An Easy Way to Make Anything You Write More Engaging
The power of quotability
One of my favorite Medium functionalities is the Highlights tool. It allows the reader to “like” a sentence or passage, of course, but more importantly to me, as both reader and editor, it encourages all of us to write in a more quotable way.
Ensuring your writing includes quotable lines will improve anything you write— a Medium story, a short presentation, a big speech, an important email, the third chapter of your book, anything—and it will make your writing more accessible and engaging to the reader. Here’s how to pull it off.
The power of quotability
Writing for quotability has always felt a little tactical. I want people to absorb the entire story, of course, but I want there to be moments in a story that impact a reader acutely. I want them to remember these moments and reflect them to other people.
When I was working on print magazines, those lines always turned into great pull quotes, those big quotes that any magazine story over, say, 750 words needs. They act as islands in a sea of text. And they sell the story to the reader. Readers always scan stories (either online or in print) before reading them, and the pull quotes are ways to suggest to readers as they scan: This is gonna be great! They’re like story trailers.
The inability to find a great pull quote in a story always indicated to me that the story was missing… something. Assertions probably.
Pull quotes and lines that readers quote to friends or highlight on Medium speak to the reader in a different way than other sentences in a story. They are authoritative. They crystallize a theme. They propel the story forward. And they are great micro-reads. There’s a kind of poetry about them
How to make your writing more quotable
Pick any Medium profile and look at what the reader has chosen to highlight. Not the stories they chose to highlight, but the highlights themselves. These lines often have a certain usefulness.
Quotable, highlightable lines are often:
- Complete, autonomous ideas that don’t require context. Look out for the word “it” which can tank a sentence’s quotability. Take the sentence “Usefulness is an underrated quality in writing.” That’s pretty quotable. “It’s an underrated quality in writing” is not.
- Assertions, not merely observations and free of hedging phrases like “I think”: (“Usefulness is, I think, an underrated quality in writing.” is not as quotable.)
- Concepts applicable beyond the scope of the story they’re reading. “Usefulness is an underrated quality in writing.” is applicable to more than just a story about quotability and highlightability on Medium.
Always write for the reader
When you reread a draft of something you’ve written, ask yourself: Does this include quotable lines? Does it include truths? Does it include lines for the reader. Does it include a maxim or an aphorism or a future “saying.”
This is not a trick.
Writing with an eye toward quotability is a generous act. You’re helping the reader understand your words and their lives. You’re equipping them with portable ideas that they can impart to others. You’re writing for the reader. Always write for the reader.
Honor the reader’s need to relate to you and to see the world through your eyes so that they can take what you know and apply it to their own lives. Equip them with truth that they can use to understand more than just what you’re writing about.
Readers and writers crave connection, and quotable lines facilitate that connection.
