Culture

How The 30-Second Rule Is Changing Culture

And not for the better

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I write and my husband records music, and we’ve noticed the same trend is ruining both spheres: the increasingly frantic need to hook your audience immediately.

Here on Medium, if readers click off after less than 30 seconds, the writer is penalized. On Spotify, if someone listens for less than 30 seconds, the artist doesn’t get paid, according to . Same concept.

I have written a slew of genre novels, and the advice there is the same: You have to start the book off with a bang. You cannot expect the reader to hang around while you paint the scene. Shit needs to happen now.

Here’s the first line of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel Verity:

“I hear the crack of his skull before the spattering of the blood reaches me.” That’s how the main character meets her love interest — both are at the scene of a fatal accident.

Nobody told Charles Dickens he had to hook the reader in 30 seconds.

I am probably going to lose a lot of you by quoting the first sentence of A Tale of Two Cities, but I asking you to hang in there and read it if you can or skim it if you must, but for God’s sake don’t…