Lessons from fiction writers on writing effective and engaging leads. Continuing on the topic of setting a tone...

By Peter P. Jacobi

In the pages of Time we meet Slater Barron:

Not to make too much of it, but Slater Barron is a lint artist.

A what?

An artist whose medium is lint.

Oh, like before Easter. No, not lent, lint -- like in your pocket.

So what kind of fuzzball are we talking about here?

We're not talking fuzzball, we're talking art, using fuzzballs, ahem, lint.

Barron gets so tired of talk that runs like that, and yet it happens all the time. "I've been working with lint so long, I don't see it as anything but an art material," she says. "Artists work with weird materials, or what some people see as weird. I'm not any different from any other artist."

Once again, the writer gives us a prevailing, pervasive mood. There's a personality to that lead, suitable for a story about an unusual artist even for these times.

Unorthodox Leads Attract Attention

And speaking of these times, some writers reflect an age in which rules are broken. They break rules.

But then, James Joyce broke rules almost three-quarters of a century ago. Finnegans Wake begins this way: "riverrun, passed Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

Nonfiction in that form would hardly be suitable in magazine journalism. Puzzlement, deciphering shouldn't be a requirement for the busy reader. But journalistic writers can break rules, the outlandish or the different, in their own way.

As did Jim Rohrer in USA Today in an initial paragraph that goes: "Thirty-nine gathered, though by general agreement 65 was the right number, which is a whole lot more than 14."

What's that? I have to read that again, and the reader isn't supposed to be required to engage in repeat readings.

I'll read it again anyway, but this time with paragraph 2 attached:

Thirty-nine gathered, though by general agreement 65 was the right number, which is a whole lot more than 14.

Jacksonburg, Ohio -- population unknown -- this week turned out for us to demonstrate that no matter what Census Bureau says, a lot more than 14 people live in Ohio's smallest incorporated village.

Aha! It's planned confusion on paper to exemplify actual confusion about census counts. Breaking the rule of clarity for the sake of clarity, one might say.

Or take the let’s-be-done-with-it rule, the get-something-done-and-move-on rule. Richard Teresi broke it in an old story from Omni with this lead:

Since Erasistratus starved a sparrow to "note the decrease in weight," billions of animals have been starved, suffocated, shocked, shot, boiled, baked, frozen, thawed, refrozen, force-fed, crucified, crashed, crushed, asphyxiated, irrigated, poisoned, and laser-beamed -- all in the name of science.

Notwithstanding the countless medical breakthroughs from animal experimentation, animals are far from the ideal research tool.

Are all those verbs really necessary, Richard Teresi? Of course they are. They make a point forcefully, and as a result, the reader cannot react without force, coming down heavily on one side or the other after reading the lead. It's undoubtedly what the author wanted: to have the reader hate him or hate the idea.

There are times for rules to be broken.

Succinct Leads Serve as Bridges into Stories

One rule, often cited, is be pithy. Like Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, "it was a pleasure to burn," he wrote. The story is underway. Pow!

Or take the first stanza of Patricia Clark's poem “Her Red Coat”:

I remember none of my mother's clothes

Except, from years ago, a red coat.

Is that all that's left of those we love -- a memory, a lump in the throat?

That's pithy. A total thought has been encapsulated. The four lines almost stand alone. But, of course, we want, we need to go on, exactly what a good lead is designed to make us want to do.

K. Mark Cowick writes for Falcon, a children's magazine: "Butterfly. Now that's a funny word. Can butter fly? No, but butterflies can. With wings, of course."

Louise Sweeney gives the reader a quick push into an article about a renowned Spanish pianist for Christian Science Monitor: "When Alicia de Larrocha was 2 1/2, they took her favorite toy away, and she bent her head on the floor in a tantrum until she got it back. The toy was the family grand piano."

Short. Effectively to the point.

Putting It Into Practice

Ask your writers, when they consider leads, to always consider what's appropriate for the subject, the magazine, and the audience. Then ask them to be inviting as possible, unique where possible, memorable if possible.

The lead, remember, must lead. It leads the reader to what comes next. If it fails to do that, it has failed. Your project is finished, at least for those in the audience who choose not to go on. The lead must lead, and then some. It has four tasks, distinct and yet interrelated:

1. A lead establishes the subject, introducing the topic at hand.

2. A lead sets the tone, suggesting the mood and method with which, by which the story will be told.

3. A lead attracts attention, gaining allegiance for the total package through the attractiveness of its opening passages.

4. A lead guides clearly into the story, serving as a bridge to what follows.

Wrote a writer for Restaurant Hospitality: "If cleanliness is indeed next to godliness, then the kitchen at Tony's belongs not in St. Louis but high atop Olympus, where from its pleasures could be whisked to the table of Zeus. This is the sort of kitchen that gives Inspectors of Health bad dreams about pink slips and unemployment lines, for if every kitchen were maintained so meticulously, we would have no need for them or their rules. The Health Code could go on the Honor System."

The lead serves four purposes: (1) as an establisher of subject, (2) setter of tone, (3) an attractor of attention, and (4) (take my word for it) bridger into the story.

It also shows a passion for the subject, prosaic as that subject might seem to be. It proves succinctly that there are no boring subjects, only bored writers.

So much work, a lead, for fiction and nonfiction. Don't let your writers get away with less than the best beginning. On that, much else depends.

More on leads in Part III.

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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