incomplete story
2. Novelty
3. Unexpectedness
4. Personal relevance

This month, play with writing headlines using these levers to make people curious about what’s to follow. Write headlines for:

• One email message
• One book you’ve read recently

Email subject line examples

Thanksgiving is coming up in the States in November. Let’s say I’m sending an email to my family, and want to catch their attention and make sure they read the message. I could experiment with those four different levers to create a subject line.

For example, I could appeal to novelty. We’re trying something new this Thanksgiving.

I could go for the unexpected. This Thanksgiving, we’re ditching the turkey.

I could try an incomplete story. I asked Grandma about Thanksgiving and her answer surprised me.

Or I could go for personal relevance. What’s your favorite Thanksgiving food?

Try writing a few curiosity-inducing subject lines for one of your emails. You don’t actually have to use them if they don’t feel right. You’ll still learn from the attempt. 

Then try writing a headline for a book that you’ve completed recently. It might be the headline for a book review. Again, really play on these curiosity-inducing things.

Why we should try headline writing

Why do we do this if we don’t actually want to become headline writers? 

First, it’s a useful skill. If we want to write effective subject lines, we should know how to make people curious. 

Second, as readers, we should be able to recognize how headlines are acting on us.

Most of all, once we understand those hooks into curiosity, we can use them in a much more subtle way in our writing. We can craft introductions that entice the reader or create a powerful hook for a book proposal.

See what it’s like to be a headline writer, and let me know what you think. 

Related content

Did you miss any of the other Writing Yogas this year? Find the rest of them here.

Want to explore other ways that introductions hook you? Check out my new book The Curious Reader’s Field Guide to Nonfiction.