These are slides I use in my feature writing classes, at the University of Iowa, the University of Oregon and Linfield College. The graphics may look unimpressive, but you'll find the content is an excellent springboard for a discussion about writing that critical first sentence of any article.

1. Creating Kick-ass Ledes

2. The Task: Get your
train chuggin’
•Craft better leads
•Refresh your lead writing basics
•Expose the common myths about
leads
•Revise your own leads better

3. LEDES
• A good lead beckons and invites. A
good lead grabs you by the throat
and doesn’t let go.
• A lede is a window into your story.
It is the first step of a journey. It is
a door to what you write.
• Leads MATTER. You must master
them.

4. Myths about leads:
• Myth #1 Leads must sum up the story
• Myth #2 Leads must never begin with a quote
“Are you married, my dear?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then you wouldn’t mind zipping me up.”
Zipped up, Dorothy Parker turned to face her
interviewer, and the world.
Saul Pett, Associated Press

5. Myths about ledes, con’d
• Myth #3 Leads must always have attribution
• Myth #4 Leads must never be more than four lines
long
• Behold the fat man. Go ahead. Everybody does. He
doesn’t mind, honestly. That’s how he makes his living.
Walk right up to him. Stand there and look. Stand
there and gape. Gape at the layers of fat, the
astonishing girth, the incredible bulk. Imagine him in a
bathtub. Or better yet, on a bike. Or better yet, on one
of those flimsy antique chairs. If you’re lucky, maybe
he’ll lift his shirt. If you’re really lucky, maybe he’ll rub
his belly. Don’t be shy, ask him a question.

6. Leads Take Time.
Good writers revise their ledes again and again.
Arguably the most important paragraph in the
story.
• Can you say it out loud and does it sound good.
• Are there any words that you stumble over.
• Does it sound like something you’d tell a friend over the
phone.
• Does it put you to sleep or confuse you?
• Is it one of the cliché leads?

7. WHAT NOT TO DO
• The News-Register lede.
Some of the nation's biggest UFO fans travel to McMinnville each May.
• The 'thanks-to' lead
Thanks to Bud Pagel, McMinnville’s jazz scene is thriving.
•
• The 'typical' lead
At first glance, Joe Schmo might seem like an average guy. But he’s not.
He…
• The 'in common' question lead
What do Charlie Chaplin and Bill Clinton have in common?

8. WHAT NOT TO DO,
cont’d
• The 'exceptional' lead
Community is important to most people, and Sally Smith
is no exception.
• The 'not alone' lead
George Tuck likes black and white photography. Tuck is
not alone.
• The it’s not what it looks like lead
• You may think they are Amazons preparing for the kill, but
it’s really the UI javelin team!

9. WHAT TO DO: FEATURE WRITING
LEADS
• They can be long. But you’ve got to earn it. Here’s how.
• Create a scene with your major protagonist.
• Use simple sentences and action verbs.
• Describe some major action where you get the essence of
the protagonist, but not, perhaps, the main action of the
story.
• Create a cliff-hanger that leads the reading begging for
more.
• Don’t have any unnecessary filler items. No details that are
not revelatory.
• Make sure your lead is related to the focus of your story
and can be backed up by the facts.

10. 1. Anecdotal Leads
• Richard Leakey likes to tell about the day in 1950 when he
was a 6-year-old whining for his parents' attention. Louis
and Mary Leakey were digging for ancient bones on the
shores of Lake Victoria, but their little boy wanted to play.
He wanted lunch. He wanted his mother to cuddle him. He
wanted something to do. "Go find your own bone," said his
exasperated father, waving Richard off toward scraps of
fossils lying around the site. What the little boy found was
the jawbone -- the best ever unearthed -- of an extinct
giant pig. As he worked away at it with the dental picks and
brushes that served for toys in the paleontologists' camp,
he experienced for the first time the passion of discovery.
(Kathleen Merryman in the Tacoma News Tribune)

11. 2. Narrative Leads
• Hours before the big dance, Robin Hemley
took his date Lizzie, her husband and her son
out to dinner. He wore a simple black suit, she
wore a black evening gown. He didn't get a
chance to kiss her good night—not that he
would have wanted to anyway. A storm
short-circuited the lights and the dance ended
half an hour early.

12. 3. Scene-Setter Leads
• A woman with tormented eyes talks to herself
as she plays a battered piano in Ward D's
dayroom. Other psychiatric patients shuffle on
the beige linoleum or stare from red-and-
green vinyl chairs. A bank of windows opens
to a fenced courtyard. Outside...

13. 4. Scene-Wraps or
Gallery Leads
• A man claiming to be a Catholic priest sits in a Santa Claus suit in a
wheelchair outside a Southeast Portland supermarket, collecting money
for the "Holy Order of Mary Inc.”
• Across town, a supposed South African visitor asks a holiday-spirited
shopper for directions to a local church. The South African then launches
into a complicated tale that soon has the Portlander withdrawing $2,000
from the bank... Elsewhere, a boiler-room telephone sales company...
• http://www.dhammaweb.net/meditation/vie
w.php?id=33

14. 5. Significant Detail
Leads
• Hidden beneath a heap of inner-tubes in a tiny
storeroom on an island in the middle of the
Vistula River is the statue of Lenin that stood
for decades inside the Gdansk Shipyard.

15. 6. The Single-Instance Lead
(microcosm)
• For five days, Alice's husband, high on drugs, threatened to
kill her. He hit her and abused her. Terrified, Alice fled the
house when she finally got the chance and ran to a local
business to call the police. "He would kill me. He's very scary,"
Alice said. "He would walk through walls if he had to." The
police advised her to contact the Domestic Violence Resource
Center in Hillsboro, and Alice found her way there.

16. 7. Word Play Leads
• “IN the art world, Rita Gomez is a mover, but
most certainly not a shaker.”
• http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/arts/ar
tsspecial/28getty.html?
_r=1&scp=1&sq=Mover+but+not+a+shaker&s
t=nyt&oref=slogin

17. Great feature ledes
• http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1003-
OCT_SINATRA_rev_
• http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/sports/
playmagazine/601juggler.html
• http://nymag.com/news/features/34738/
• http://nymag.com/realestate/features/47224
/