August 26, 2026

How do you keep people reading?

One of the members in Ditcherville asked:

How do you leave open loops in your writing and speaking to keep people interested in following up with questions?

I first learned about open loops in a book called On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

I’m not sure if Zinsser explicitly uses the term “open loops” in the book, but he definitely talks about the mechanics of what an open loop is.

TL;DR:

An open loop is basically a cliffhanger.

Here’s how I think about open loops in my daily emails:

Don’t try to explain everything
Focus on getting one point across
Along the way, mention the next thing they’ll need to understand
Leave that thread open for tomorrow

For example, I might write an email about how you can increase profits by using value-based pricing.

And then at the end, say something like:

Of course, if your positioning is weak, the whole concept falls apart because someone else can just undercut your price.

...which is likely to make the reader think, “Okay, so how do I prevent THAT?”

So the next day, I’ll write an email about how to improve weak positioning.

And in THAT message, I might open a loop about how to make the right people aware of your stronger positioning.

Rinse and repeat.

While we’re talking about open loops...

On the call, I described a common “closed loop” trap that new writers often fall into. From the transcript:

A common trap when people first start, say, blogging or writing emails is that they try to answer everything in one message and it turns into a giant mess. You basically start writing a bad book about every aspect of the subject, instead of what was supposed to be just one short email.

Here’s the thing...

You WANT to create curiosity.

You WANT to create tension.

It’s like an itch the reader can’t scratch.

And you want it to stay itchy for a little while so that when they do scratch it, it’s satisfying.

If you don’t, it makes it harder for them to read and retain the material.

Yours,

—J