lede presentation for CNF, 2014

1. LEDES
Also known as leads. Also known as “the beginning of
your story”

2. IN THE BEGINNING
 A strong beginning draws in the reader and holds
the reader.
 It’s the hook, prime real estate
 There are many different ways to start, and most
writers will try several different beginnings before
finding the best one.
 For some reason, many writers find that the second
paragraph should usually be the first one.

3. STRAIGHTFORWARD/SUMMARY
 PARIS — In a cultural twofer that makes it Frank
Gehry week here, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, a
private cultural center and contemporary-art
museum designed by Mr. Gehry, had its official
inaugural ceremony on Monday, attended by the
French president, François Hollande. At the same
time, the Pompidou Center across town is giving
Mr. Gehry, based in Los Angeles, a major career
retrospective, his first in Europe.
 —New York Times Oct. 21, 2014

4. THE WHOLE STORY IN THE LEDE
 Less than a year has elapsed since Oxford
Dictionaries declared “selfie” its word of the year for
2013, and though many people regarded selfies as
an art form long before that the time has clearly
come for formal recognition. Visionaire, a publisher
that produces pricey limited editions (which it calls
issues), is devoting its current issue, Visionaire 64,
to works by the conceptual artist John Baldessari,
who has used celebrity self-portraits provided for
the project as his raw material.
 —Ibid, NYT, Oct. 21

5. SCENE & DESCRIPTION
“Lindsay Lohan moves through the Chateau Marmont
as if she owns the place, but in a debtor-prison kind
of way. She’ll soon owe the hotel $46,000. Heads
turn subtly as she slinks toward a table to meet a
young producer and an old director. The actress’s
mother, Dina Lohan, sits at the next table. Mom
sweeps blond hair behind her ear and tries to
eavesdrop. A few tables away, a distinguished-looking
middle-aged man patiently waits for the
actress. He has a stack of presents for her.”
—Times Magazine, January 10

6. ANECDOTE FROM AN INTERVIEW
 KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip—The images of so
many houses destroyed, so many bomb blasts,
even so many bodies wrapped in burial shrouds
can begin to blur together, indistinguishable. But
Belal Khaled, a young photojournalist and painter in
this southern Gaza town, saw symbols and stories
in the smoke all around him.
 —Artists’ Work Rises From the Destruction of the
Israel-Gaza Conflict, NY Times, Oct. 21

7. A PROVOCATIVE QUESTION:
“What is the solution to affordable housing in New
York?”
—Trading Parking Lots for Affordable Housing, NY
Times, Oct. 21, 2014

8. AN IMAGE
“Passersby of the Standard hotel on Manhattan’s
Washington Street will encounter an inflatable
rainbow structure of indeterminate shape,
beginning this week. At night it lights up like an
alien pod that’s just set down from a planet located
in the artist James Turrell’s high-school locker.”
—”What Is That Glowing Orb in Manhattan’s
Meatpacking District?”, Vanity Fair, September,
2014

9. A QUOTE
 “IT’S A MOVIE in which you never forget you are
watching these actresses,” director Olivier Assayas
said at the press conference following the
screening of his magnificent Clouds of Sils Maria, a
film that explores the unstable boundaries between
performing and being. “These actresses,” who were
seated stage right from Assayas, are Juliette
Binoche, who plays Maria Enders, an internationally
renowned star, and Kristen Stewart, as Valentine,
Maria’s personal assistant...
 —ART FORUM, “New York Film Festival, Dispatch
5,” Oct. 11, 2014

10. PERSONAL ANECDOTE
 In the 1990s, some seven years before Sofia
Coppola released “Lost in Translation” — and we
got to watch Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray
transact disassociation in Tokyo — I visited Japan
for nearly a month. The first experience sticks with
me: being locked into the bus from the airport, by
the driver, listening as a fellow passenger sneezed
over and over again.
 —IMPACTS! Cute, Grotesque and Almost Perfect,
Adobe Airstrwam, October, 2014

11. AND THE LIST GOES ON
 A good exercise is to try a variety of different ledes: write
many different starts
 Never feel locked into your first beginning
 Your beginning should have resonance throughout the
piece
 Either circularly (come back to the start)
 Chronologically if you start in the beginning
 Thematically
 All elements mentioned in the lede, if it’s a summary, will
make an appearance in the story
 For more ideas, check out this gallery of award-winning
ledes
 Read for “starts”—pay attention to how pieces begin.