Audience Considerations: Ten Tips, Crafting a Hook, and the Writing Process

This editorial focuses on writing academic articles that appeal to researcher audiences. I offer 10 tips for audience considerations in writing research articles. One tip is to develop a hook. What is a hook and how does one craft it? I help to answer these questions by encouraging authors to move beyond the over-utilized claim that “very little research exists on this topic.” That is a challenging claim to substantiate after decades and centuries of existing studies on most topics, and it is unnecessary. More than likely in this contemporary year, there are many studies relevant to the topics of any article. Their lack is probably more a reflection of the author not thoroughly looking than whether they exist. But why make such a challenging claim? There are many other interesting reasons to pay attention to a topic than lack of attention. Be more creative than only “filling a gap.” The editorial concludes with attention to the writing process and an affirmation of the inverted triangle for organizing the structure of each section in an article.