The Art and Business of Online Writing: How to Beat the Game of Capturing and Keeping Attention

by Nicolas Cole

When people read online, they don’t actually “read.” What they do is skim. Browse. Scroll. They let their eyes gloss over the words, and if something compelling catches their eye in the first two, five, maybe ten seconds (a word, a subhead, a phrase), then they’ll stop skimming and start reading. But you better believe as soon as momentum in the writing starts to slow, they’re gone. They’ll swipe back to their social media feed and be neck deep in Memeville in a millisecond. When I was in college, one of my teachers used to say all the time, “If your story is reliant on the reader making it past the first few pages, then chances are, your story doesn’t need those pages.”