Creating Kick-ass Ledes

The Task: Get your train chuggin’

•Craft better leads•Refresh your lead writing basics•Expose the common myths about leads•Revise your own leads better

LEDES

• A good lead beckons and invites. A good lead grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go.

• A lede is a window into your story. It is the first step of a journey. It is a door to what you write.

• Leads MATTER. You must master them.

Myths about leads:

• Myth #1 Leads must sum up the story• Myth #2 Leads must never begin with a quote“Are you married, my dear?”“Yes, I am.”“Then you wouldn’t mind zipping me up.”Zipped up, Dorothy Parker turned to face her

interviewer, and the world.Saul Pett, Associated Press

Myths about ledes, con’d

• Myth #3 Leads must always have attribution• Myth #4 Leads must never be more than four lines

long• Behold the fat man. Go ahead. Everybody does. He

doesn’t mind, honestly. That’s how he makes his living. Walk right up to him. Stand there and look. Stand there and gape. Gape at the layers of fat, the astonishing girth, the incredible bulk. Imagine him in a bathtub. Or better yet, on a bike. Or better yet, on one of those flimsy antique chairs. If you’re lucky, maybe he’ll lift his shirt. If you’re really lucky, maybe he’ll rub his belly. Don’t be shy, ask him a question.

Leads Take Time.Good writers revise their ledes again and again.

Arguably the most important paragraph in the story.

• Can you say it out loud and does it sound good.• Are there any words that you stumble over.• Does it sound like something you’d tell a friend over the

phone.• Does it put you to sleep or confuse you?• Is it one of the cliché leads?

WHAT NOT TO DO• The News-Register lede.

Some of the nation's biggest UFO fans travel to McMinnville each May. • The 'thanks-to' lead

Thanks to Bud Pagel, McMinnville’s jazz scene is thriving.• • The 'typical' lead

At first glance, Joe Schmo might seem like an average guy. But he’s not. He…

• The 'in common' question lead What do Charlie Chaplin and Bill Clinton have in common?

WHAT NOT TO DO, cont’d

• The 'exceptional' lead Community is important to most people, and Sally Smith is no exception.

• The 'not alone' lead George Tuck likes black and white photography. Tuck is not alone.

• The it’s not what it looks like lead• You may think they are Amazons preparing for the kill, but

it’s really the UI javelin team!

WHAT TO DO: FEATURE WRITING LEADS

• They can be long. But you’ve got to earn it. Here’s how.• Create a scene with your major protagonist. • Use simple sentences and action verbs.• Describe some major action where you get the essence of

the protagonist, but not, perhaps, the main action of the story.

• Create a cliff-hanger that leads the reading begging for more.

• Don’t have any unnecessary filler items. No details that are not revelatory.

• Make sure your lead is related to the focus of your story and can be backed up by the facts.

1. Anecdotal Leads• Richard Leakey likes to tell about the day in 1950 when he

was a 6-year-old whining for his parents' attention. Louis and Mary Leakey were digging for ancient bones on the shores of Lake Victoria, but their little boy wanted to play. He wanted lunch. He wanted his mother to cuddle him. He wanted something to do. "Go find your own bone," said his exasperated father, waving Richard off toward scraps of fossils lying around the site. What the little boy found was the jawbone -- the best ever unearthed -- of an extinct giant pig. As he worked away at it with the dental picks and brushes that served for toys in the paleontologists' camp, he experienced for the first time the passion of discovery. (Kathleen Merryman in the Tacoma News Tribune)

2. Narrative Leads

• Hours before the big dance, Robin Hemley took his date Lizzie, her husband and her son out to dinner. He wore a simple black suit, she wore a black evening gown. He didn't get a chance to kiss her good night—not that he would have wanted to anyway. A storm short-circuited the lights and the dance ended half an hour early.

3. Scene-Setter Leads

• A woman with tormented eyes talks to herself as she plays a battered piano in Ward D's dayroom. Other psychiatric patients shuffle on the beige linoleum or stare from red-and-green vinyl chairs. A bank of windows opens to a fenced courtyard. Outside...

4. Scene-Wraps or Gallery Leads

• A man claiming to be a Catholic priest sits in a Santa Claus suit in a wheelchair outside a Southeast Portland supermarket, collecting money for the "Holy Order of Mary Inc.”

• Across town, a supposed South African visitor asks a holiday-spirited shopper for directions to a local church. The South African then launches into a complicated tale that soon has the Portlander withdrawing $2,000 from the bank... Elsewhere, a boiler-room telephone sales company...

• http://www.dhammaweb.net/meditation/view.php?id=33

5. Significant Detail Leads

• Hidden beneath a heap of inner-tubes in a tiny storeroom on an island in the middle of the Vistula River is the statue of Lenin that stood for decades inside the Gdansk Shipyard.

6. The Single-Instance Lead (microcosm)

• For five days, Alice's husband, high on drugs, threatened to kill her. He hit her and abused her. Terrified, Alice fled the house when she finally got the chance and ran to a local business to call the police. "He would kill me. He's very scary," Alice said. "He would walk through walls if he had to." The police advised her to contact the Domestic Violence Resource Center in Hillsboro, and Alice found her way there.

7. Word Play Leads

• “IN the art world, Rita Gomez is a mover, but most certainly not a shaker.”

• http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/arts/artsspecial/28getty.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Mover+but+not+a+shaker&st=nyt&oref=slogin

Great feature ledes

• http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1003-OCT_SINATRA_rev_

• http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/sports/playmagazine/601juggler.html

• http://nymag.com/news/features/34738/• http://nymag.com/realestate/features/

47224/