James Patterson, the world's bestselling author, offers tips for grabbing the public's attention

James Patterson is the best-selling author in the world because he has mastered the art of grabbing the reader's attention.

The opening sentence of Kiss the Girls, the second in Alex Cross's series of novels, reads: "For three weeks the young killer actually lived in inside the walls of an extraordinary fifteen room beach house. ."

Patterson encourages communicators to write (and rewrite) the opening of a presentation until it's strong enough to hook the listener. This is one of the lessons Patterson taught me during a recent conversation about his new memoir: James Patterson by James Patterson: The Stories of My Life.

"The front rows can really give you an edge," he said. "Grab your reader's attention quickly."

Yes, your audience wants to be informed. They also want to be entertained. Here are four quick ways to hang them.

1. Don't start with a diary

No one cares what you talk about later unless they are interested in what you talk about now. Save the agenda or schedule until you've caught their attention and set the scene.

2. Set the scene

Setting the scene means you immediately draw the listener into the story.

One of my favorite examples of staging is a TED talk by brain researcher Jill Bolte-Taylor, a neuroscientist I interviewed for one of my books.

Bolte-Taylor told me she practiced over a hundred times to pull off the following opening:

"On the morning of December 10, 1996, I woke up to find that a blood vessel had burst in the left half of my brain. And within four hours, I saw my brain completely deteriorate. in his ability to process all the information. On the morning of the hemorrhage, I couldn't walk, speak, read, write, or remember anything about my life. I basically became a child in the body of a woman."

I don't know about you, but after opening, I'm in. I want to know what will happen next.

Bolte-Taylor's opening scene garnered over 30 million views and made his TED talk one of the most popular of all time.

3. Define the style

Staging a scene is a way to attract the listener. Another way is to simply set the tone and style of the presentation.

For example, Patterson told me that he often starts a speech by saying, "Hello, I'm Stephen King." The remark gets a lot of laughs because many of his fans know the two writers aren't very close (King has criticized some of Patterson's books). The lines let the audience know that Patterson doesn't take himself too seriously and should expect the speech to be light and fun.

Famous educator Sir Ken Robinson delivered the most-watched TED talk of all time using self-deprecating humor. "I'm interested in education. I find that very interesting. If you're at a dinner party and you say you work in education - in fact, you're not often at dinner parties, frankly, you work in education -- we don't ask you."

Robinson's TED talk has been viewed over 75 million times because he adopted a humorous style early on and kept his ideas fun throughout the presentation. Robinson's success as a speaker was that he brought laughs and, once he hooked them, delivered a powerful message about the education system.

4. Edit and rewrite

Pull out a red pencil and edit your first lines over and over again. Rewriting is not a sign that something is wrong. Instead, it reflects your...