A great lead is prett-ay, prett-ay, prett-ay… important
Written a crappy lead? Expect the reader to jump ship before the dock is out of sight.
Written a good lead? Expect them to joyfully stay with you for the entire voyage.
“Your lead was just too interesting, so I’m not going to continue reading,” said no one ever.
The first sentence, paragraph, or cohesive thought of a written story is called the “lead,” or in hard-core journalism circles, the “lede.” (I’ve always found that spelling to be a little snooty, so for this story, I’m sticking with “lead.”) To use a fishing analogy, the lead is your best opportunity to snag the reader like an enthusiastic bluegill on a treble hook and reel him back to the boat with no chance of shaking loose.
(It’s my story so I get to use fishing analogies if I want to.)
For hard-news writers, leads usually consist of the good ol’ 5 Ws — who, what, when, where, and why.
A Nashville man (who) was struck and injured by a runaway water buffalo (what) last night (when) near the Music City Zoo (where) after the animal managed to scale the 20-foot wall of its enclosure using “Mission Impossible”-style suction cups smuggled into the facility by a relative earlier in the day (why).
OK, that’s pretty interesting, but you see what I’m getting at. Structure-wise, it’s boring. The creativity of a typical beat writer is usually squashed by those Ws. She must (or should) convey the most important info in the lead and then flesh out the details in the body of the story.
Feature writers don’t have to do that. In fact, we are allowed to write with a clear bias toward our employer, industry, product, or whatever. (And yes, I realize there is also startling bias in today’s mainstream journalism, but that’s a topic for another newsletter and a different writer.) For years, I’ve written for farmer-owned agricultural cooperatives, and my stories hardly ever involve investigative journalism — they are about supporting my employer’s mission or telling the cooperative story in creative and positive ways.
That’s where the lead comes in.
Imagine a great feature-story lead to be like the classic Larry David comedy, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” It’s nearly all improvisation, and the actors are encouraged to be inventive and, frankly, a little goofy and over the top. That could also describe an effective lead. The writer is not boxed in with normal rules of alternating quotes and paraphrases, attributions, and traditional sentence structure, but is allowed to make editorial statements, ask questions, incorporate a little slang, and even use sentence fragments.
What do cloven hooves, illegal and oddly powerful suction cups, and a very ticked off but resourceful 1,800-pound African bovine have in common? A Nashville man with a broken leg and the rest of us with a whole lot of unanswered questions.
The remainder of the story, however, is like any other traditional TV show — the actors follow a script, and the plot is carefully structured. As soon as the lead ends, we are bound by the natural laws of journalism to stick with a framework that readers clearly understand.
As an editor who often works with young writers (including my own kids), I regularly encounter otherwise decent stories with uninspired, mundane leads. This makes me nuts. I want to grab the writer and shake them, screaming, “This. Was. Your. Chance. To. Be. Creative! You. Blew. It!” (Each word gets its own shake.)
Of course, I don’t do that. But I want to.
But I’m totally serious when I say, “Don’t blow it.” A feature story lead is your best opportunity as a writer to have fun AND do your sworn duty of hooking the reader. Every story you write took time and effort, and by writing it, there is a built-in assumption that it will somehow improve the life of the reader by reading it.
Might be by providing critical information. Might be by providing good ol’ mindless entertainment. (Arguably, just as valid.)
But by starting this important story with a lame lead, you are dooming it to a life of loneliness and indifference, never to be fully read.
That’s not cool!
Give your lead the time, consideration, creativity, and fun it deserves, and you will, in turn, lead your grateful reader down the path of enlightenment.
