Lead + Title + Subtitle = Complete Package
Posted on Monday, November 29, 2010 at 5:23 PM
Writer's leads and editor's editions produce a winning formula.
By
Peter P. Jacobi
The magazine Smithsonian, in its
September 2009 issue, featured an inviting and informative section
devoted to "Top Travel Writers' Dream Assignments." The six articles
included led me to think once again about leads:
1. How to choose
a lead, so as to introduce and drive a suitable approach for the story;
2.
How to fit a lead, so as to suggest with it the purpose of and
forthcoming content in the story;
3. How to enhance a lead by
paving the way toward it with collaborative title and subtitle.
On
the third item above, I'm using the labels "title" and "subtitle,"
designations for editorial matter used atop feature stories and magazine
articles to guide a reader into what follows through some form of
enticing suggestion about those inches of copy that follow. Were you to
be writing a straight news story, then the appropriate labels would, of
course, be "headline" and "subhead," which serve to succinctly summarize
the copy that will then complete the editorial package.
The
authors employed by Smithsonian will be familiar to many of you;
they're topnotch writers: Susan Orlean, Francine Prose, Geoffrey Ward,
Caroline Alexander, Frances Mayes, and Paul Theroux.
Let's look
at several of their contributions and how the editors of the magazine
led into the leads.
An Inviting and Educating Package
The
Orlean piece was given "Where Donkeys Deliver" as title, supported by
this subtitle: "The author returns to Morocco to explore the animal's
central role in the life of this desert kingdom."
Orlean
begins: "The donkey I couldn't forget was coming around a corner in the
walled city of Fez, Morocco, with six color televisions strapped to its
back. If I could tell you the exact intersection where I saw him, I
would do so, but pinpointing a location in Fez is a formidable
challenge, a little like noting GPS coordinates in a spider web. I might
be able to be more precise about where I saw the donkey if I knew how to
extrapolate location using the position of the sun, but I don't.
Moreover, there wasn't any sun to be seen and barely a sliver of sky,
because leaning in all around me were the sheer walls of the medina --
the old walled portion of Fez -- where the buildings are so packed and
stacked together that they seem to have been carved out of a single huge
stone rather than constructed individually, clustered so tightly that
they blot out the shrieking blue and silver of the Moroccan sky."
Title
and subtitle prepare me for surprise, for an unexpected journey. The
lead paragraph takes me there. The author becomes a personal "I." The
reader becomes a personal "you." The TV-laden donkey set against the
ancient buildings offers the metaphor that symbolizes the contrasts of
experiences facing those who live in Morocco and the distinctiveness of
place that will embrace the visitor. The package invites and begins to
educate. Success achieved, at least for this reader.
Setting
the Mood
Francine Prose writes about "Serene Japan" where,
according to the subtitle, "On the western coast, far from bustling
Tokyo, tradition can be found in contemplative gardens, quiet inns and
old temples."
She shares this introductory observation: "At
the Buddhist temple of Gesshoji, on the western coast of Japan, the
glossy, enormous crows are louder -- much louder -- than any
birds I've ever heard. Crows are famously territorial, but these in the
small city of Matsue seem almost demonically possessed by the need to
assert their domain and keep track of our progress past the rows of
stone lanterns aligned like vigilant, lichen-spotted sentinels guarding
the burial grounds of nine generations of the Matsudaira clan. The
strident cawing somehow makes the gorgeous, all-but-deserted garden seem
even further from the world of the living and more thickly populated by
the spirits of the dead. Something about the temple grounds -- their
eerie beauty, the damp mossy fragrance, the gently hallucinatory
patterns of light and shadow as morning sun filters through the ancient,
carefully tended pines -- makes us start to speak in whispers and then
stop speaking altogether until the only sounds are the bird cries and
the swishing of the old-fashioned brooms a pair of gardener are using to
clear fallen pink petals from the gravel paths."
One could
argue con and pro about the length of Prose's sentences: "con" that they
can be considered overwhelming in detail and, perhaps, meandering in
development; "pro" that they establish a mystic aura, appropriate for a
burial site and temple, and also that they make room for an author's
flight of imagination, fostered by those noisy, seemingly protective
crows in a serene and otherwise silent environment. The contemplative
writing reflects the "contemplative gardens" listed in the subtitle and
paves the way for what, yes, turns out to be a contemplative article.
The mood is set.
You can read for yourself and gain much from
reading the above pieces fully, as also "Saving Punjab" by Geoffrey C.
Ward ("My wife says I suffer from an 'India problem.' She's right.").
And from Caroline Alexander's "Captain Bligh's Cursed Breadfruit," about
Jamaica ("An hour out of the maelstrom of Kingston's traffic, the first
frigate bird appeared, and then, around a bend in the road, the sea.").
And from Frances Mayes' "Under the Polish Sun" ("In 1990, when my
husband, Ed, and I bought an abandoned villa in Tuscany, we hired three
Polish workers to help us restore a major terrace wall. They were new
immigrants, there for the money, and not happy to be out of their
homeland.").
Smoothly Paving the Road
The
sixth author, Paul Theroux, deals with "The Long Way Home," about which
the subtitle says: "The noted world traveler fulfills a boyhood dream --
to drive across America in the spirit of Kerouac, Steinbeck and other
poets of the open road."
Here's how Theroux begins: "The
mixed blessing of America is that anyone with a car can go anywhere. The
visible expression of our freedom is that we are a country without
roadblocks. And a driver's license is our identity. My dream, from way
back -- from high school, when I first heard the name Kerouac -- was of
driving across the United States. The cross-country trip is the supreme
example of the journey as the destination."
Theroux realizes
his dream and, for us, he recounts it. The title/subtitle/lead combine
smoothly paves the road, paves the way thematically. Adventures await
me, from Los Angeles to Cape Cod. Theroux does not disappoint.
Look
for the above issue of Smithsonian. See what writers' ambient
leads can do. See what editors' sensitively crafted additions can do.
The do-good things and all for the reader.
Peter P. Jacobi is
a Professor Emeritus at Indiana University. He is a writing and editing
consultant for numerous associations and magazines, speech coach, and
workshop leader for various institutions and corporations. He can be
reached at 812-334-0063.
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