6 Ways to Gain Your Audience’s Attention

1. Establish common ground: What is it that will connect the reader to your paper? What does the reader have in common with you?

2. Arouse curiosity: Use intriguing or startling statements that immediately grab the reader’s attention. They want to read the rest of your paper because they are curious.

3. Tell a story: Is there a story that you can relate that corresponds to your topic? If you are writing about making wrong choices, you can begin by telling about a student who seemed to have the perfect life until he made the one wrong choice that cost him everything.

4. Use rhetorical questions: These are questions that don’t seek an immediate response from your audience. Instead, they are posed to simply get your audience thinking and get them involved in your thoughts.

5. Begin with a memorable quotation: If you are writing about your experiences as a softball or baseball player you might begin with the line, “You play ball like a girl,” from the movie Sandlot. Quotations that people recognize immediately draw them in to the paper.

6. Use humor: Be careful with this one. What you think is funny may not be to others. A random joke that doesn’t tie in with your topic will not be funny.