First, you never want to have three or more long paragraphs… - Nicolas Cole

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First, you never want to have three or more long paragraphs one after another. That style of writing has been dead for years, and anyone writing that way on the internet is clinging to a way things were but no longer are. Second, if you are going to have long paragraphs one after another, you want to find ways to change up their internal rhythm so they don’t feel or sound exactly the same. One way of doing this is by using punctuation. Have one paragraph with a lot of short, strong sentences. Have the next paragraph be one long, winding sentence. This is what makes them seem “different.” Lastly, notice how before and after both long paragraphs in the above excerpt there are single, declarative sentences. This is very intentional. Again, you want to subtly tell the reader, “I’m going to tell you a quick story — this will only take a second,” before giving them their next mile marker. There’s something about reading a single sentence after a long paragraph that gives a reader the same feeling a listener gets hearing a chord resolve on the piano. Let your chords resolve.

Nicolas Cole

The Art and Business of Online Writing: How to Beat the Game of Capturing and Keeping Attention · August 28, 2020 Verified in 1 source Sign up to see the complete provenance

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Dickie Bush William Zinsser Keith Ferrazzi Natalie Goldberg Paul Millerd

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The 1/5/1 structure is the same as the 1/3/1 structure, just with more room for description and clarification in the middle. Here’s how it works: This first sentence is your opener. This second sentence clarifies your opener. This third sentence reinforces the point you’re making with some sort of credibility or amplified description. This fourth sentence builds on that credibility or description, giving added context or new information. This fifth sentence explains to the reader why you’re telling them what you’re telling them. And this sixth sentence drives home the point. This seventh sentence is your strong conclusion. You want to use the 1/5/1 structure when your opener would benefit from additional context, or you want to tell a story that requires an extra sentence or two for clarification.

Somewhere along the line, a writer woke up in the morning and thought, “You know, romance is a pretty big category. But I bet there are readers who only want to read romance novels in military settings.” All of a sudden, you as a reader have to make a very concrete choice: do you want to read any romance novel? Or do you want to read a romance novel where the main character is in the military? This is where, again, Specificity Is The Secret. The more specific you can be about why your new category is exactly what your target readers are looking for, the more likely it is readers will see this category of yours as unique and SEPARATE from any and all competition.

The real question you should never stop asking yourself is, “Could this be more specific?” Because the more specific you can be, the more likely you are to resonate with your target reader MORE than your competition.

First, you never want to have three or more long paragraphs one after another. That style of writing has been dead for years, and anyone writing that… - Nicolas Cole

Additional quotes by Nicolas Cole