I’m re-reading Maxwell Maltz’s self-help classic Psycho-Cybernetics, which opens with the following sentence:
“During the past decade a revolution has been quietly going on in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine.”
Now if you ask me, this is a great opening line.
In case you’re interested, I’ll tell you why — and how you can use this to suck your own readers into your copy.
To get started, let’s look at a couple of alternative opening sentences old Max coulda used. For starters, here’s one:
“During the past decade a revolution has been quietly going on.”
This opening line isn’t bad.
It sounds mysterious. And sometimes, that’s enough to suck readers in.
But it might not be enough, because this opening line is also very vague.
Anybody who reads this might rightly say, “So what? There are too many revolutions out there to worry about right now.”
That’s why this opening line gets a B-.
Now let’s look at a second possible opening line:
“During the past decade researchers in psychology, psychiatry, and medicine have come to an important conclusion.”
Boy that’s a dull duck.
While the content is pretty much same as in Maxwell Maltz’s original, there’s no intrigue.
There’s no excitement.
There’s just the cold feeling that reading on will be work and not fun.
That’s why this second opening line gets a C-.
Maybe you see where I’m going with this.
Because the B- and C- aren’t grades in the traditional sense. I’ll let Gary Bencivenga, who has been called “America’s best copywriter” and “The Michelangelo of direct mail copywriting,” explain it in his own words:
“In pondering this, I realized a great truth about headlines: your level of interest is directly proportional to the presence of two factors: benefit and curiosity. Either one without the other is a devastating weakening. I = B + C. Interest equals Benefit plus Curiosity.“
And there you have it.
The first alternate opening line was missing a benefit (B-).
The second was missing curiosity (C-).
The original Maxwell Maltz opening line wasn’t missing anything. It had both benefit (don’t tell me you have zero health or mental issues) and curiosity (a quiet revolution?). That’s what made it so good.
The good news is, you now know a formula that let’s you do the same: I = B + C. This works whether you’re writing a headline, a subject line, or some other crucial piece of copy, like an opening sentence.
Or a call to action. Speaking of which:
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If you want to get your paws on this book when it comes out (and get it for free), here’s where to sign up: