So how do you grab and keep the readers interest? Well you grab it by entering their world I would say right at the beginning you enter their world because you know who they are hopefully if you don't know who they are you bellifying out quick and then you go into their world and you think about their needs their interests you hook them that way and you hook them by obviously headline and such like but let's get beyond the headline. The first paragraph you want to make your sentences short they've got to be absolutely pointed towards the needs and interests of that reader and you want to make the early paragraph short as well. We're not talking about news items here we're talking about features let's say or opinion pieces so if you keep your paragraphs punchy and your sentences punchy by the way a sentence is a thought and a paragraph is a theme if that helps you so you don't want to go mixing themes in my paragraph or jumbling up multiple thoughts in one sentence that's a bit of an aside but if you can surprise the readers in treegum hold out some kind of promise that this article is really going to be worthwhile they'll hang in there. Now it depends then on the length of the piece if it's a short piece then you probably won't have much problem sustaining their interests but if it's a long piece like a feature of two three thousand words let's say you have got to drop nuggets in all the way through that piece and the way we write we tend to write as a pyramid I don't know if you're familiar with this the pyramid way of writing but you are a central point you build it out with evidence you answer the questions that you expect the reader is going to need answers to and then you move on to another one so don't don't fire all your bullets out the gun right at the beginning save them and I said nuggets before now I'm saying bullets but it's the same thing save some so that you sprinkle them all the way through the article and then wrap up nicely at the end and gather your thoughts together so I would say