What Makes Something Interesting?

 What Makes Something Interesting?

Why some ideas grab our attention — and others never stand a chance

Big-Picture Framing

We ask “what makes something interesting?” whenever we’re bored in a meeting, hooked by a story, or puzzled by why one slide lands and another dies. At its core, interesting is a mix of surprise, personal relevance, and emotional spark. Seeing that pattern gives you a practical way to design better conversations, products, and decisions.

Why “interesting” matters

If you can explain why people find something interesting, you can reverse-engineer attention: make complex topics accessible, make dry work feel meaningful, and make your ideas easier to remember and act on.

The Three Core Ingredients of Interesting

Most of the time, “interesting” comes from three elements working together:

• Novelty — it’s new, unexpected, or breaks a pattern.
• Relevance — it connects to something we care about right now.
• Emotion — it makes us feel something (curiosity, delight, tension, even concern).

Think of “interesting” as a campfire. Novelty is the spark, relevance is the wood, and emotion is the heat that keeps people gathered around. Take one away and the fire weakens.

Pure novelty without relevance is clickbait. Pure relevance without novelty is routine. Emotion without either is drama with no direction. When you combine all three — “This is new, it matters to me, and I feel something about it” — people naturally pay attention and remember.

A Real-World Example: Why Some Meetings Drag and Others Spark

Imagine two project updates.

In Meeting A, someone walks through 25 slides of status bullets. Nothing is new, there’s no clear decision, and you’re not sure why you’re in the room. Low novelty, fuzzy relevance, almost no emotion — no wonder it feels boring.

In Meeting B, the presenter opens with:

“We’re 3 weeks behind, but we’ve discovered a shortcut that could not only catch us up, it might cut next quarter’s costs by 15%. We need to decide today if we take the risk.”

Same project, very different feeling:

• Novelty: a surprising shortcut and a new risk.
• Relevance: the delay and cost impact touch everyone’s work.
• Emotion: urgency, possibility, and a bit of anxiety.

The content isn’t magically better; it’s framed to light up the three ingredients of interesting.

How to Make Your Ideas More Interesting on Purpose

You can deliberately “tune” novelty, relevance, and emotion when you write, present, or ask questions.

1. Turn up novelty with contrasts and “what ifs”

• Start with a pattern, then break it: “Most teams do X — here’s why we’re doing Y.”
• Ask a counterintuitive question: “What if the problem isn’t low traffic, but too much of the wrong traffic?”

2. Sharpen relevance by naming the stakes

People care more when they can answer, “So what? For whom? By when?” Tie the idea to a concrete outcome (time saved, risk reduced, opportunity created) and make it specific:

• “This could save each salesperson 3 hours a week,”
  not “This improves efficiency.”

3. Add emotion ethically, not manipulatively

You don’t need drama; you need felt significance.

• Use stories about real people, not just metrics.
• Highlight real tradeoffs.
• Show your own curiosity: “Here’s the part that really surprised me…”

Done well, this isn’t hype. It’s aligning with the real stakes already present in the situation.

Bringing It All Together

So, what makes something interesting? It’s not a mysterious quality reserved for charismatic speakers or flashy brands. It’s the combination of novelty, relevance, and emotion, tuned to a specific audience in a specific moment.

If you start asking, “What here is new? Why does it matter now? What should people feel about it?” your emails, presentations, and one-on-ones will start to land differently.

For your next piece of communication, rewrite the first two sentences so they:

1. Highlight a surprise
2. Name a concrete stake
3. Hint at a feeling

Then notice who suddenly leans in.

And if you want to keep sharpening how you ask and answer questions like this, follow QuestionClass’s Question-a-Day at questionclass.com — a tiny daily nudge to make your thinking, and your conversations, more interesting.

Bookmarked for You

Here are a few enduring reads that deepen the idea of “interesting”:

Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath — Why some ideas survive and others die, with practical tools for making messages memorable.

Curious by Ian Leslie — How curiosity works, why it matters, and how to cultivate it.

The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker — A playful guide to paying better attention so more of the world becomes interesting to you.

QuestionStrings to Practice

QuestionStrings are ordered sequences of questions in which each answer fuels the next. Use the one below to redesign one email, meeting, or message this week so it’s more interesting to your audience.

Interest-Engine String
“For this audience, what do they already care about?” →
“What can I say that’s genuinely new or surprising to them?” →
“What is at stake if we ignore this — or act on it?” →
“How do I want them to feel as they hear this?” →
“What’s the simplest way to frame it so those three ingredients come through?”

A final thought: “interesting” isn’t a property of the idea alone; it’s a relationship between an idea and a specific mind, at a specific moment. See that relationship, and you gain a powerful lever for influence, clarity, and connection.

You can treat “interesting” as a skill, not a mystery — and use it to make your work, conversations, and questions more alive.