Medium Writers — Leave a Little Bit of Your Message to Mystery
Why our strange brains want your open loops and mind tricks
While the latest, so-called ‘clickbait’ rules have sent many Medium writers freaking-out and over the fences, I recommend you take the back-road.
Instead of work so hard to comply with a bland approach to content, with article titles that do little more than force the reader to make a yes/no decision — it’s time to add some mystery.
If you’ve written copy for any length of time you understand the power of intrigue.
Our brains are obsessed with curiosity and open-ended questions. We get this little antenna-pop in our subconscious and it makes us itchy to have open-ended loops.
Think of the last time you couldn’t remember what’s-his-name.
That brain-lapse probably drove you half-mad. When a loop is open we feel compelled to close it. When a question is asked we feel compelled to answer it. When we don’t know the answer we feel compelled to find out.
All this nonsense is baked-in to our hard-wiring.
And for good reason. These evolutionary tidbits keep us striving for more, asking more questions of our world, doing our best to improve our work, and eventually tweaking…
