The Top 5 Reasons You Should Make A List Article

Hey, you notice how much of the internet is lists?  Ever wonder why?

5. They’re Approachable

Lists are really easy to get into reading. People can tell – usually – that a list numbering system clearly indicates a form of escalation, it’ll always be easy to collect things with a common theme that causes people to wonder how you link things together, and it creates natural break points for readers to stop reading.

People intuitively seek sequences, and so if you present them with the knowledge they’re going to experience a sequence, they kind of mentally ‘sign on’ for it and they sort of get locked in to engaging with it. It’s a great way to connect an audience to your work.

B. No unilateral disarmament

As long as Buzzfeed and other major news sources are using this model to get people to pay attention to stuff, and operating with my idea that getting writing is important and it’s worth doing, the listicle is going to be here, and while there may be some case to be made about them simplifying media forms, I don’t see why people with barriers to creativity should be the ones told they need to give up on the most accessible and popular forms as if it’s somehow their job to drive the form of all online journalism forwards with the weight of their very souls.

3. The List Forms Its Own Context

When you make a list, everything in the list is in the list. This means the list forms its own context, and each thing in the list can inform everything else in the list.  Which means that if you present five list items about (say), the best octopuses, you’re knowingly just comparing the octopuses in the list. That means it’s easier for you to organise your thoughts, and you can put the list objects in direct contention with one another.

II. You Can Couch the Bummer

Ordering a list is pretty arbitary. Sometimes you’ll track a number value, like ‘biggest failures’ or ‘largest sheep by volume’ and then you can just order the list by that, but a lot of the rest of the time, you have to order your points in your list. With a lot of these topics, there are some things that are fun and  some things that are interesting, but crucially, there’s going to be something in the list that’s the least good, or the sort of thing that feels like a total bummer.

The list format lets you build to these things, when they are important, but they also let you structure your story in such a way that the whole article doesn’t just fizzle out on a depressing, end note. Then when you move on to the last entry, it gets to be funny, lift the mood, and maybe be the natural crescendo of the article. It even gets to be the easiest part of the article, because at that point you’ve got all that other work laid out!

1. The end gets to be a punchline

Penguin!