Start with Why
How to engage your audience with the simple Why-What-How framework
A previous version of this post was first published early last year. This is a revised and slightly extended version that came out of several insightful comments and discussions on the original post.
We’ve all been there. You wrote the perfect blog post for solving that painful problem elegantly. Your readers should be delighted; there’s everything they might want to know. And yet, hardly anyone reads the whole thing. If only they gave the article a chance, they would find out how incredibly useful it is, right? But you find it almost impossible to get readers interested long enough to discover it themselves. Sounds familiar?
I’ve struggled with this issue for years. I’ve written solid papers that reviewers didn’t grok. I’ve given insightful lectures that put listeners to sleep. I’ve pitched exciting business ideas that landed flat in the face of potential investors. I’ve tried every trick to hook the audience, and most don’t work. But I’ve found a remarkably simple strategy that does work.
Convincing your readers about the importance of some topic is the hardest part of technical writing. Doing the research, finding reputable sources, and actually writing and editing is devilishly complex. But it’s nothing compared to getting your readers to care. Ask any technical writer, and they will all tell you the same: it doesn’t matter how good your content is; most people won’t stay long enough to find out. They’ll give you the benefit of a couple of minutes, at most, and decide their time is better spent elsewhere.
Why is this so hard? You are dealing with the quintessential problem of communication: how to hook your audience so they’ll stick long enough to allow you to deliver on that hook? The problem starts with human psychology. You see, we have evolved to prioritize. Things potentially dangerous or that satisfy our basic instincts hijack your brain —that’s how social media keeps you hooked.
What happens is that you’re trying to sell the reader a solution to a problem they don’t care about. It doesn’t matter how elegant, effective, or simple the solution is. If your reader is not invested in the problem, you're preaching to the void. Thus, you must convince the reader that your problem matters to them first, and only then can you show them the answer. Start with Why.
You should answer the following three questions in this order:
Why? What? How?
Let’s break it down.
Start with Why
Engagement begins with the Why. Your aim here is to establish three points: the importance, complexity, and solvability of the problem.
Regarding importance, your job is to convince your reader that the problem is relevant and significant to them. You do this by highlighting all the negative consequences of not solving that problem. It could be framed as an undesirable world state your reader wishes to improve or a negative consequence of not taking action.
Then you tackle complexity. You should debunk common but ineffective solutions, showing why they fail to solve the problem, or at least how they fail to solve it in the way that matters in this case. This doesn’t need to be a detailed explanation, but at least show that you’ve done your homework and know the problem isn’t trivial.
Finally, you can introduce the critical insight that supports your solution as a better alternative. The trick is not to spill the beans just yet, but instead say something that hints at the solution, and, ideally, makes something click in the reader's mind. In this post, that insight is the idea that we have evolved to prioritize things we believe are essential.
Punch with What
Next comes the What, a concise statement. The purpose of this claim is to get stuck in your reader’s mind.
Keep it simple yet comprehensive for easy understanding. If they take away anything at all from you, it should be this. So make it easy to remember: use mnemonics and put it in big, bold, centered letters.
To understand your what, consider the following two questions: “what is this article about?”, and “what does it say about it?” Most writers think the answer to the first question is what should stick. But that first answer is often just a promise, a high-level prompt, not an actual answer. You want to incept the second answer in your reader’s mind.
Let’s see in this post:
— What is this article about?
— The best way to structure your content to make it engaging.
— Oh, and what does it say about it?
— That you should answer the Why, What, and How, in that order.
See? That final answer is the What —the thing you want the reader to answer when prompted in detail.
Deliver with How
Finally, you get into the nitty-gritty of How. This is where you’ll spill all the beans, and provide a thorough explanation of the actual solution. At this point, the reader should be invested in the problem, and happily surprised by the hint to the solution that is your What. Now is the time to deliver.
For highly complex solutions, start with a top-down approach. Begin with an outline at a high level of abstraction and then detail the steps to implement the ideas. The purpose is to avoid overwhelming the reader with too many details before they grok the big picture.
An alternative approach is to start explaining the separate components of the solution from the bottom up and then tie them together at the end. This approach is more effective when the overall solution cannot be easily reduced to its parts. With enough time to understand in detail each part, the reader can hopefully see the overall solution emerge naturally.
Whatever approach you pick, remember to make it didactic. The goal is to teach a new skill, so the language and pacing should match the reader's expertise level. If it's too easy, it will be dull and uninteresting; and if it's too challenging, the reader won't learn anything at all.
Finding the right balance
The time apportioned to each of these parts can vary, but as a general rule, you should spend a fair amount of time in the Why, say, no less than 30% of the whole content. The What aspect usually requires the least time since it's an overview that can be displayed through diagrams or short headlines. Then, the How can take up all the remaining space. The exact balance will depend on the type of content and audience you're writing about.
For instructional and educational material, for example, you'll likely spend around 20-30% of your time setting up the problem's context and causes, 10% outlining what the solution is at a high level, and then devote 60-70% on detailed instructions for the solution. This is the typical distribution for a tutorial-like post here in Substack.
In contrast, if you’re preparing something short —e.g., a product pitch with a limited time— focus mainly on the Why. Nearly all your content should explain why an issue needs resolution and convince the audience that this is the most critical problem in their lives (at least while you’re talking). Then, you can briefly introduce your service, product, or idea as the answer and provide simple usage instructions as the How.
These are the two extremes; anything else likely falls in the middle. College courses, for example, are often designed with a combination of lectures and practical classes (or laboratories). In this case, the lecture can cover the Why and What, leaving much room to ensure students get invested in the problem. Then, the practical part takes over the How.
Closing remarks
If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that this article is organized in this fashion. I spent a fair amount of time trying to convince you that engagement is a vital issue that you want to solve, then I pitched a simple high-level solution to you, and finally, I spilled the details. If you’ve read this far, then I’ve succeeded. And now you know the secret: Start with Why.
I've found that this approach works well indeed!
I like starting my posts with a "personal story" which covers the "why I'm even bothering to write about this". The whys on the technical answer might come before or after the whats depending on what the topic is though. But if you've already motivated the audience to keep reading with your personal story, then the sequencing is more fluid I think.