Taking the Lead

You pick up a newspaper. You buy a magazine. You open a new book. The first sentence, the first paragraph, these are the most important lines in any of the articles, the beginning of the story.

The question is how to write an incredible lead. How do you pen an opening that includes and dissolves the body of information being disseminated to its inevitable end?

The best leads own everything and divulge nothing. They include the total summation of the story but leave enough wiggle room to suggest this isn't all the data. They tease.

From there, assuming you've hooked the reader into continuing, you dissect each point that was made in the lead into the real story, the long story.

I like to think of the reader sitting across the table from me. The reader isn't reading, she's listening (what are words but a transferal of thought) to a summation of an incredible experience I had as a reporter in Chicago. I say something that creates more interest. When I'm finished with the cliffs notes version, she says, "tell me more."

This is the reaction you want to create with your lead. And it's as easy as telling it straight, and quick. Of course, it couldn't hurt, the language you use, the twists of fate.

Here are a couple of good first lines:

This was the year he rode the subway to the ends of the city, two hundred miles of track.
Libra - Don DeLillo

Monday, 27 January 129 lbs. (total fat groove), boyfriends 1 (hurrah!), shags 3 (hurrah!), calories 2,100, calories used up by shags 600, so total calories 1,500 (exemplary).
Bridget Jones, The Edge of Reason - Helen Fielding

The first first line, from Don DeLillo, is the opening to a novel about Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of President John Kennedy. The second first line from Helen Fielding is about an obsessed modern everywoman.

In each instance you get an idea of the setting, the mental state of the character around whom the story is about to unfold. Granted, the selections above are from fictions, and a newsy intro would undoubtedly read another way. However, in order to make the point of capturing the reader in the very moment that is at the crux of the matter, it is of great import to verbally lead them there.

My suggestion: Visit a library or bookstore and open everything on the shelves. Read the first line. Read the first paragraph. Does it inspire you to keep reading? If so, why? If no, why not?

If you're having trouble writing your own lead for something, try grabbing every bit of information you can and cramming it into a sentence that funnels to a singularity. If possible refine the entire story to a word.

If you can do that, well, you can write the rest of it too.