The final installment of our series on good article leads.

By Peter P. Jacobi

Creating a sense of puzzlement in your lead can be a useful change of pace. Be careful, however. Make the puzzle really lead, not mislead. I recall a news magazine story -- let's leave the exact source nameless -- that began this way:

The disease strikes suddenly, and its symptoms are often frightening: severe diarrhea, bloody vomit, and dehydration -- sometimes ending in death. Sweeping northeast across the United States from Texas, the viral illness has claimed hundreds of lives in the past six months. Doctors can treat only the symptoms, then hope for the best. And a vaccine to fight the virus is in such short supply that it is almost impossible to obtain. No national health emergency has been declared, but many American families grieve.

The title above that opening gave nothing away. "A viral epidemic without a cure," it said. The next sentence in the story read: "All the victims of this cruel killer are dogs."

A tragic enough situation. But the earlier material (title and story opening) had led my mind in quite a different direction. An even more worrisome one.

I consider that start deceptive. I consider it dishonest, trying too hard.

My philosophy is: "Whatever way you can get your reader into a story is fine." But my companion philosophy is: "as long as you do it with honesty."

Don't permit writers to mislead with their lead.

Proper Use of Question/Quote Leads

Now, a couple of other watch-out-fors. Question leads. Quote leads.

Almost any story can be led with the question because a writer usually attempts to answer one or more questions. Almost any story can be led with a quote because the writer will collect lots of comments from information sources. But these are two easy approaches. So, be sure -- when you select question or quote as a curtain raiser -- that what you've chosen is your strongest and most natural approach.

Who would dare change the arms of God on the first day of Creation? Michelangelo. First he scribed outlines for God's arms onto wet plaster with quick strokes of a sharp tool. Then he abandoned those outlines in a flash of brushstrokes. He painted God’s left arm so it swept directly overhead, made that arm plunge a divine hand into the turbulent light and wrench it from the darkness.

David Jeffrey, in his National Geographic story of the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, poses the question, then immediately supplies the answer. That's a good use made of the question technique.

"Listen," begins Myron Magnet's article on "America's Underclass: What to Do?" in Fortune:

Listen: "He made me scared, so I pulled the trigger. So feel sorry? I doubt it. I didn't want to see him go down like that, but better him than me."

"I'm gonna work 40 hours a week and bring home maybe $100, $150, when I can work 15 minutes and come back with $1,000 tax-free?"

"I ain't working for no minimum wage."

"Man, you go to, three years not working, and hanging around and smoking reefer or drinking, and then you get a job -- you can't handle it. You say, 'I don't want get up in the morning, get pushed and shoved. I'm gonna get on welfare.'"

"Everybody else I know was having babies, so I just went along."

"It just seems that everybody here is down on their luck."

The voices, reported in the press, or the voices of the underclass and their message is that the troubles of this group at the very bottom of the American social ladder need fixing fast.

Quotes from those who live the life. Strong beginning.

A Good Lead Works for the Story

Note, please, that the Fortune lead is not a short one. Don't worry about length. A lead is whatever it takes to get a story underway. Don't let the writer waste words, but let the start do what it needs to do. Sometimes that takes space. Sometimes that requires background or context. Just so the lead gets the reader close to the subject, as Magnet's does. It helps me to see. It helps me to understand. It's not too long. It's not too short. It's just right.

What's important is that the lead works for the story by working on the reader.

Be real, as Michael Lemonick demonstrated in a onetime cover story for Time:

They can strike anywhere, anytime. On a cruise ship, in the corner restaurant, in the grass just outside the back door. And anyone can be a carrier: the stranger coughing in the next seat on the bus, the college classmate from a far-off place, even the sweetheart who seems perfect in every way. For whatever we go and whatever we do, we are accosted by invaders from an unseen world. Protozoans, bacteria, viruses -- a whole menagerie of microscopic pests constantly assaults every part of our body, looking for a way inside. Many are harmless or easy to fight off. Others -- as we now are so often reminded -- are merciless killers.

Humanity once had the hubris to think it could control or even conquer all these microbes. But anyone who reads today's headlines knows how vain that hope turned out to be.

Maybe it's apocryphal as in a Newsweek profile some years back:

For the world's great conductors, so the joke goes, are bickering about which one is best. "My 'Chicago sound' is revered everywhere," says Sir Georg Salti, "and I've been knighted by the Queen of England." "Ah, but my tours with the Boston Symphony have been a triumph," says Seiji Ozawa. "I'm the most respected Japanese name since Sony." "Yes, but who else here is as celebrated a composer as he is a conductor?" injects Leonard Bernstein. "It was God himself who inspired me to write my Mass." "No, I did not!" snaps Herbert von Karajan.

Yes, we go on to read the real story about Herbert von Karajan. The opening fiction, however, paves the way.

Make the lead work for the story. That's the key. Make the lead work for the story, as does Matt Bivins in his "Russian Roulette" article for Modern Maturity:

Nikolai Sigayev saved carefully over the years to buy a car, something only a select few Soviet citizens could afford. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, Sigayev saved 10,000 rubles -- an amount worth about $16,700 in 1989 and nearly enough. Five years later, 10,000 rubles is equal to about five dollars. Sigayev, 62, grins ruefully at the comparison. "I was going to buy a car," he says. "But after inflation, I had to settle for a bicycle."

Like Sigayev, the majority of Russia's older citizens have had the financial, political and social rug pulled out from under them.

And so forth.

A good lead.

Editors must help writers make them so.

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.

Add your comment.