BROWSE HOW TOs

How to Write a Lead

By eHow Careers & Work Editor

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A lead is the first sentence of a news article. An effective lead draws readers in and makes them want to read more.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately challenging

Things You’ll Need:

Dictionaries
Thesauri
Writing Style Manuals
Cassette Tape Recorders
Spiral Notebooks
Computers
Word-processing Software

Step1

Think about how you would interest your best friend in this story if you were explaining it out loud. What's the "hook" that would grab his or her interest immediately?

Step2

Consider the most interesting part of the story. This needs to be used up front to interest the reader in what will follow, but still worded in a way that will get immediate attention.

Step3

Think of using an interesting fact, a question, or something humorous or provocative as your lead. Be sure you are completely familiar with your subject so that these "hooks" will more easily come to mind.

Step4

Use active verbs as much as you can, and avoid the passive voice. Use a thesaurus if you need active synonyms for passive words.

Step5

Read the lead objectively. Edit and rewrite to make it as lean as possible while still maintaining the factors that will draw in your reader.

Tips & Warnings

Use the same tone in the lead that will follow through the entire story. Once you have grabbed the reader's attention, you don't want to change your style.
Here's an example of an intriguing lead from the New York Times' Web site following a volatile week in the stock market in April 2000: "After Friday's wild sell-off, almost everybody on Wall Street thought that one of two things would happen Monday morning." The reader is left wondering what's to come; his or her curiosity has been piqued.
In feature stories, there's more room to be creative with your lead. In straight news stories, however, you should usually try to include a good portion of the "five W's": who, what, where, when and why.
Take care not to misspell anything in the lead. This is the editor's first impression of your writing.

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Comments

actinite said

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on 6/8/2008 what if you're writing on a new project to teach citizens to run for public office? The a lead question could be, "Ever consider running for office? Would that be biased?

Anonymous said

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on 11/22/2005 Never, ever use a question in your lead. News articles are supposed to be objective. If you pose a question in any writing, you must answer. Therefore, the answer is going to biased and not objective.