Lecture No 8 (for the students of English Dept of SBBU) Good Beginnings:
How to Write a Lede Your Editor—and Your
Readers—Will Love “We judge people by what is apparent and leave
their inner secrets to Allah.” – Hazrat Umar ibn al-Khattab
(radiallahu’ anhu)
Well begun is half done. Scratch that—no clichés. Um. Just as breakfast is the most important meal of
the day, the beginning is the most important part of a story. Snore. And that first bit isn’t even true.
set phrase An
interjection telling someone to ignore, forget, or disregard what was just said
or instructed. I wonder how much it would be
to have our wedding inside the aquarium? Actually, scratch that, that's a
ridiculous idea.
But the second part is. We’ve all
heard the advice:
“I urge you not to count on the reader to stick around. Readers
want to know—very soon—what’s in it for them,” William Zinsser wrote in On Writing Well, his classic guide to nonfiction writing. “Therefore your lead must capture the reader
immediately and force him to keep reading.”
“A good lead beckons and invites. It informs,
attracts, and entices,” says Chip Scanlan—of the Poynter Institute—in “The Power of Leads.”
“It’s got to deliver on what you promise,”
says New
Yorker contributor John McPhee of ledes in an interview with The Paris Review.
“It should shine like a flashlight down through the piece.”
How do you write a lede that does all this? Here are four editors on ledes they love and why they love them, and the writers on how they did
it.
(As for why journalists sometimes write “ledes” rather than
“leads”—there’s some lore attributing the practice to the days of linotype,
though the lore may be a fable.)
a body of traditions and knowledge on a subject
or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word
of mouth.
"the jinns of Arabian lore"
a short story, typically with animals as
characters, conveying a moral.
"the fable of the sick lion and the wary
fox"
linotype: a composing
machine producing lines of words as single strips of metal, used chiefly for
newspapers. It is now rarely used.
Make
the Reader Smile
Lede: Even black holes wear
makeup in Hollywood. Last year’s hit film Interstellar used real
scientific equations to depict what happens when a team of space farers venture
near a supermassive black hole. Now, a joint paper published in the
journal Classical
and Quantum Gravity from the movie’s visual effects team and
scientific consultant reveal that the real black hole was deemed too confusing
for audiences, and some of the science had to be toned down.
black hole
a region of space having a gravitational field
so intense that no matter or radiation can escape.
·
informal
a place where money or lost items apparently
disappear without trace.
fare To travel; go.
A
transportation charge, as for a bus.
2. A passenger
transported for a fee.
altered so as to be less extreme or intense.
"a toned-down version of the report was
published
The editor’s take: “This is my favorite lede
of any story I’ve worked on in the past year,” says Lisa
Grossman, physical sciences news editor at New Scientist and
award-winning writer. “It’s hilarious, evocative, and gives you an accurate sense of what the story is about all at the same time.”
The lede should get to the point
immediately, Grossman says, with the news
nearly always in the first sentence. She also
likes humor: “The perfect lede ideally first makes
you smile, and then makes you keep reading.”
The writer’s take: The best
ledes give you a taste of the story but leave you
wanting to know more, says Jacob Aron, physical sciences reporter at New Scientist.
Inspiration for a good first line often comes after work, when he’s done
reporting but hasn’t started writing. “I’ll have stories from the day before
buzzing around in my head, planning out different structures, and something
will pop into my head,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll be just falling asleep when
something occurs to me, so I blearily grab for my
phone and email it to myself.”
Aron didn’t have time to wait for inspiration for his Interstellar lede,
though, because the story had a short embargo. Luckily, an idea popped into his
head on the spot. While the press release pitched the “Hollywood does real
physics” angle, when Aron read the paper he realized
that the black hole’s original depiction had been even
more real—but so strange the director worried it would leave viewers in the
dark.
“I immediately loved this, as it just seemed so typically
Hollywood that even the supposedly most realistic depiction of a black hole
ever wasn’t safe,” Aron says. “And then I got an image of
this monstrous singularity in the fabric of the universe sitting in a trailer,
doing its makeup before being called onto the set.”
the state, fact, quality, or condition of
being singular.
"he believed in the singularity of all
cultures"
|
synonyms:
|
uniqueness,
|
1.
an unpowered vehicle towed by another, in
particular:
2.
.
a series of extracts from a film or broadcast,
used for advance publicity.
"terrific trailers for mediocre
movies"
Leave
the Reader Hanging
Lede: Walter Tschinkel may
not have solved the mystery of the fairy circles, but he can tell you that
they’re alive. Tens of thousands of the formations—bare patches of soil, 2 to
12 meters in diameter—freckle grasslands from southern Angola to northern South
Africa, their perimeters often marked by a tall fringe of grass. Locals say
they’re the footprints of the gods. Scientists have thrown their hands up in
the air. But now Tschinkel, a biologist at Florida State University in
Tallahassee, has discovered something no one else has.
Fairy circles are circular patches of land barren of
plants, varying between 2 and 15 metres (7 and 49 ft) in diameter, often
encircled by a ring of stimulated growth of grass. ... Fairy circles typically occur in
essentially monospecific grassy vegetation, where conditions are particularly
arid.
The editor’s take: This lede has everything
David Grimm wants. “I’m looking for a few things in a lede: an attention-grabbing first sentence; a
clear, concise, and user-friendly summary of the new finding; and a sense of
why the average reader should care,” says Grimm, online news editor at Science and
award-winning journalist.
Grimm also likes ledes that are “lean and mean.” He favors short
snappy sentences that are free of jargon and information that isn’t necessary
to hook the reader, such as the journal name and research institution.
of a machine or system) easy to use or
understand.
"the search software is
user-friendly"
cleverly concise; neat.
"snappy catchphrases"
|
synonyms:
|
concise, succinct
|
special words or expressions used by a
profession or group that are difficult for others to understand.
"legal jargon
a thing designed to catch people's attention.
"companies are looking for a sales
hook"
The writer’s take: Freelancer
Rachel Nuwer learned how to write ledes by working with her editors, who “can
expedite the process of discovering what differentiates
a mediocre lede from an exceptional one.” Her
experience is common. “I’ve seen and rewritten thousands of ledes,” Grimm says.
Nuwer wrote this fairy-circle story early in her career, and
collaborating with Grimm taught her to structure ledes as mini anecdotes. Her
fairy-circle lede introduces a character
(biologist Walter Tschinkel), includes the news (fairy circles are alive),
defines fairy circles, and—crucially—leaves readers wanting to know more.
Ledes should “present some form of tension, mystery, surprise, or
challenge,” Nuwer says.
Collaborating with another editor, Richard Fisher at the BBC,
taught her that ledes in longer stories should tease the reader—giving bits of tantalizing information early on, but not the whole story. “Regardless of the length of the story, however,
the more compelling the lede, the better the
chances that the reader will read on,” Nuwer says.
Find
Common Ground with the Reader
Lede: “Hi! I’m Gabe. What’s
your name?”
“Seung-heon. Nice to meet you, Gabe.”
Uh-oh.
“Sorry, I missed that. What’s your name again?”
“Seung-heon.”
This is bad.
“Sung-hon?”
“Seung-heon. It’s okay—just call me Jerry. Everyone does.”
I hate it when this happens. I have every intention of learning
this person’s name, and my brain is simply not cooperating. I can’t seem to
hear what he’s saying, I can’t pronounce it correctly, and there’s no way I’m
going to remember it for more than five seconds.
The editor’s take: “This is
one of my favorite ledes of all time,” says Karen Schrock Simring, news and
letters editor at Scientific
American Mind. “It’s instantly
relatable—we’ve all been there—and it’s an instant scene.” She adds that starting with a short dialogue is a lot more fun than just
describing this predicament (“Remember the last time
you met someone with an unusual foreign name and you just couldn’t hear it
properly?”).
Simring says the best ledes are emotionally evocative and show rather than tell, giving readers an instant
mini-experience without telling them what they should be feeling by using words
like tragic, staggering,
or amazing. She also likes ledes that introduce the story’s main points
effortlessly. “It’s lovely to read an introductory section of an article and be totally sucked in—so
engrossed that you don’t even realize you’ve just hit the nut graf or moved into the meat of
the article,” she says.
'Nut graf' is an editorial slang term used by editors and copy editors at newspapers
and magazines. The term refers to a
paragraph or sentence that summarizes the essence of a story without divulging
every detail.
The writer’s take: A good lede connects
readers with their own experiences in a funny or
provocative way, says Gabriel Wyner, author of Fluent Forever, a
science-based guide to learning new languages. While distinguishing sounds in
foreign languages is not a universal frustration, many of us
have had trouble with foreign names. “My goal was to evoke a memory of this sort of struggle,” he says, helping readers empathize
with people who struggle in the same way while learning a foreign language.
Identifying a part of your story that readers can understand
experientially shows them why you care about it. “If you can find that
connection, then you can bring them in and have them share in your own
excitement,” Wyner says.
Make a Promise and Establish Tension
Lede: Some places on
this planet are so wondrous, and so frangible, that maybe we just shouldn’t go
there.
Maybe we should leave them alone and appreciate them from afar.
Send a delegated observer who will
absorb much, walk lightly, and report back as Neil Armstrong did from the
moon—and let the rest of us stay home. That paradox applies to Kronotsky Zapovednik, a remote nature reserve on the
east side of Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, along the Pacific coast a thousand
miles north of Japan. It’s a splendorous landscape, dynamic and rich,
tumultuous and delicate, encompassing 2.8 million acres of volcanic mountains
and forest and tundra and river bottoms as well as more than 700 brown bears,
thickets of Siberian dwarf pine (with edible nuts for the bears) and relict
“graceful” fir (Abies
sachalinensis) left in the wake of Pleistocene glaciers, a major
rookery of Steller sea lions on the coast, a population of kokanee salmon in
Kronotskoye Lake, along with sea-run salmon and steelhead in the rivers, eagles
and gyrfalcons and wolverines and many other species—terrain altogether too good
to be a mere destination. With so much to offer, so
much at stake, so much that can be quickly damaged but (because of the high
latitudes, the slow growth of plants, the intricacies of its geothermal
underpinnings, the specialness of its ecosystems, the delicacy of its
topographic repose) not quickly repaired, does Kronotsky need people, even as
visitors? I raise this question, acutely aware that it may sound hypocritical,
or anyway inconsistent, given that I’ve recently left my own boot prints in
Kronotsky’s yielding crust.
able to be broken into fragments; brittle or
fragile.
"the frangible skull of an infant"
the quality of being specific rather than general.
specificity. the quality of being specific to a particular organism. Type of:
quality. an essential and distinguishing attribute of something or someone.
behaving in a way that suggests one has higher
standards or more noble beliefs than is the case.
"we don't go to church and we thought it
would be hypocritical to have him christened"
give (a baby) a Christian name at baptism as a
sign of admission to a Christian Church.
"their second daughter was christened
Jeanette"
|
synonyms:
|
baptize
|
The editor’s take: “This lede has it all,” says Tim De
Chant, senior digital editor at NOVA and editor of NOVA Next.
“There’s a hook, a story, and some familiarity, but ultimately
there’s something unsettled and unfinished about it. We want to read more.”
The first sentence hooks us. “With just two words—’wondrous’ and
‘frangible’—Quammen has us thinking, ‘Wherever this place is, I really have
to see it,’ ” De Chant says. “But then he pulls the rug out from under us. The sentence is enticing but leaves us
wanting.”
Familiarity comes from the image of
Neil Armstrong walking on the moon as everyone else watched from their living
rooms. Next comes the story of Kronotsky Zapovednik and Quammen second-guessing his exploration of this
fragile, remote nature reserve. “Again, he’s pulling the rug out from under us,”
De Chant says.
The best ledes “stand
alone as their own tiny story,” De Chant says.
“Not necessarily as a summary of the story to come, but a passage with a
beginning, middle, and end.” And the end of Quammen’s
lede is also the beginning of the story of his visit
to Kronotsky Zapovednik, making a seamless
transition for launching into the bigger story of the reserve.
1.
anticipate or predict (someone's actions or
thoughts) by guesswork.
"he had to second-guess what the
environmental regulations would be in five years' time"
2.
2.
NORTH
AMERICAN
criticize (someone or something) with
hindsight.
"no one should second-guess police
officers whose lives are on the line
smooth and continuous, with no apparent gaps
or spaces between one part and the next.
"the seamless integration of footage from
different sources"
The writer’s take: David Quammen learned to write ledes by reading the best—literary writers like Samuel Beckett, William
Faulkner, and Albert Camus (“My
mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday …”), and nonfiction writers like Loren Eiseley,
John McPhee, and Robert Ardrey (“Not
in innocence, and not in Asia, was mankind born”).
These writers taught him “to grab the
reader, hold the reader, give the reader immediate and potent reasons to
proceed past the first sampled line,” Quammen
says. “I came to understand, gradually and unconsciously, that the opening of a
piece of nonfiction has to do two things, and do them very quickly: offer a promise and establish tension.”
Inspiration for Quammen’s lede to this National
Geographic story came from his reaction to hiking in the
reserve: An hour or so into the hike, he was appalled at the damage his boots had done to the reserve’s delicate crust and mossy banks. “That’s where the lede of this Kronotsky piece
begins,” he says. “It incorporates my sense of the mandate to offer a promise
of natural wonders and establish tension.”
an official order or commission to do something.
"a mandate to seek the release of
political prisoners"
(of territory) be assigned to (another power)
under a mandate of the League of Nations.
"mandated territories"
Still want more? In April, Roy Peter Clark of the
Poynter Institute published his picks for the best ledes amongst this year’s
Pulitzer Prize winners. Here is my favorite:
Lede: The two fieldworkers
scraped hoes over weeds that weren’t there.
“Let us pretend we see many weeds,” Francisco Galvez told his
friend Rafael. That way, maybe they’d get a full week’s work.
Endings often echo beginnings—but that’s the
first time I’ve ever used a lede in the kicker.
Vocabulary of a midterm paper
Smolder. Rephrase. Code switching
collapsing
into itself. inheritor.
intimate.
Scars. do away with
proxy.
spoils. encompass
wreak
havoc. code switching. colonization
Overwhelmingly ingrained
Conjures. binary. versus
chaotic
ominous
lives up to
reckon with
seething
shield
hover
No Man’s Land’.
hinged on
breathe life into
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