Rule 1. Your meeting should interest, inform, and persuade your reader. Psychological writing should not be dull or stuffy. You must interest your reader in your paper; otherwise, the reader will find something else to do. Even teachers reading course papers will often read boring papers more quickly and less carefully than they will read interesting papers. Although you can lose your reader at any time, the major decision points for the reader are the title, abstract, and introduction.

The optimal title is one that concisely informs the reader of what the article is about. Such a title will minimize the number of people who start the article only to find that the topic doesn't interest them, and maximize the number of people who start the article because the topic does interest them. The abstract should summarize the article and at the same time convey to the reader why the topic, hypotheses, and results are of theoretical or practical interest. The introduction should further motivate the reader by pointing out why the research is a necessary next step in putting together the pieces of an as yet unsolved puzzle. The reader should finish the introduction believing that you have (a) put together one or more pieces of the puzzle, and (b) pointed the way for further pieces to be put together.