This document provides information on writing effective story leads. It discusses how leads act as a "potato" that readers and writers want to dig up. Leads help writers figure out where the story is growing and act as an organizational, motivational, and starting point. The document then reviews four types of leads: descriptive leads that create a picture, dialogue leads that start with character conversation, thinking leads that begin with a character's thought, and action leads that set up the story conflict. It emphasizes that great leads get readers asking questions to keep them engaged in the story. The document encourages practicing asking both surface and deeper questions about leads to help develop stories.

1. Writing Effective
Writing Effective
Story Leads
Story Leads

2. Dig a Potato Today!
A potato grows beneath the surface in a
piece of writing. It’s the thing that the
reader and the writer want to dig up.
A lead is like that potato. Leads are the seeds
that help a writer begin to figure out where
the plant is growing. They are an
organizational tool, a motivational tool, and
a springboard into a piece of writing. They
also lead us to endings.

3. Dig a Potato Today!
Listen to the following leads. What
questions arise in your mind as you listen?
I was six years old when my mother
taught me the art of invisible strength.
Rules of the Game by Amy Tan

4. Dig a Potato Today!
You are not the kind of guy who
would be at a place like this at this time of
the morning.
Bright Lights Big City by Jay McInerney

5. Dig a Potato Today!
The name my family calls me is
Morning Girl because I wake up early
always with something on my mind.
The Morning Girl by Michael Dorris

6. Leads are magic
flashlights that shine
down through a story
showing the writer
what to put in and
what to leave out.
John McPhee

7. We are going to
review four types of
leads:
- descriptive
- dialogue
- thinking
- action

8. Types of Leads:
Descriptive Leads
Create a picture in the reader’s mind.
Abraham Lincoln wasn’t the sort of
man who could lose himself in a crowd.
After all, he stood 6 foot 4 inches tall, and to
top it off, he wore a high silk hat. His height
was mostly in his long bony legs, and when
he sat in a chair he seemed no taller than
anyone else. It was only when he stood up
that he towered above other men.
Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman

9. Types of Leads:
Descriptive Leads
Create a picture in the reader’s mind.
Mossflower lay deep in the grip of
midwinder beneath a sky of leaden gray that
showed tinges of scarlet and orange on the
horizon. A cold mantle of snow draped the
landscape, covering the flatlands to the west
. . . .Winter had muted the earth; the muffled
stillness was broken only by a traveler’s
paws.
Mossflower by Brian Jacques

10. Types of Leads:
Dialogue Leads
Let your characters start talking.
“George, I wish you’d look at the
nursery.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then.”
“I just want you to look at it, is all, or
call a psychologist in to look at it.”
“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury

11. Types of Leads:
Dialogue Leads
Let your characters start talking.
“Where is Papa going with that ax?”
said Fern to her mother as they were setting
the table for breakfast.
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White

12. Types of Leads:
Thinking Leads
Start with a thought inside a character .
Mother taught me to be polite to dragons.
Particularly polite, I mean; she taught me to be
ordinarily polite to everyone. Well, it makes
sense. With all the enchanted princesses and
disguised wizards and transformed kings and
so on wandering around, you never know
whom you might be talking to. But dragons are
a special case.
Talking to Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

13. Types of Leads:
Thinking Leads
Start with a thought inside a character .
As a boy, I never knew where my
mother was from—where she was born, who
her parents were.
The Color of Water by James McBride

14. Types of Leads:
Action Leads
Set-up the action/conflict for the
whole story in a few sentences.
The first concussion cut the rocket up
the side with a giant can opener. The men
were thrown into space like a dozen
wriggling silverfish. There were scattered
into a dark sea; and the ship, in a million
pieces, went on, a meteor swarm seeking a
lost sun.
“Kaleidoscope” by Ray Bradbury

15. Types of Leads:
Action Leads
Set-up the action/conflict for the
whole story in a few sentences.
A cold day after school. Frankie T.,
who would drown his brother by accident
that coming spring and would use a length
of pipe to beat a woman in a burglary years
later, had me pinned to the ground behind a
backstop, his breath sour as meat left out in
the sun.
“Fear” by Gary Soto

16. Great Leads
Dig Up Great Questions
A great lead will get the reader thinking,
wondering, and curious about what’s going
to happen next.
Good readers ask questions all the time while
they’re reading although they may not even
realize it. Wanting to answer the questions is
what keeps us reading.

17. Types of Questions:
Above the Surface / Below the Surface
Questions come in different shapes. One
type of question is the above the surface
question – What happened? What are the
facts? What’s the truth?
Who was with you at the store?
What kind of day was it?
When did it happen?
Did you need stitches?

18. Types of Questions:
Above the Surface / Below the Surface
The second kind of question digs below the
surface of a story and tries to root out a
new thought, insight, or feeling.
How did you feel when you fell
off your bike?
Do you remember another time
you felt that way?
Why did she steal the candy?

19. Types of Questions:
Above the Surface / Below the Surface
Both kinds of questions can help a writer
develop a story, but the second kind of
question is especially important because it
can help a writer to find new ideas and
angles.
What was he thinking when the
hurricane blew through?
How did it feel to see the house
destroyed?

20. Notebook Entry - Asking Questions
Above the Surface / Below the Surface
One way to practice digging questions is to do
what journalists do. Use the following words
to ask questions about the following pictures
and leads. Pay attention to the two kinds of
questions you are asking. Try to ask both
above the surface and below the surface
questions.
Who? What?
When? Where?
Why? How?

21. What kinds of questions could
we ask about this picture?
1. Write two
questions on
your paper.
Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

22. What kinds of questions could
we ask about this picture?
2. Write two
questions on
your paper.
Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

23. What kinds of questions
could we ask about this
lead?
Many years later, as he faced the firing
squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to
remember that distant afternoon when his
father took him to discover ice.
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. Write two Who? What?
questions on
When? Where?
your paper.
Why? How?

24. What kinds of questions
could we ask about this
lead?
Every so often that dead dog dreams me
up again.
Dog Heaven by Stephanie Vaughn
Who? What?
4. Write two
questions on When? Where?
your paper.
Why? How?

25. What kinds of 5. Write two
questions on
questions could we your paper.
ask about this lead?
If you really want to hear about it, the
first thing you’ll probably want to know is
where I was born, and what my lousy
childhood was like, and how my parents were
occupied and all before they had me, and all
that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t
like going into it, if you want to know the
truth.
Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?