Lead Generator: Making Your First Words Count
It's the Medusa of writing, turning to stone countless writers who gaze at it too long. It's responsible for thousands of stalled writing projects and laptops closed in frustration.
It's the lead, the first sentences a reader encounters. And you want to make it count.
Lead or Lede?
Let's iron this out here and now, shall we? It's lead. Lede is old-hat, journalistic jargon (AP even says so). Lede drinks with its pinky finger out at parties and is liable to poke you in the retina while telling a story you're half listening to.
And if you've never wondered about this, congrats, you're normal.
Leads: More than an Introduction
Gallons of ink have been spilled concerning the lead. It's likely why many writers, despite the winds of inspiration at their backs, freeze before they reach their first body paragraph. The lead is a big bill to foot; the famous journalist Rene "Jack" Cappon called the lead "the agony of square one." And we should approach the lead with some mild trepidation. Nothing debilitating, but enough to keep us from phoning it in. Why? The lead offers the reader something different from any other part of an article, blog, or essay. But much of the advice on leads is the same as any good general writing advice (Cut clutter; Focus on verbs; Avoid there is/are starts to a sentence; etc.). Or it highlights the same thing as your 7th grade English teacher.
Leads, it's often said, introduce the reader to the theme, and typically in as few words as possible. I find no harm in this, but "Reader, meet theme. Theme, reader," is the static part of the lead's job. Yes, the lead introduces the reader to the theme. Gold star. But its job is more dynamic.
A well-written lead, in its many forms, involves the reader.
Where every sentence after the lead keeps readers involved, the lead first entices readers. It heightens intrigue and invites a reader to invest her time. This is less of a dilemma for book writers because most [fair] readers appreciate the cumulative power of longer prose. But for blogs, articles, and essays, the lead is "the doorway into every text. Its job, never a minor one, is to draw the reader over the threshold" (emphasis mine).1
What's in a [Great] Lead?
Great leads promise readers that their time will be worth it. Readers need incentive to leave what they were or could be doing in order to read your piece. And there's no better ROI for readers than peaked then satisfied curiosity.
The best leads, then, provoke questions while the rest of a piece answers them. But the one question you want to help readers avoid asking is "Where's this going?" If a reader asks this before she hits the second paragraph, the goose is cooked—no matter how great your exposition is.
“The most important sentence in any article is the first one. If it doesn’t induce the reader to proceed to the second sentence, your article is dead.” — William Zinsser, On Writing Well
That said, the best leads introduce and involve the reader.
Four Types of Leads
Many types of leads exist and get the job done. And each type has had a master wield it with precision. You'll find a litany of great examples via Google right now. Four that I cycle through often are the "I need more" lead, the "set the scene" lead, the "double-take" lead, and the "fact" lead.
"I Need More" Leads: These leads are engaging, but tricky, to execute. When done well, readers think, "I'm going to need to know more about this." These leads feel explosive, and they're engineered by careful writers to carry the blast in a precise direction. Be careful, though: Eager writers think often that they've dropped a humdinger when it's actually a dramatic dud.
- "Several years ago, a fifteen-year-old boy answered the side door of a house where I once lived, and was murdered, shot twice by one of five people—two women and three men—who had gone there to steal a pound of cocaine." This is from a Ted Kooser essay titled Smalls Rooms in Time, about his life in his former home, and the effects of time's imminent passage on nostalgia. What Kooser does is subtle: wrapped in this alarming news, his former home steps onto the stage, and we're curious and bought in.
Set the Scene Leads: Scene leads supply readers with the terra firma of a sturdy setting and guide their gaze toward a specific focus. Writers who've trained their powers of scene-setting leads appeal to a number of readers' senses to establish where they are while showing readers why they're there in the first place.
- "On the second floor of an old Bavarian palace in Munich, Germany, there's a library with high ceilings, a distinctly bookish smell and one of the world's most extensive collections of Latin texts. About 20 researchers from all over the world work in small offices around the room. They're laboring on a comprehensive Latin dictionary that's been in progress since 1894. The most recently published volume contained all the words beginning with the letter P. That was back in 2010," wrote Byrd Pinkerton in this piece about, you guessed it, a comprehensive Latin dictionary.
Double-Take Leads: Double-take leads, as Francis Flaherty calls them, emerge at the intersection of two unlikely things—an Amish man selling refurbished Apple products, for instance—and inspire the same questions that likely made it worth writing about in the first place. Double-take leads tend to be the most common, but don't let that stop you. These leads almost guarantee questions that require further reading. Just make sure you deliver on your promises in the body. Double-take leads, typically, are shorter in stature, but cast a long shadow.
- "It took 60 years before they found each other and amassed enough proof to overcome skeptics. But a handful of families who survived the Holocaust are responsible for having a German army officer recognized for saving hundreds of Jews from extermination during World War II," wrote Alison Leigh Conwan in the New York Times.
Fact Leads: The most docile of lead types in this list, but it's plenty powerful to provoke. The world is big and mysterious, which means the weirdest facts lurk around the corner. These leads capitalize on that, and they deliver it to a reader's doorstep. This doesn't imply, though, that every big number (the number of toilets in the U.S.) is worth the real estate of the first sentences. Suffice it to say, when you find it, you'll know.
- "The dead will eventually outnumber the living on Facebook, according to a new study whose authors want us to think more about the importance of preserving our collective digital histories." Rachel E. Greenspan of TIME leveraged this fact lead well. How do I know? You're still thinking about how staggering that news is.
Be a Lead Generator
How can you discern the best lead for your piece? Unless you're under the gun for time, write two or three different leads for a piece and consider which one foots the bill the best. In most cases, you'll find one that doesn't feel forced (unless you feel that way about them all).
If you feel particularly flummoxed, write a bland lead, draft your body and conclusion, then return to your lead. Nothing says you must craft the lead before everything else. Many leads stutter and stammer because writers haven't narrowed their gaze to a single theme. If that's the case, write a few filler sentences, find your theme as you write the body, and then develop your lead. If you still feel out of sorts, you may need to do further reporting or research.
One final caution: Before you hit "publish," check that you haven't spent a paragraph or two clearing your throat. Writers often find their targets after they've warmed their confidence and fingers after writing several sentences. Read the first paragraph then second or third. If the second or third paragraph say the same thing as the first but better, cut the first paragraph. Your readers will thank you for making those first words count.
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- Francis Flaherty, The Elements of Story, 201.