原文：

The introductory flow

We saw earlier that the pyramid structure permits you to carry on a question/answer dialogue with your reader. This question/answer dialogue cannot be counted on to engage his interest unless the statement that starts it off is relevant to him. The only way you can be confident of its relevance is to make sure that it directly answers a question you have identified as already existing in his mind.

I said earlier that you write primarily to tell people what they don’t know. But a reader wants to find out what he doesn’t know only if he needs to do so. If he has no need, he will have no question, and vice versa.

Thus, you make sure your document is of interest by directing it toward answering a question that already exists in the reader’s mind, or that would exist if he thought for a minute about what is going on around him. The introduction identifies that question by tracing the history of its origin.

Since this history will be in the form of a narrative of events, it should follow the classic narrative pattern of development. That is, it should begin by establishing for the reader the time and place of a Situation. In that Situation something will have occurred (known as the Complication) that caused him to raise (or would cause him to raise) the Question to which your document will give him the Answer.

This classic pattern of story-telling – Situation, Complication, Question, Answer – permits you to make sure that you and the reader are 'standing in the same place' before you take him by the hand and lead him through your thinking. It also gives you a clear focus for the point at the top of your document, and thus a means of judging that you are conveying the right message in the most direct way.

To illustrate, here is an introduction of the kind normally seen in business.

翻译：

引言流程

我们之前提到，金字塔结构允许你与读者进行一种问答式的对话。除非对话开始的陈述对他而言具有相关性，否则这种问答对话无法吸引他的兴趣。唯一能确保其相关性的方法是确保内容直接回答了你已经识别出的读者脑海中存在的问题。

我之前说过，你主要是为了告诉人们他们不知道的事情而写作。然而，只有当读者有这个需求时，他们才会想要知道自己不知道的内容。如果他没有需求，就不会有问题，反之亦然。

因此，你需要确保你的文档具有吸引力，方法是让它朝着回答读者脑海中已经存在的问题的方向发展，或者是让他稍微思考一下周围正在发生的事情后会产生的问题。引言部分通过追溯问题的起源来识别这个问题。

由于这个历史会以事件叙述的形式出现，它应遵循经典的叙述发展模式。也就是说，它应从为读者建立情境的时间和地点开始。在该情境中，将会发生某件事情（称为“复杂情况”），这件事情引发（或将引发）他提出一个问题，而你的文档将给出该问题的答案。

这种经典的叙事模式——情境、复杂情况、问题、答案——使你和读者能够“站在同一个地方”，然后再牵引他进入你的思路。这种模式还为你在文档顶端表达的核心思想提供了一个清晰的聚焦点，从而提供了一种判断你是否以最直接的方式传达正确信息的手段。

为例证这一点，以下是商业环境中常见的一种引言示例。

原文：

The purpose of this memorandum is to pull together some ideas for further reflection and discussion in such questions as:

1. Composition of the Board and its optimum size.

2. A conception of the broad roles of the Board and the Executive Committee, the specific responsibilities of each, and the relationships of one to the other.

3. Making the outside Board member an effective participant.

4. Some principles dealing with the selection of Board members and their tenure.

5. Alternate ways for the company to get from where it is to where it wants to be in Board and Executive Committee operations.

Note how much more easily you comprehend its purpose and message when it is forced to fit the narrative mold:

翻译：

此备忘录的目的是汇集一些想法，以便进一步反思和讨论以下问题：

1. 董事会的组成及其最佳规模。

2. 对董事会和执行委员会广泛角色的概念，每方的具体职责，以及彼此之间的关系。

3. 使外部董事会成员成为有效的参与者。

4. 关于董事会成员选择和任期的一些原则。

5. 公司从当前状态到达其希望在董事会和执行委员会运作方面的目标的替代途径。

请注意，当内容被强制适应叙述模式时，您能更容易地理解其目的和信息。

原文：

The new organization installed in October places full authority and responsibility for running the day-to-day activities of the two divisions squarely on the shoulders of the managers of those divisions. This move frees the Board to deal entirely with the broad matters of policy and planning that are its exclusive responsibility.

However, the Board has for so long oriented itself to dealing with short-term operating problems that it is not presently in a position to focus its attention on long-range strategy development. Consequently, it must consider the changes needed to permit itself to do so. Specifically, we believe it should:

• Relinquish responsibility for day-to-day operating matters to the Executive Committee

• Broaden its composition to include outside members

• Establish policies and procedures to formalize internal operation.

In summary, the introduction tells the reader, in story form, what he already knows or could reasonably be expected to know about the subject you are discussing, and thus reminds him of the question he has to which he can expect the document to give him an answer. The story sets forth the Situation within which a Complication developed that raised the Question to which your document will now give the Answer. Once you state the Answer (the main point at the top of your pyramid), it will raise a new question in the reader’s mind that you will answer on the line below.

翻译：

新组织于十月成立，赋予两个部门的经理全权和责任，以管理其日常活动。此举解放了董事会，使其能够完全处理自身专属的政策和规划方面的广泛事务。

然而，董事会长期以来一直专注于处理短期的运营问题，目前并不具备集中精力于长期战略发展的条件。因此，董事会必须考虑允许自身进行这种调整所需的变更。具体而言，我们认为应采取以下措施：

• 将日常运营事务的责任转交给执行委员会

• 扩大其组成，纳入外部成员

• 建立政策和程序，以规范内部运作。

总结而言，引言以故事形式告诉读者他已知或合理预期会知道的关于你讨论主题的内容，从而提醒他这个主题所引发的问题，并期望文档给出解答。故事阐述了一个情境，在此情境中产生了一个复杂情况，从而引发了一个问题，而你的文档现在将提供答案。当你陈述答案（位于金字塔顶部的主要观点）时，这将引发读者脑海中的新问题，你将在下一行给出解答。

原文：

What does the essence of these three substructures — i.e., the vertical question/answer dialogue, the horizontal deductive or inductive logic, and the narrative introductory structure — do for you in helping you discover the ideas you need to build a pyramid? Knowing the vertical relationship, you can determine the kind of ideas you need in each grouping (i.e., those that will answer the question). Knowing the horizontal relationship, you can judge that the ideas you bring together are of a like kind (i.e., proper parts of an inductive or deductive argument). And — most important — knowing the reader’s question will ensure that all the ideas you do bring together are relevant (i.e., exist only because they help to answer that question).

Naturally, you want to go about applying these insights in an orderly way, and that’s what Chapter 3 will tell you how to do.

翻译：

这三种子结构的本质——即垂直的问答式对话、横向的演绎或归纳逻辑以及叙述性的引言结构——对帮助你发现构建金字塔所需的想法有何帮助？了解垂直关系，你可以确定每组所需的想法类型（即那些可以回答问题的想法）。了解横向关系，你可以判断你聚集的想法是否属于同类（即是否为归纳或演绎论证的适当组成部分）。而最重要的是，了解读者的问题将确保你汇集的所有想法都是相关的（即仅因为它们有助于回答该问题而存在）。

自然地，你希望以有序的方式应用这些见解，这就是第3章将教你如何做到的。