Make Them Want to Hear It: The Art Of The Reveal
When I was young, I spent a lot of time in the car with my father. His radio dial never changed. Big band music. NPR. And baseball games when the Yankees or Phillies were playing. He didn’t flip stations. He didn’t look for something new. He only listened to what he liked.
Most of it faded into the background for me, but every so often, in the space between innings or segments, a voice would come through. Calm. Measured. A little old-fashioned, even then.
It was a man who told stories. Not from the beginning. From the middle, or just after. Stories about a boy with a peculiar habit, or a woman in a forgettable job, or a moment in history that seemed insignificant...until it wasn’t.
You didn’t know who or what he was talking about, not at first. Then, slowly, it clicked: it was someone familiar. A public figure. A historic event. But told from an angle you’d never heard before. At the end, he would pause and deliver the name followed by his famous line:
“And now you know…the rest of the story.”
The voice was Paul Harvey, a syndicated broadcaster who slipped in between news and music with stories that were short, quiet, and completely captivating. I didn’t know his name at the time. I just knew I liked the way it felt to be held in suspense like that. I liked how long he waited before filling in the blanks. I liked how it all came together, shockingly, at the very last moment.
Later, I found the same structure hidden in Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 countdown. Tucked between songs, he’d tell stories too—about artists who were overlooked, or songs that nearly didn’t get made. And he’d hold the name until the final line.
When I first read Robert Fulghum’s essays and heard Harry Chapin's music, I recognized it again. Stories that started with crayons and taxi cabs and ended with existential truths about life, love, and what it means to matter. Fulghum’s first career was a pastor. Chapin was a part-time poet. It made sense.
They didn’t give everything away up front. They held something back. Not simply to be dramatic, but because they knew how to keep people listening.
They gave you a reason to stay. A reason to care about what came next.
That idea stuck with me. It shaped how I taught in a classroom, how I speak on stage, and eventually, how I learned to write. I usually start with the ending. I try to find the one line that means the most, then build everything around it. Giving people the feeling that something’s coming and it’s going to be worth it.
Because if you’ve ever tried to hold someone’s attention, for a page, a pitch, or a presentation, you know it doesn’t just happen. You have to earn it.
That, to me, is the essence of a good reveal.
A reveal is not an unnecessary delay and it’s not a trick. It’s a promise. That if you stay with me just a little longer there will be something waiting for you on the other side. Something you didn't expect. Something that shifts the way you see, the way you think, the way you decide what's important.
It’s what a good litigator understands. They don’t open the case with the smoking gun. They lay the ground first. They help the jury understand the stakes, the characters, the reasons. And then, when the key evidence comes, it lands like a verdict.
It’s what a comedian understands. A punchline without a setup is just a sentence. The laughter comes because they’ve led you there with rhythm, with silence, with misdirection. The best ones don’t rush to be funny. They wait until the timing is just right.
And it’s what anyone who wants to be heard must understand. A great magician doesn’t just show you a trick. They first slow your breath. They narrow your focus. They make you doubt what you think you know and then they show you something that feels impossible.
That’s what a reveal can do.
It makes people lean in. It makes them wonder. It makes them believe you know something they don’t and they want to hear more.
When you start thinking in terms of a reveal, you change how you communicate. You stop trying to unload everything all at once. You stop rushing to the point. You start asking yourself: What do I want them to feel just before I say it?
(And here is my reveal. The words I wrote first, before I began this essay):
The goal isn’t just to be understood.
It’s to be remembered.