A Fresh Approach to Leads, Part I
Posted on Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 2:31 PM
Which type of lead best serves the piece you want to write?
By
Peter P. Jacobi
The writers of fiction can show us the way.
Take leads -- beginnings.
The writers of fiction need to find
ways of getting the reader started, then immersed. And not too slowly.
The
writers of nonfiction, those who would engage others in the pages of the
magazine, for instance, need to find ways of getting their readers
started, then immersed. And not too slowly.
The parallels of
responsibility and of approach can be striking.
For Example...
So
familiar, this lead: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of
times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was
the epic of disbelief, it was the epic of incredulity, it was the season
of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it
was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing
before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct
the other way..."
Charles Dickens opens his Tale of Two
Cities this way, striking the reader's mind through parallelism and
contrasts, the former a stylistically enticing verbal structure, the
latter a way of surprising with the range of differences.
The
parallelism amounts to manner, the "how" of presentation.
The
contrast is a way of handling matter, the "what" of presentation.
How
and what are the essential elements of the lead.
As Dorothy Vines
once showed us in TV Quarterly when she reintroduces us to a
world we thought we knew but apparently don't:
Fade In: a
lush, deserted tropical island, palm trees languidly swaying over
ways-drenched, semi-new lovers stretched out at the water's edge locked
in a passionate embrace...
Fade In: An unmarried couple in bed.
She unbuttons his shirt and repeatedly kisses his chest. She tells him,
"I want you to want me so much you cannot stand to be without me."
Fade
In: Along the Seine's left bank, strolling hand-in-hand, two lovers
enjoy the actual sights and sounds of a spring day in Paris...
It
may come as a surprise, or perhaps even the shock to non-soap watchers,
these are not scenes from a high-budget or X-rated feature film but from
old episodes of Search for Tomorrow, Days of Our Lives,
and One Life to Live, respectively. Gone forever were the
stereotypes associated with soap operas...
Any Lead That
Summarizes -- Established the Subject
For Tolstoy, in Anna
Karenina, an aphorism says it all: "Happy families are all alike;
every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Here is a
preliminary wisdom, a theme, perceived truth. Everything that follows in
his novel will bear out that statement. It's like a summary, a thesis,
and all-encompassing nugget.
Some magazine articles lend
themselves to such treatment. Their authors decide that readers are best
served with brief basics. A story once in Chain Store Age says
simply: "Yesterday's crumpled, rumpled antiestablishment generation is
dressing up." All that comes thereafter will support that opening.
I
like this one from a piece in the New York Times:
To a
judge, New York City's Criminal Court is an endless crotch of cases that
rarely allows time for compassion or careful consideration of complex
human issues.
To a defense lawyer from the Legal Aid Society who
has been on the job nine months and has yet to try a case, the court is
a daily exercise in frustration.
To a prosecutor, it is a daily
parade of accused criminals whose sheer numbers almost guarantee that
they will be freed or sentenced on reduced charges.
We know
what the story will tell us. We know what the story's purpose is. Those
are the advantages of a summary or thesis lead.
Setting the
Tone
Sometimes, the fiction writer strives for the essence of
the tone, a field that will imbue the entire book or a character within
it.
Take this start:
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 feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
That's
J. D. Salinger, of course. That's Catcher in the Rye. That's
Holden Caulfield talking, revealing immediately what he is all about, on
the level, at least.
(We'll continue with the matter of tone in
Part II.)
A classic article from a past issue in tribute to
the late Peter J. Jacobi, longtime EO writer and author of The
Magazine Article: How to Think It, Plan It, Write It.
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