The role of the opening paragraph in a news-style report is straightforward: It’s not meant to ease into a topic, offer a lengthy overview, or show off your vocabulary. Its job is to tell the reader what occurred, what’s shifting, or what the article’s focus is. In the language of reporting, that opening section is referred to as the lead, and when you’re just starting out with stories, it’s the first sign that you might have a firm grip on your story.
When leads are weak, they sometimes bury the lead under the background. A novice draft might start with, “Education has changed over the past several years with many more students taking standardized exams.” This is a safe way to start, because it sets up the context, but for this story the news is that one particular school is changing how it schedules exams. A more effective lead is one that gets closer to the specific fact, announcement, incident, or problem that makes your story worth reporting.
A clear lead also dictates the direction of the article. Once you have a firm sense of the topic, it’s easier to know which quote backs up the main point, which background information is best suited near the top, and which information can be left out entirely. An indistinct lead can leave a draft as a jumble of quotes from one interview, a detail from an observation, a number to support an argument, and some detail to fill out the side of the story. One good thing a lead does is to tell you what to write about next.
Another way you can train yourself to write leads that are specific and informative is to start by writing three or four versions. Do this before you decide on one version, even if you’re only writing a short story. Draft a lead with one that focuses on the news, one with the people or the situation, and one with the problem or question that the story is about. Then compare your three drafts. Which version tells the reader the most vital point with the least amount of text? Which one matches the article’s title? Which one provides you with the clearest idea of what comes next? By doing this type of comparison, you learn that selecting the best lead is a reporting choice as well as a writing choice.
As with any news report, getting everything right is necessary in the lead. Double check that the names, dates, figures, and places and the roles of the sources are all accurately reported. Make sure that when you say in the lead that a proposed new policy “will impact the lives of hundreds of students,” you know where that number came from. If you write that a meeting took place this Monday, confirm what day of the week that is. Because the lead is the most important claim in the report, any factual errors there have the greatest potential for damaging the overall credibility of the report.
Like other news stories, a lead doesn’t need to cover every angle. It’s there to give the reader a clear entryway into the report, and to ensure the reader wants to know more in the next paragraph. Any details, background, extended quotes, or explanation you provide in the lead are not needed to tell the reader everything right away; you can cover that in other parts of the story. One indication of a good lead in an actual news report is when you feel that it is specific enough to give you direction to follow when you write out the report, but not so detailed that the reader has to sort through five separate things in one place.