5 ways to get a reader's attention

   I have written biographies for over 30 years. Because I write monthly magazine articles, these stories are mostly short ones…only 300 to 500 words.

    Most of my works tell the story of inventors, company founders, or business leaders. My purpose for each bio is not to provide a life history, but to spotlight when a discovery is made, or how a company founder decided to focus on a specialty, or why a company selects a specific product.

    The foundation of a news story – the who, what, where, when, why, and how – are of course a foundation for creating the biography/memoir feature. But I add one more component.

And in this report, I tell you five of my favorite ways to approach (almost) any biography, story, special report, or product description. -- Rix Quinn, 2026