GUEST COLUMN BY PAUL DAVIS

In 2009, I wrote about an unusual event: a group of Somali pirates had hijacked an American cargo ship headed for Kenya. The crew fought off the attack, but the hijackers took the captain hostage.
 
A few days later, Navy snipers killed three of the pirates and rescued Capt. Richard Phillips. (Tom Hanks played the captain in the 2013 Hollywood film.)
 
Shane Murphy, the ship's chief officer, had just returned to the U.S. and was holed up in his ranch house in Seekonk, Massachusetts. I was a reporter for the Providence Journal, a Rhode Island newspaper with readers in Massachusetts.
 
"Get the story," my editor said.
 
I camped on Murphy's street for three days before he spoke to me. "No press!" his wife yelled from the back of the house.
 
Murphy, who juggled his infant son in one hand and a beer in the other, told me a wild story.
 
I drove back to the paper. I had a scoop, but probably not for long.
 
"Write a block of copy and file it," an editor said. "I’ll post it on our website. Then write another block, and I’ll post it. Don’t stop."
 
He paused. "End each segment with a cliffhanger. I don't want to lose a reader."
 
I wrote the first few sentences to set the tone:
 
Chief Officer Shane Murphy heard the threat before dawn.
"Stop ship," said a voice on the radio. "This is Somali pirate."
 
I limited the opening scene to 10 paragraphs. During the hijacking, Murphy ran below deck to secure more than 100 locks and doors. Above him, he heard Captain Phillips shout, "Shots fired! Shot's fired!"
 
I ended the first installment this way:
 
The men grabbed improvised weapons: hatchets, saws and homemade shivs.
 
I wrote a few more scenes. An engineer shut off the ship's lights and power. Murphy activated a tracking transmitter. He and another crewman jumped a pirate and held him hostage.
 
I wrote in bursts and used short sentences to create tension.
 
The exercise taught me something: Never forget your reader. Text messages, YouTube videos, emails, Netflix — distractions abound. Readers are quick to put a story down.
 
You don't have to write like James Patterson, but you must engage your readers. That means using every trick in the book: cliffhangers, foreshadowing, cinematic detail, snappy dialogue — anything to grab the reader and propel the story forward.
 
"Shots fired! Shots fired!"
 
I talked to Murphy for 20 minutes before his wife threw me out. It was enough. He even sketched the ship’s interior on a napkin. Before I left, I noticed the tattoos on Murphy’s arms. A mermaid floated on one bicep. A shark swam on the other.

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