A Simple "Flip" That Stops Readers in Their Tracks

And makes you a much more interesting writer

You might think being right, truthful, or entertaining is what makes writing interesting.

But what really stops people in their tracks is when you tell them something they assume to be true, and then prove to them that it isn’t.

Just as I did here.

Want a formula? Here’s the flip: X ≠ X. In other words, what seems to be X does not equal X.

Most writing bores because it affirms the obvious. It’s what we’re taught to do in sales copy: get the prospect nodding in agreement. Trouble is, they nod off to sleep.

Of course, there’s a bit more to it than just picking something your audience knows and denying it. In an ironically very dry academic essay titled "That’s Interesting," Murray Davis delves into how to keep an audience awake, if not riveted.

Be careful, though, that what you set up to deny meets two criteria:

1. It must matter to your audience — not just a topic they care about, but one where flipping the assumption changes how they think or what they do.

2. It cannot be a too tightly held belief (something they’re merely mistaken or misinformed about rather than a strongly held political or religious belief).

For me, the most interesting part of his essay was his breakdown of wrong assumptions — the many different ways people’s beliefs can be flipped.

• Appearance — Your audience is wrong about the nature of the thing. What looks chaotic is actually ordered. What looks like one thing is actually many — or a dozen things turn out to be one. (For example, hidden patterns in a “random” stock market. Or why every diet is really the same diet.)

• Reach and scope — Your audience is mistaken about something’s reach — whether it affects just them or everyone, whether it’s just here or everywhere, whether it’s just now or forever. Or vice versa. (For example, a flaw they’re ashamed of that’s actually universal. A “best practice” that works in one industry quietly fails in theirs. A trend everyone’s chasing that’s already dead. Or a dead trend they should be paying attention to.)

• Function and value — Your audience is wrong about what something does, or how good it is. The thing they trust is quietly working against them, or vice-versa, what they avoid is the thing that would help. (For example, health foods that make you fatter. Junk food that’s actually good for you. Why productivity apps destroy productivity.)

• Relationship — Your audience is wrong about how two things relate. Two things they’d never connect actually move in lockstep (the more product choices offered, the less people buy). Two that they assume go together can’t coexist past a point (like growth and profitability). Or they’ve got cause and effect backward (you don’t procrastinate because you’re anxious — you’re anxious because you procrastinate).

Use this technique and you’re in good company, as it’s been employed by some of the most influential writers in history. (Can you tell which of the four frames each one is using? Don’t peek at the answers below.)

• Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, posited that what looks like shopkeepers pursuing their own selfish profit is actually what feeds and builds prosperity for all.

• Karl Marx took issue with Smith, and argued that what may look like prosperity is actually exploitation and sowing the seeds of the system’s own destruction.

• Sigmund Freud showed that dreams, jokes, slips of the tongue, and a child’s odd fears may seem unrelated, but are all the buried drives of our deeper selves rising to the surface.

• Nietzsche, in On the Genealogy of Morals, while we may think meekness and mercy are “good,” they are actually the weak’s attempt to turn their weakness and powerlessness into strengths. (And, of course, that something that almost kills you isn’t a bad thing, but actually makes you stronger.)

• Darwin, in On the Origin of Species, shows that while all living things may look fixed, finished, and eternal, they’re all in ceaseless flux and evolving.

One important caveat: Once you’ve landed on a flip that works, resist the urge to march it through every case until it’s airtight. That may feel like rigor, but it reads like tedium.

ANSWER KEY:

• Smith → Relationship. Two things assumed to clash — private greed and public good — actually move together.

• Marx → Also Relationship. Marx tried to flip Smith’s flip and show that two things assumed to go together — a thriving economy and a just one — actually do clash.

• Freud → Appearance. A dozen unrelated things turn out to be one.

• Nietzsche → Function and value. What everyone calls good is, he argues, bad. And vice versa.

• Darwin → Reach and scope. What seems permanent is ever-changing.