✏️🛠️ How to Write a Headline That Makes Everyone Want to Read Your Story

At Narratively, we spend a LOT of time crafting our “heds and deks.” Our founder chose his four all-time favorites—and shared his secrets behind why they made the cut.

There was a time, back when our beards didn’t have a fleck of gray and you weren’t a “real” wordsmith if you deigned to use any software other than Microsoft Word, when my co-founder, Brendan, and I would co-edit every Narratively story that ran on our site. As our company grew, and I expanded my focus into TV, film, podcasts and beyond, that process, as fun and creatively fulfilling as it was, became impractical. Thousands of pieces later, however, I still sit down with an editor colleague each week to hammer out the “hed and dek” (a.k.a. the headline and sub-headline) for each piece we publish. In many cases, this always lively and often supremely challenging ritual is the main creative connection I have to a story between when I give the pitch a greenlight and the moment it gets released into the wild. So, I take my role very seriously, and I have the 10,000-ish hours to prove it! 

We’ve received over 50,000 pitches in the decade since we launched Narratively and we have our favorit…