How To Write Page-Turner Content

When it comes to how to write a novel that is a real page-turner, there are many books and blog articles that explain how to do that. But how do we get our blog posts, articles, and essays read from top to bottom? In this article, you’ll find three proven ways to turn your content into a real page-turner.

Long before I started writing blog articles, I wrote novels. I now look back on twenty-nine publications. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about how to captivate readers and make them devour chapter after chapter.

Since all my books are listed in Kindle unlimited’s lending program, I’m used to being paid according to read pages, among other things. The more readers read my book thoroughly, the better I get paid.

In the world of bloggers, other measures also count when it comes to defining success. Views, i.e., page impressions, are a criterion that is much more important for bloggers than for us novelists.

Nobody pays me to have a thousand people look at my product page at Amazon.

For bloggers, however, page views are critical because traffic determines how much money they can take from advertisers.

Until recently, this was also true of medium authors in a similar way. All we had to do was make sure that as many other Medium members as possible, click on our articles and then press the clap button at the end of the story.

Sure, there is a difference whether we only have to generate page impressions, or whether we still have to rely on claps at the end. But one thing was the same for bloggers and medium writers: We didn’t have to care if our content was read completely.

This is now changing, as we all know from numerous articles from the last twenty-four hours and from a mail from Medium.

Now we have to make sure that readers don’t just fly over our articles but actually read them.

Let’s take a look at how we can achieve this.

Prove expertise

This tip does not apply to every type of article. Poems, flash fiction, listicles, and other types of content that virtually anyone can write don’t depend on your credibility as an author.

How-to articles, tutorials, content about success, self-development, or scientific articles, on the other hand, are more likely to be accepted by the reader if it is apparent that the author knows precisely what he is writing about.

Writing tips from someone who has never published a book? Business strategies from someone who works as an employee? Success strategies from people who are broke or lead a very average life? Hardly any reader will expect to learn anything from such articles.

When I point out in the introduction to this article that I am a full-time author and have already published twenty-nine novels, I don’t do that to brag.

I’m telling the reader: Look, I know what I’m talking about. When you read my article, you’re not wasting your time.

Building an Arc of Suspense

In novels, the arc of suspense in a story is often created by a three-act structure. We can adopt this structure for our articles to develop a comparable dynamic.

The first act of a novel introduces the characters and their goals. The central conflict (or main problem) is shown, and towards the end of the first act follows the first point of no return — an event that irreversibly directs further action in a specific direction.

From this point on, the hero of the story can no longer reverse. He must face his problems or opponents and become active.

The first act, therefore, serves as an introduction to the story. The introduction accounts for about twenty-five percent of the story. Of course, this is only an approximate value.

If we want to apply the principle of the first act to our articles, we face the problem that we usually don’t have a hero, as is the case in novels.

But we can imagine our readers as heroes of our article instead. If we make it clear to the reader what insights and solutions he can gain from reading the article, we make him the hero of our story.

He will now be curious to see how the article will solve his problems and answer his questions.

At the end of the introduction, we give him the decisive reason why he should continue reading. If we have him so far that he continues reading after the opening, he has crossed the point of no return. The article has captivated the reader like a critical event capturing the main character from a novel.

The second act: After the hero has become aware at the end of the first act that he must act, the second act is about how he and the other characters act to solve the central problem or to decide the central conflict for himself.

In about the middle of the second act, additional problems or important information often emerge that further increase the dynamics of the story.

It becomes apparent how the goal can be achieved or the problem solved. In the second half of the second act, the pace of action increases, and the motivation of the alternate characters increases, because much is now more apparent than at the beginning of the story.

So the second act is the central part of the story. It comprises about fifty percent of the entire text.

We can also transfer the principle of the second act to our articles.

Here we address the questions raised in the introduction directly.

The second act contains the How of a How-To article. In the second act, the concrete success strategies of a success-article are described. Here the scientific findings of a scientific essay are revealed.

The third act serves the resolution. Here the hero succeeds in using the insights gained in the second act to defeat his adversary or solve his problem.

This part covers the last quarter of the story.

Our article is also resolved in the third act. We conclude, summarize the essential points once again and show the reader how to take the next step with the insights gained.

Here is the place to refer to further information and to announce upcoming articles dealing with other aspects of the subject. Also, in the third act, we can motivate the reader to perform specific actions.

Here we link to our other articles that may be of interest to the reader and offer to provide further information and updates via email.

Use Cliffhangers

In my novels, I write the story from changing perspectives and divide the plot into scenes.

Each scene is always written from the perspective of precisely one person. When I arrive at the end of a scene, I always leave a question open, which is only answered when I return to the perspective of that character in a later scene.

So I motivate the reader to keep on track because, of course, he wants to know whether Harry, whom I just pushed over a cliff, survives the fall or not. But he has to read on because I finished the scene the moment Harry fell into the depths.

Even if we write articles, we can use this stylistic device. However, we should use it sparingly so that it doesn’t wear out.

How do you create a cliffhanger in an informative article?

We use sentences like: But we’ll come back to this in more detail below” or “We’ll come back to it later, but first …

For this to work, what we want to come back to later must, of course, be extremely attractive. Let’s take as an example of an article with the title: “How you can double your reading speed immediately.”

To create a cliffhanger in this article, you could write in the introduction, for example:

In fact, with advanced techniques, it’s even possible to increase your reading speed tenfold, but I’ll get to that later. Let’s start by doubling the reading speed. Only then you are ready to use the advanced techniques.

Now we have the reader on the hook because, of course, he wants to get to know these advanced techniques as well.

But first, he has to read on until there.

Cliffhangers are very useful if they are used sensibly. If we overdo it, however, we can also annoy the reader. As soon as he gets the impression that we are withholding crucial information from him for longer than necessary, he will stop reading and perhaps never read anything from us again.

Conclusion

Article writers can learn a lot from successful novelists when it comes to captivating readers.

The three-act structure and cliffhanger technique can also be applied to a large extent to article writing. Especially now that the Medium is changing the criteria according to which authors are paid, we have to adopt such techniques.

But it’s not about imposing a three-act structure on every article or using many cliffhangers every time, but about using these techniques as additional tools. Some of us may have neglected these techniques because they were not necessary.

Well, now, they are essential. Our payment no longer depends on how many other authors we get to clap in favor of our articles. From now on, we have to put our readers first.

Also, we need to show the reader why we are qualified to write on a particular topic. If the reader does not trust us, he will ignore us.

So the reader’s journey through our work begins with trust. Then we must first arouse his interest and then maintain it throughout the text.

If we succeed, we can also be successful under the new rules.

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