Hello Everyone and Welcome Back! Today we will be talking about an aspect that helps us write a feature story that we would need in order to create our magazine.
The key word in this blog will be "Lead".
A lead is an aspect that helps us write a feature story that we would need in order to create our magazine. Specifically, a lead is an introductory sentence that, while keeping the reader's attention, succinctly and clearly presents the audience with the most crucial details of the news item. Even if a reader only skims your opening paragraph, they should still be able to tell what the piece is about and what the most crucial details are. A lead can be a sentence, a paragraph, or even a page long. The lead should be specific to the story, should be in third person, should fit the mood/tone of the story, and shouldn’t be filled with cliches.
There are numerous methods for crafting a strong lead and so far we have learned about the ones below.
- Narrative: Tells a Story
- Descriptive: Describes a scene/person
- Direct Quote: Should be used sparingly & Must be a very powerful quote
- Startling Statement: Creates Drama
- Contrast & Compare: Contrasting/Comparing ideas
- Twist: Sets reader up for one mood and then twists it, surprises the reader
Writing devices for these leads include repetition, short & punchy sentences, dialogue, mixing sentence length to set a rhythm, and allowing the use of starting a sentence with the word "And".
Some ways that you can go wrong with creating a lead that catches a reader's attention is by using news or editorial leads using first or second person, stating the obvious, leads starting with "Imagine this..", and as stated earlier, using cliches.
All these helpful tips are my guidelines that I'll use when I do rough drafts and practices of creating my own leads.
Stay tuned, on my next blogs I'll be updating you guys on my lead practice writing!
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