The blonde screamed.With the speed of a rattle snake, the Panther struck....again and again, he plunged the deadly blade into the body of his enemy. If percentages run true to form, the opening paragraph of this ill fated composition will have wetted the curiosity impulse of 36 per cent of the people, who we take for granted, shall have picked this paper with an intention of reading a portion of the contents.
The percentages given is admitted to be an approximation. It is based upon certain studies which some advertising men call "reader response" and which, it is contended, bear correlation to habit fixation and word mesmerism and thereby to psychology and even to psychoanalysis. A reader response of 36 per cent is exceptionally high, it seems.
Disregarding type, position, etc., which help to snare attention, the opening words of this article are assured of a high percentage in reader interest because of psychological impressions that have been laboriously classified, defined, segregated and catologued by men who make a specialty of this sort of thing.
Words which strike responsive cords, which create a picture in the mind of the reader, are indispensable to the interest compelling technique. Such words as blonde, scream, rattlesnake panther, plundge, deadly, enemy may be considered in this category. Now suppose that we had begun this column thus: Philosophical reflection inevitably leads to a solace of mind that cannot be purchased with gold but is far more precious in the scales.
The reader response to this sentence very likely would not amount to three per cent. We do not wish to offend any students of philosophy in the audience, but we must contend that they are sadly in the minority. besides they generally are not affected so easly by habit fixation and mesmerism. The technique in writing must be far more subtle. For a gain of three per cent is now worth the effort.
Now then: She clung to him in a wild moment of ecstasy: her heart, like a frieghtened dove, flapping his wings against his chest. Though half closed eyes she saw him bend his head foward; another moment, and she was transported to an other world. Reader interest because of our feminine customers (God bless them) hovers in the neighborhood of 22 per cent. Women are loyal, exhaustive readers but their likes and demands are kept strictly within a well defined area.
There is not much room for experimentation with the feminine interest; the formula seldon varies. Problems in ethics go wide of there mark here; words as affinity, physical, magnetism, etc., are utterly out of place. In certain types of advertising, where habit fixation is the objective motivation, the impressionist value of the words is given a great deal of attention. As a consumer you have been phycho analyzed, qualified, assesesd, diagnosed and deciphered. You react in certain ways to certain suggestions; you retain certain ideas because of insinuations. It is all a simple matter of science to those in the trade.
Now our problem is to get a high rating to please the detective story fan, the phychological student, the mathematician, the chap who's psychological reaction would have to be measured with a hairline.
We venture with the following; "Darling." she said sweetly as she blew her husbands brains out with forty- five, you know very well it irrates me when you read the stock reports without your glasses." So saying, she counted the remaining bullets in the gun and discovered that there were two missing although she fired but one.
"I must call Butch-----," she said. "He knows all about algebra."
Bill
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