Write Stuff

Shout Outs

We’ve seen more good leads lately, perhaps a testament to the additional time for live-in assignments. That’s encouraging because there’s no quicker way to lose a reader than with an uninspiring, uninteresting opening. A lead is a “flashlight shining down into the story,” says John McPhee, the extraordinary non-fiction writer and Princeton writing professor. As writing coach Jack Hart explains, some writers don’t realize that their lead should provide the organizing principle for everything that follows. Here’s a compelling lead from Matt Townsend that illuminates what is to come:

The first year and a half of Nat Dixon’s new life as a Methodist pastor unfolded just as he envisioned. Until a man with a badge knocked on his door.

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Shout Outs

Nothing enlivens and empowers writing more than specific detail. When you’re out on the street reporting, create a special place in your notebook for every imaginable detail your senses can take in. You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how many of these nuggets you’ll use to power your story.

Watch how Barry Paddock creates a delicious image as he observes New York Knick Nate Robinson bite into a new Domino’s dessert pizza (the emphasis is mine):

There was a mild crush of cameras as Robinson took his first bite of the Oreo pizza, the crowd waiting in some suspense for his reaction. “Oh my goodness, I have to have another bite; I’m sorry,” he said, a dot of vanilla icing sticking to the upper left corner of his lip.

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Shout Outs

When sentences run the same length throughout a story, it gets monotonous. Readers drop off. The solution: Vary sentence length. Read and listen to Kenyon Farrow’s lead on an international AIDS conference this summer to see how he varies sentence length and punctuation to great effect (the emphasis is mine):

HIV experts gathering at the International AIDS Society conference in Sydney next week are sure to champion the need for greater treatment access in the developing world—and to point out that in the United States, by contrast, drugs have made HIV a manageable disease. But that is only partly true: Many HIV-positive people in this country confront financial barriers and a labyrinth of rules that keep life-saving medications beyond their reach. For them, HIV is not manageable at all.

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