Something about that post-holiday weekend feeling
Oh, hi friends!
When I was working at The Daily Beast, there was always this fun idea that the day after a three-day weekend (or the return after any holiday) had the potential to be a “good traffic day.” The thinking, I suppose, was that everyone would be back at their computers, hungry to work — or distract themselves from work by reading the news.
This always put pressure on writers and editors to prepare stories in advance for the day after the holiday. (You also knew not to waste a good story on a summer Friday, when no one was sitting at their computer.)
The strategies for getting people to visit websites have changed, but there’s something about that thinking that’s always stuck with me.
Today does feel like a great time to start, debut, or make progress on something.
Not because people are refreshing their browsers, waiting for it, but because you’re back at your desk, maybe a little more rested and a little hungrier for a challenge than before, thinking about what’s next.
This may look like just another Twitter cat meme — and it is! — but it also reminds me of good storytelling advice, which is: Let the reader do a bit of work. Don’t give them everything, all at once.
The same can be true for most types of writing. How can you tease out the protagonist, the mystery, the big reveal? How can you make the person watching, reading, absorbing, constantly ask, “Yes yes, but now what?”
The Underground Railroad is a slow-burning masterpiece and breaks a lot of ‘rules’ of TV. (One episode is 70 minutes, the next is 18? And the stillness, the silence, the cinematography!) How can you break some rules today?
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Thanks, as always, for reading.
Love, Kara