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We’ve been talking about Meaning and its relationship to Attention. The basic simplicity is an equation: more meaning = more attention. For the most part, as we have seen, the world at large ignores us as writers and as human beings unless we belong to the small class of the super-famous. Even then, the attention given is usually fleeting, or what I have called Momentary. Much of the energy expended by those trying to attract attention in order to sell something or comm

Deep Attention is the fount from which ripples move outward, meeting the consciousness of readers at the level of Intermittent Attention. Perhaps you will understand more of what I am talking about if I use even a rather obscure example. ‘The Woodspurge’ By Dante Gabriel Rossetti is on the surface a simple enough poem: The wind flapp'd loose, the wind was still, Shaken out dead from tree and hill: I had walk'd on at the wind's will,— I sat now, for the wind was still.

Deep Attention is the fount from which ripples move outward, meeting the consciousness of readers at the level of Intermittent Attention. Perhaps you will understand more of what I am talking about if I use even a rather obscure example. ‘The Woodspurge’ By Dante Gabriel Rossetti is on the surface a simple enough poem: The wind flapp'd loose, the wind was still, Shaken out dead from tree and hill: I had walk'd on at the wind's will,— I sat now, for the wind was still.

Using quite a few jumbled analogies and metaphors, we have proceeded through the levels of Zero Attention (largely ignoring it as it ignores us) and Momentary Attention (encouraging it to linger with gifts) and arrived at Intermittent Attention. Having largely dismissed those who give us Zero Attention, we have focused on that mysterious shadowy troupe of people who visit us momentarily, and - depending upon which analogy you prefer - we have left out a saucer of milk, lure

Choosing the right genre, selecting the best setting, devising the most engaging plotlines, providing the necessary archetypal characters, and attracting attention through carefully planned and run scenes are part of what a writer must do to get the product of a reader connected with, fascinated by and moved by a story. It isn’t that there is such a thing as a difficult reader; there is really only a failure to recognise where a reader's attention is, or bungled attempts to

In one version of the story of Schrödinger’s cat, a cat is imagined as being enclosed in a box with a radioactive source and a poison that will be released when the source (unpredictably) emits radiation. According to quantum mechanics, the cat is simultaneously both dead and alive until the box is opened and the cat observed. I prefer the version in which no deaths are involved: the cat is either there, or not there, much like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. The p

In looking at the seven levels of attention, I asserted that the largest category was that of zero attention. I am hoping that this will be self-evident to you as a writer, or indeed as a human being. Basically, it is the claim that, out of all the people in the world, the biggest segment will be those who are not aware of you or your work at all. This might not apply if you are incredibly famous, of course. If you are the Pope, or a worldwide celebrity, or a notorious poli

It’s quite likely that a fair amount of science has gone into the subject of attention. There’s the Zeigarnik Effect, for example. Bluma Wulfovna Zeigarnik was a Soviet psychologist and psychiatrist who discovered the ‘Zeigarnik Effect’ after a study she completed in the 1920s in which she compared memory in relation to incomplete and complete tasks. Incomplete tasks, she found, are easier to remember than complete ones. What has this got to do with writing stories? A

Trying to write a story? Worried that you will end up penning something derivative, full of clichés, tired or too obvious? Here are three quick tactics you can use to grab your readers’ attention from the start: 1. Use a Unique Angle You can confidently begin anywhere, with anything, but spice it up immediately by taking a unique approach to the content. Say something unconventional or insightful; open in an intriguing way. For example, the opening sentence of Leo Tol