Crafting a compelling long form story is difficult. Your goal is to compel readers into your story and keep them there until the last word. But in an attention deficit world that’s difficult. You don’t just need a compelling lead. You need compelling leads throughout your story.
Think about your story as if it were a book. Ever try reading a long book without chapters? Yikes!
Divide your story up into “chapters” or mini-stories. Each mini-story will need its own compelling lead. You might think about these mini stories as inverted pyramids. The problem is that the end of each mini story gives readers an exit door out of the story.
That’s where the Martini Glass style of story writing comes in. It is an inverted pyramid with a nice, juicy quote or piece of information as your glass stem or kicker. So what you end up with is a string of martini glasses standing on top of each other. Right after the juicy ending quote of one section comes a compelling
secondary lead drawing the reader back into the story.