How Far Can You Take Readers
in Just 1 or 2 Sentences?

You want to bring readers to a specific perspective on your cause, right? Let’s imagine that perspective as a gorgeous view from a mountain peak. You describe it perfectly, instantaneously transporting your readers to this place where the planet is laid out before them like a wrinkled blanket, and you say, “My work is to guide people up this mountain! Isn’t it amazing?”

You wait with bated breath, while they squint at the sun, scratch their mosquito bites, yawn, and finally reply, “Yeah, it’s nice. When’s lunch?” And your heart falls into your hiking boots. Your writing has skillfully depicted the most incredible heights achieved through all of your hard labor, but your readers understand nothing about the mountain beneath their feet.

For the reader, being brought right to the mountain vista is rather like taking an elevator up to the peak… and falling asleep on the way up. Just think of how much more profoundly readers will experience the vista if you start by taking them on the journey of climbing, and then show them the view from the top! If first they understand the heavy backpacks, slippery gravel, burning muscles, and sweaty brows, the final vista of a valley spotted with cloud shadows and lakes reflecting liquid gold will move them all the deeper. Only if you bring people down into the valley first will they understand how high your peak really is, and only after tumbling down from the peak will they see how low and rocky the valley can be.

My point: readers will be more engaged with your work if your writing brings them through its ups and downs.

The most obvious way to carry readers on a journey is to tell a story arc focusing on a problem and solution, a goal and the obstacles that must be overcome to achieve it, etc. Such narratives are fantastic, but tend to take at least a paragraph. Sometimes you don’t have space for that, but don’t worry; that doesn’t mean you have to go with the elevator approach. You can actually still take readers to a valley and a peak within just one or two sentences.

Here’s how: Be as brief as you need to be, but be sure to describe at least one valley and one peak, and don’t let any other text come between them. If the two are right next to each other, within the same sentence or two, readers can’t help but contrast them. It is that contrast that makes readers automatically imagine the rising or falling journey that has to be experienced between a peak and a valley in life. If you do this whenever you have the opportunity (even if you also have a longer story elsewhere in the same piece), your readers will respond more strongly to your work. Take a look at the table below for examples.

	Text	Peaks & Valleys/ Ups & Downs
	Our English classes for first generation immigrants help many to obtain better jobs in their previous areas of expertise, which require fluency in speaking and writing. Obtaining these jobs can even enable some of our students to make salaries which start them on the path toward home ownership.	mood only rises slightly
	A third of our students were skilled breadwinners for their families before emigrating, but here minimal English forced them into minimum-wage jobs and cramped tenements. A one-year English class can often bring these students from food stamps to salaried jobs with incomes of $50,000-70,000 and plans for home ownership.	mood rises a bit, falls drastically, then rises dramatically
	Chiropractic care can help you become more mobile. You may find afterward that you can move through your day more easily, exercise more, and not feel pain.	mood only rises slightly
	If pain is keeping you from the satisfaction of exercise, or even from walking around as much as you want to, chiropractic care could liberate you to walk, run, and dance in easy freedom.	mood falls steeply, then flies high