The most important factor in writing a lead: You have to decide what your piece is about and clearly telegraph it to the reader, and then you have to confine yourself to writing about what you promised.
A memo, article, blog post, or any piece of writing that doesn’t have a perceptible main focus is not going to hold the reader’s attention or attract that attention in the first place. Readers are fickle. They’ll lose interest in a flash if confused or bored, and if the point of your work is unclear or meanders you’ll drive them away. Even if it’s something they are compelled to read, such as a report, you’ll subtly antagonize them by injection friction into the writing/reading transaction and their interest, retention, and pliability will be eroded.
In addition to identifying the central thought, you have to tell the reader what it is. Summarize it, or at least refer to it, near the beginning of your piece.
The part of your writing that tells the reader what the piece is about is called the lead. There are two basic types of leads, direct leads and indirect leads. I’m not using the terms synonymously with journalistic leads, which sometimes follow a somewhat arcane format, but there are many similarities.
For our purposes, just think of a lead as a preview of what is coming.
For a direct lead, simply summarize what’s ahead and then use the following paragraph to amplify. You’ll notice that’s exactly what I did in the first sentence of this entry and the next paragraph. That was a direct lead to the central thought.
I summarized was what coming:
You have to decide what your piece is about and clearly telegraph it to the reader, and then you have to confine yourself to writing about what you promised.
And then amplified:
A memo, article, blog post, or any piece of writing that doesn’t have a perceptible main focus is not going to hold the reader’s attention or attract that attention in the first place. Readers are fickle. They’ll lose interest in a flash if confused or bored, and if the point of your work is unclear or meanders you’ll drive them away. Even if it’s something they are compelled to read, such as a report, you’ll subtly antagonize them by injection friction into the writing/reading transaction and their interest, retention, and pliability will be eroded.
The indirect lead builds up a little suspense in the opening line or paragraph, sometimes utilizing a tease that captures the readers’ attention and leading them into the following part – the part that identifies the central thought.
Feature (newspaper and magazine soft-news) writers use the indirect lead to capture attention and pull the reader into the story. For example, I once was assigned to write an article about rugby, an unfamiliar, somewhat violent, and always raucous British sport that was beginning to make some headway in the U.S. and the Boston area in particular. I focused in one team in Worcester, Mass., to tell the story.
The central thought is pretty clear:
Rugby is an up-and-coming sport, but it’s confusing, strange to the American eye, quite violent and very raucous. There’s a team right here that is competing in a league that’s part of a national league structure, and they are doing pretty well. Here is their story.
The central thought is fairly complex and boring, at least the way it’s stated above.
So I used the indirect lead to segue into the central thought, opening with an attention-grabbing tease followed by the paragraphs that summed up what’s coming.
Michael Minty learned his sport as a youth in his native Wembly, England. He came home from one of his first games with two black eyes, seven stitches above one eyebrow, a swollen lip, and a torn nostril. His father looked up from the dinner table: “Been playing rugby, have you?”
Then the second paragraph sets the road map for the central thought and how the central thought will progress through the article:
Minty, not one to be easily discouraged, is today player-coach of the Worcester Rugby Football club, established two years ago. Competing it what’s called the B Division of the New England Rugby Union…{ I follow with more detail follows, including the team’s 13-11 winning record…then the next paragraph notes that the record is quite respectable because two-thirds of the team never played the game before the team was assembled…and then comes the requisite detail about broken bones and wild parties.]
Once you’ve established the central thought, keep everything that follows somehow related to it. Journalists call this “supporting your lead.” This is important. Don’t wander off track.
The process of writing is truly enjoyable. Many people find AHA! DID YOU NOTICE I JUST WENT OFF TRACK AND LOST YOU? The central thought of this entry is:
A memo, article, blog post – anything – that doesn’t have a perceptible main focus is a loser. Readers are fickle. They’ll lose interest in a flash if confused or bored, and if the point of your work is unclear or meanders you’ll drive them away…
And the stuff about writing being enjoyable is not relevant to this entry and thus doesn’t follow the lead and thus must be euthanized.
We’ll focus on paragraphing and transitions in future posts, but at this point remember that if what you have in the piece doesn’t follow your lead, get rid of it. If what you have to excise is absolutely essential, then your lead is written incorrectly and should be revised.
For more, see Write Like a Pro: Ten Techniques for Getting Your Point Across at Work (and in Life), on sale at Amazon.
