Editor's introduction: Whether it is an advertisement or an article or a speech, the first sentence is very important, and grasping people's hearts in the first sentence is often the key to victory; many times when we write articles, we are often stuck on the first sentence, and we do not know how to start; the author of this article shares several common copywriting opening methods, let's take a look at it together.
Everything is difficult at the beginning, and it is even more difficult to begin a text.
Some people say that the beginning of the article is a "three-line love book" written for the reader - it must be in the first three lines to make people fall into the inability to extricate themselves, otherwise they may be abandoned.
After all, the short video is so happy, the creation camp is so hot, why should you listen to you in this conversation.
So how to write a good start? Here are a few common ways to win at the beginning without worrying.
< h1 toutiao-origin="h2" >01 paragraph method</h1>
Jia Pingwa once said: Life in the world, encountering thousands of people, only interesting, the most rare.
Interesting things no one will refuse, funny beginnings are like stuffing a piece of sugar into the reader, handing over a cigarette, and making people expect you to give me a new trick.
For example, at the beginning of Li Chengpeng's novel "Li Coke's Anti-Demolition": "Since I became mentally ill, my spirit has been much better."
Quoting a network paragraph, it smoothly opens the protagonist's magical life in a mental hospital.
"GQ Labs" explosive article "When life wants to hammer people, never pick objects" began: Contemporary life is not thin.
After working for many years, although there is not much left in the savings, it leaves a bunch of sequelae. Although the housing area is getting smaller and smaller, the area of psychological shadows is increasing day by day.
Immediately amuse people, and then watch him tell the scene of various life critical hits.
Wang Xiaobo's "Thirty and Standing" begins: "Wang Er was born in Beijing, and I am Wang Er."
It was indeed quite two, and this person was suddenly erect.
Like the article, there is a "7-second principle" in the speech, and the audience must be captured within 7 seconds, otherwise people will be distracted.
Before advertising an office building, I invited economist Lang Xianping to give a speech, and Professor Lang took the stage to say the first sentence: How are you, guests?
The audience shouted in unison: Good~!
Professor Lang: But China's economy is not very good.
There was a lot of laughter in the audience, and the venue immediately warmed up, and the atmosphere of the whole speech was very warm.
Another time, invited another big coffee to speak, the opening straight into the theme, flat and straight out, the same dry goods, but the field is cold like an ice cellar, and even a few wonderful paragraphs do not stir up the splash.
Why does the "Talk Show Conference" have a special laugher? Because once the field is cold, it really can't be saved.
And Jobs and Luo Yonghao are both masters of opening statements.
At the 2013 Hammer mobile phone operating system conference, Lao Luo appeared on the scene, and everyone applauded, only to see Lao Luo pretend to be calm and said:
"Are you ready?" Calm down, we are a gathering of the scientific and technological community, not a quyi activity, so I hope you will calm down. (As a result, everyone laughed more happily)
When Jobs released the first generation of iPhones, he came up and teased the audience: "Today, we are going to release three revolutionary products, the first is a smartphone, the second is an iPod with a contactable screen, and the third is a revolutionary browser." Do you get the idea? I'm not talking about three separate products, I'm talking about one product. This product is called the iPhone. (The audience went straight crazy)
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" >02 suspense method</h1>
UC shocked the body, the unscrupulous title party, always hated people with itchy teeth, but couldn't help but ask and then, relying on the strong attraction of "suspense" to people.
Suspense, that is, the reader's eager anticipation of the development and change of the unknown plot. Say half, leave half, make a gap, hang your appetite, and make people addicted.
Today's online novels, in order to adapt to the recommendation of the algorithm, always do their best to scare out the beginning of the explosion, such as the first paragraph at the beginning of the popular online article "Immortal Dynasty Emperor": "Gongzi is dead."
Just 4 words, spread out the huge suspense.
Nobel Prize winner and master of the beginning, Albert Camus, looked straight at the insider, and his novel The Outsider begins: "Today, My Mother is dead." Maybe it was yesterday, and I couldn't figure it out."
Not only is it full of suspense, but the image of an impersonal "outsider" is about to come out.
Therefore, the suspense is good, and there is no trouble at the beginning.
Copywriter John Carps wrote a direct mail ad for the American Conservatory of Music: "They laugh at me when I sit at the piano, but when I start playing..."
Through the contrast of the attitudes of others before and after playing, it creates suspense and cuts to the "counterattack plot" in people's hearts, which is very substitutionary.
The ad was so successful that It was called one of the most recognizable ads of all time by David Ogilvy, and variations of the phrase are still used in the headlines and openings of many new media hits.
Suspenseful beginnings, whether in new media articles, long advertising copywriting, or world famous books or movie scripts have a wide range of applications.
The Oscar-winning Best Picture, The Kramers, begins with the script outline: "When we were least prepared, life suddenly struck us."
Kafka's Metamorphosis begins:
One morning, Gregor Samsa awoke from an uneasy sleep and found himself lying in bed transformed into a giant beetle.
Wang Xiaobo's "Golden Age" begins: When I was twenty-one years old, I was in the yunnan queue. Chen Qingyang was twenty-six years old at the time, working as a doctor where I joined the team. I was on the fourteenth team down the hill, and she was on the fifteenth team on the mountain. One day she came down from the mountain and discussed with me the problem that she wasn't a broken shoe.
The author's preface to The Way of Creativity begins: "It is often difficult to know where great ideas come from. In the case of this book, that's easy."
The long copywriter Parveez Shaikh wrote for XENON TV: If you can read this advertisement clearly, you should feel fortunate for yourself, because 400 million people in the world can't see it.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" >03 syntactic</h1>
What if you can't think of a paragraph or create suspense? It's also easy to do.
Put a golden sentence at the beginning, simple, powerful, and attract attention.
A sentence directly shocks people, such as the opening golden sentences of these famous works, and some of them can even surpass the work itself, and take the work with it in a long river of time.
Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina begins: "Happy families are all alike, unhappy families have their own misfortunes."
Dickens's Tale of Two Cities begins: "This is the best of times, this is the worst of times."
Han Yu's "The Beginning of the Horse Saying": "There is Bole in the world, and then there is a thousand-mile horse." Maxima is often present, but Bó Lè is not."
Luo Guanzhong's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" begins: "When it comes to the general trend of the world, it will be united for a long time, and it will be divided for a long time."
In Mimon's famous work "To the Untouchables", the golden sentence at the beginning allows countless people to find an emotional outlet. "'Raise your hand' is my humble word, not your moral kidnapping."
For example, there are probably hundreds of lou books in the country that begin with the same sentence: The city is an open book, from which you can see the ambitions of a city. - Sharinin
In fact, there are many famous sayings about architecture, and you can start with a random sentence:
Architecture is solidified notes, and music is fluid architecture. - Hegel
Man-made houses, houses also make people. — Churchill
The more national, the more worldly. --I.M. Pei
The first is the lot, the second is the lot, and the third is the lot. - Li Ka-shing
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" >04 related laws</h1>
A beginning of how to attract people to read, there is a point is "related to me", in fact, most people will only care about their own things, after all, everyone is busy with 996 volume all day, and those who have nothing to do with me should not affect my work.
For example, the beginning of Philip Ward's Advertising Copywriting:
It was a Saturday morning. Yet instead of playing golf or on your way to the beach, you're in the office, staring at the word-processing screen as if a brilliant idea were going to pop out of it.
After watching the bullet screen in my head, it exploded: "I am not wrong", "Please don't scold", "You just read my ID number"...
In The Way of Creativity, the apple copywriter Steve Hayden begins with this:
If you want to be a well-paid copywriter, please the customer.
If you want to be a very award-winning copywriter, please yourself.
If you want to be great copywriters, please the readers.
The sense of substitution is too strong, and it has begun to enter the seat.
Look at the beginning of the long copy of Shengjia Ma Xiaobo's B station "Houlang": "Those who claim that a generation is not as good as a generation, they should look at you, like me."
After the 80s, 90s, and 00s, they all pricked up their ears, "a generation is not as good as a generation" why does it sound so familiar? The sense of substitution is too strong, and it has begun to enter a period of rebellion.
There is also the beginning of Feng Tang's "How to Avoid Becoming a Greasy Middle-Aged Lewd Man":
More able to dissipate a few storms, the most pitiful pile of flesh. Once upon a time, we had nothing but the future, we were full of curiosity, we had endless strength, we were not afraid of loss, we had light in our eyes, we read for the rise of China, our lower bodies were swollen, our hormones were creaking, we loved girls, we grew everything. Once upon a time, time seemed to change overnight from "not walking" to "never staying". Once upon a time, even the word "once upon a time" became so pretentious...
Sentence after sentence poured down, irresistible, like a bullet to directly break the middle-aged man's defense. Feng Tang woke up the next day and found that his circle of friends had been brushed by himself.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" >05 question method</h1>
Having said so much before, it feels like I've learned it, but when I use it, I find that I have really learned it.
I knew it would be like this, so I prepared a backhand here, and I really didn't know how to start, so I started with a question.
As the saying goes: the beginning is indecisive, the question is solved.
All kinds of new media big V such as GQ Lab, characters, Mimon tried and failed, all kinds of copywriting gods, speech opening is also used again.
GQ "The Fate of The Tool Man:" begins: "In a rapidly changing world, what is constant?"
The character "The Black Talk Dilemma of the Internet Giants" begins: "How much have you been changed by the Internet in the past decade?"
John Bevance, Australia's top creative in The Way of Creativity, begins: "Is the copywriting job just sitting there thinking about ideas?" I don't think so."
In Luo Zhenyu's "Friend of Time" speech in 2020, he opened like this: 2019 is about to pass. Is there a specific person in your mind who, in this year, at a certain moment, has lit you up? I have.
Carter and Reagan ran for president of the United States, when the gap between the two sides was large, and the Carter team felt that the victory was in hand, and in the final debate, Reagan's opening statement:
Hello dear guys, I would like to ask you, will your life be better today than it was 4 years ago?
If you're better off, please vote for President Carter. If life is no better today than it was 4 years ago, please vote for me.
And Reagan's campaign slogan was the same: Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?
In the end, Reagan won, and many wavering people voted for Reagan, after all, who can bear such a soul-pointing question?
If the beginning is the aphrodisiac of copywriting, then the end is the climax of the copywriting, but as an article about the beginning, I will not end here.
This article was originally published by @Copywriter Free Shipping everyone is a product manager, and reprinting without the author's permission is prohibited.
The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.