RESEARCH 12 - How to write a lead story

HOW TO WRITE A LEAD STORY

The opening sentence or paragraph is a lot more important than it may seem, because this is what the audience see first and they need to be drawn in from the lead sentence and automatically be interested and know what the story will be about.  A good lead consists of giving readers important, brief and fascinating information, yet is still able to establish the tone of the article whether it is soft or hard news.

Here are a couple of tips when writing a lead story:

1.     The Five W’s and H: Before writing anything, decide the most important aspects of the story this includes – who, what, where, when, why and how. These are all important because they cover the most relevant pieces of the article. You can leave the less important features until the next few lines.

2.    Conflict: Good stories have conflict, therefore so should leads, because everyone is always interested in struggles and the resolutions of them.

3.    Specifically: Try to be as specific as possible in your lead, otherwise it will not be as interesting and informative as you want it to be to attract readers.

4.    Brevity: Readers want to know how the story links to them and why it should matter to them. Therefore they do not want to be kept waiting so the lead should be kept abrupt and consist of relevant information. A lead is usually 1 or 2 sentences, they should be 25-30 words and rarely ever be 40 because leads are meant to be quick and snappy.

5.    Active Sentences: Strong verbs will allow your lead to be lively and exciting, which should attract and wow the audience. Although, sometimes using these could leave out important information like the person or what caused the action, so you should be careful when choosing vocabulary because it should refer to the article AND still be interesting.

6.    Audience and Context: Always make sure how much your readers already know about the story. This is because now people are more quickly updated by what is happening there and then, so if your story is about what happened yesterday, you should use the information from then but still have new evidence for the audience to know more about what has happened rather than repeating yesterday’s news.

7.    Honesty: A lead can sometimes come across as a promise to your readers, as they are expected to know all about the story and don’t want any false information. So you must always be able to deliver what you have promised in your lead.

Here are some things you should avoid:

1.     Flowery language: Many writers begin with too many adjectives and overusing the verbs so they miss out on writing about what the article is actually about and skip important information. Therefore you should always concentrate on using strong verbs and nouns, so it still has a great impact and focuses on the story.

2.    Unnecessary words or phrases: Avoid using words that aren’t needed in the lead, cut to the chase of it all and get straight to the point of the story, otherwise it will waste space and not be significant.

3.    Formulaic leads: Make sure you lead is genuine and isn’t mechanical, because although stories are written on a deadline, try to resist writing the typical sort of headline because even though the audience want information they still want to be entertained by it.

4.    Don’t use the word ‘IT’: Most editors disapprove leads that start with the word ‘it’ because it is not very precise and doesn’t start with a clear view of what the article will be about, which is the most important factor.

Here are a few examples of some leads:

1.     The summary lead: This is perhaps one of the most traditional lead in news writing. It is straight to the point and factual and gives the reader a quick summary about the story in as many little words as possible, so that it doesn’t give everything away. It also covers the 5 W’s and H in this lead.

2.    Short sentence lead: This is when the lead consists of one word or phrase that acts as a teaser for the whole article

3.    Amazing fact lead: This is when the lead begins with a fact about something which is weird and interesting, because it attracts the readers into wanting to know more about what the fact is about and how they found out about it.

Overall, there are many different types of leads that go with different types of articles, the list goes on! The lead is very important because it allows the audience to know what the specific article is about and how it relates to them, which is why the lead makes such an impact because it can either be seriously good or terribly bad.

Sources:
http://cubreporters.org/leads.html
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/735/05/