100 ways to improve your writing - Gary Provost 2019
Write a strong lead
Five ways to write a strong beginning
There is no precise definition of the lead. It can be the first sentence, the first paragraph, even the first several paragraphs of your article or story. The lead is whatever it takes to lead your readers so deeply into your story or article that they will not turn back unless you stray from the path you have put them on.
Here are two leads that I have used:
On a clear day in Salem you can stand in front of the Peabody Museum and stare down Essex Street all the way to the Hawthorne Boulevard. And, if you’re in luck, you might see something black coming around the corner, something black and bewildering, floating, like a hole in the sky growing larger as it comes toward you. For an instant it is as disturbing as a rustle in the night. Don’t be concerned. It is only Laurie Cabot.
John E. Rock kills people for their own good.
“It’s all hypothetical, of course,” he says, waving a hand at his MacBook in the Framingham office of Rock Insurance.
Though the term “lead” is usually associated with nonfiction, the lead in fiction is just as important. Here is how Gail Levine-Freidus began her novel for children Popcorn:
You know how sometimes you suddenly get the feeling that someone is watching every move you make? The feeling sort of sneaks up on you and gives you the creeps, whatever they are. Well that’s exactly how I felt in Mr. Pettigrew’s English class just as I was starting to work on the last section of our test.
A lead should be provocative. It should have energy, excitement, an implicit promise that something is going to happen or that some interesting information will be revealed. It should create curiosity, get the reader asking questions.
The character of a good lead depends largely on the nature and length of what you have written. A 500-word lead in an 800-word story is not a good lead, but it could be a great lead in a 3,000-word story.
Your lead should give readers something to care about before it gives them dry background information. “Something to care about” usually means one of two things. Either you give the readers information that affects them directly, or you give them a human being with whom they can identify.
Don’t begin a story in the company newsletter like this:
On March 27 the Board of Directors met at the Holiday Inn in Podunk. All but two members were present. John Burdick of the Tymecomp Agency presented the results of his time and productivity study. Mr. Burdick has spent six months in the four plants surveying daily production, employee attendance records, and overhead costs. He has spoken to employees and personnel managers. He described the effectiveness of a variety of work schedules, and on his recommendation the board voted unanimously to put the company on a four-day workweek, effective June 1.
Employees would have to read the whole first paragraph before they found what the story had to do with them. Most employees would not have bothered.
The provocative information, the information that will hook the reader and compel him to keep reading, is at the end of the paragraph. It should be moved to the front, and the lead should be:
On June 1 the company will go to a four-day workweek.
This next lead is the opening of my book about Las Vegas, High Stakes. Instead of loading the opening with impersonal background material, I brought my story immediately to life by giving the reader something to care about. Note the two important elements in the lead: I made it visible—I showed the reader something; and I made it human—I showed the reader what the topic of the book meant to a real person: me.
In the spring of 1990 my friend Frank Strunk took me to Las Vegas. He lured me into a casino, my first time, his zillionth, and introduced me to the fine points of blackjack and craps. Even before my second $100 bill had been poked down into the darkness of the drop box under crap table number five at the Flamingo Hilton, I knew that I had found the missing piece in my life.
A lead like that will make your reader want to keep reading.
One common mistake you should be aware of is the writing of two or three leads in the same story. Often a writer creates a good lead and then repeats all the information in the second paragraph, and again in the third.
This is from an unpublished article on dog parks:
Dog parks are a great place to exercise and socialize your pet. They are often fenced in, so the dogs can safely run off-leash and play to their hearts’ content. As long as owners clean up after their pets and don’t allow aggressive behavior, a dog park can be a canine paradise.
Buster the beagle was a shy, overweight couch potato before his owner discovered the Beagleville dog park. Thanks to the free dog-park manners classes offered by local volunteers, Buster lost his fear of other dogs as well as his excess weight. His daily visits to the dog park are the highlight of the day for Buster and his owner, thanks to the well-trained pals with whom he plays.
The second paragraph of that article would have made the better lead. It contains all the information in the first paragraph plus a specific statement of interest to the reader. If the writer had inserted the phrase “safe environment and” before “well-trained pals” in the second paragraph, the first paragraph could have been tossed in the wastebasket.