Nor is the story just rambling movement–unless it is a poor story. Something is happening and we wish to know the outcome. It is for this reason that a story almost invariably holds us. “What is happening?” or “What is going to happen?” If one can stir either of these questions in the minds of people–students or prospective customers, or voters, etc.–he has in so far captured their attention. Doubtless it is all of a piece with the primitive curiosity in us which responds instantly to a change of condition–the rustling of a leaf, the dropping of a twig. One may take a safe wager that something is happening there. One walks down the street and comes upon a crowd gathered at a shop window. We might call this the kinetic requirement–perhaps the most fundamental of all requirements. Hence, if one wishes to capture and hold another person’s attention, he must be sure that what he offers by way of stimulus moves. There must, in other words, be movement if we are to hold attention for very long. One will, in short, have put his waking, variously attending mind to sleep.

In fact, if the attention is held for very long, there is every likelihood that one will induce in oneself a state of hypnosis. In the first place, suppose one tries to hold one’s attention immovably to a dot on the wall. How, now, does one capture attention? There are a number of basic considerations. What, we may ask, is a failure in life? Obviously, it is a person without influence one to whom no one attends: the inventor who can persuade no one of the value of his device the merchant who cannot attract enough customers into his store the teacher whose pupils whistle or stamp or play tricks while he tries to capture their attention the poet who writes reams of verse which no one will accept. The person who can capture and hold attention is the person who can effectively influence human behavior.

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpted chapter from Influencing Human Behavior (1925) by H.

Another word for capture