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Imagine for a moment that your reader is shopping at a crowded market.
Stalls everywhere. People streaming past. The vendor turns to a shopper and says:
Step right up! You can be the proud owner of this brand new widget! Nobody has ever made this thing before and I put a lot of work into it. Yours for the low, low price of $9.99.
The shopper walks on, of course.
Why? Because the vendor told her the product was new and that he worked hard on it.
But neither of those qualities is valuable to the shopper. To her it makes no difference whether the product is new or how hard the manufacturer worked on it.
She buys things when she perceives value. And value is always a solution to a problem.
Most writers make the same mistake as the hard-working vendor.
They present their ideas as if their value is obvious, as though the ideas are interesting simply because the writer has them.
But like shoppers at a busy market, readers have many other vendors vying for their attention. And their attention is a limited currency.
So if they can't see the problem your text solves, they'll take their business elsewhere.
What It Is
Before any of the sentence-level writing tools matter, you need to answer the most fundamental question a reader asks: "Why should I care?"
The answer is always a problem. If readers can't perceive a problem, they can't perceive value. And why would they read something worthless?
A problem has two parts:
- a condition (some situation or trend) and
- an intolerable consequence (a cost that readers don't want to pay).
Many writers include only the first part: a condition, some situation or trend that happens to interest them. But the condition alone isn't enough. Without identifying the consequences of that condition, it amounts to little more than a topic.
Misinformation is spreading on social media.
That's just a topic. It's a condition, a current trend. But without identifying the consequences of that condition, the reader has no reason to care. (It's possible that the reader is already interested in misinformation or social media, in which case she'll be happy to read on. But the point here is that there's nothing in the text to make the reader care about that condition.)
The topic becomes a problem when you show its cost:
In the last six months, misinformation has been linked to three public health scares, two election interference investigations, and measurable erosion of public trust in major institutions.
Now the reader sees not just a situation but a consequence they want to avoid.
So your first job as a writer is to establish a problem your readers care about. Every other writing technique is downstream of this one.
Why It Works
When we're deeply interested in a topic, we'll read anything about it.
But we read even more attentively when we read about a problem that matters to us—from fixing a leaky faucet to understanding the origins of disease. When we're motivated to read attentively, we read with greater understanding. And what we read even seems more clearly written, because we're so engaged with it.
This means motivation and clarity are linked.
A reader who sees the value of your writing will find it clearer than a reader who doesn't, even if the text is identical. The first job of an introduction, then, isn't to display your knowledge or establish a topic. It's to set up a reason for the reader to care.
Different readers care about different problems. And they have different levels of awareness of those problems.
Some readers already know their problem and are searching for a solution.
Others expect a solution exists but are looking for someone who can deliver it.
Others don't even know they have a problem.
Your introduction needs to meet your readers where they are, which means adapting how you present the problem—i.e., the condition and its consequences.