Want your writing to captivate readers?
The rotary phone rang once, twice...
Three times.
“Aloh?”
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“Yana, it’s Vasya.”
“Oh, hey,” said Yana.
“Listen,” Vasya cut her off. “LISTEN. Something happened in Pripyat. The nuclear plant there…”
Vasya cleared his throat.
“It blew up.”
Silence.
“It what?”
“IT FUCKING EXPLODED!”
Silence.
“You need to leave Kiev,” said Vasya. “Now.”
Silence.
“Leave?” said Yana. “Why?”
“Because,” said Vasya, “you’ll get cancer if you don’t.”
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In 1986…
The Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in Pripyat, Ukraine erupted, irradiating everything. My mom Yana was living in Kiev then, 200 km away, when my Uncle Vasya called her with the news. I wasn’t born yet.
I got the full story 30 years later. Chernobyl, the HBO miniseries, dramatized the event in remarkable fashion.
“Sheer storytelling craft,” one critic wrote.
And it is. The show arrests you.
Why? Because it doesn’t waste any time. The explosion happens almost immediately in episode one.
KA-BOOM! We’re in it.
This is intentional. It’s a narrative technique called “in media res” — Latin for “in the middle of things” — proven to hook you, captivate you.
Want your writing to captivate readers?
Start with drama, turmoil, emotion! Throw your Reader into the problem.
Forget context. You have the rest of the story to fill in the blanks.
LEARN TO PERSUADE
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Judge not lest ye be judged.