“Students are encountering many challenges this year” is a sentence with gravitas, but it fails to offer the reader anything to observe, verify or pursue. A more powerful lead might open with a student standing outside an advisor’s closed door, a cafeteria cost that has doubled within a single semester or a new academic calendar that leaves commuters missing the start of class. What separates these is not mere embellishment; rather, the concrete information provides the article with a point of access.
Leads are tricky, because they are required to do more than merely sound captivating. They should also gesture to the article’s story, convey why the content is essential and leave the reader with sufficient knowledge to keep reading. Too broad a lead, and the remainder of the article is likely to be too as well, perhaps filled with speculation, history and wide-ranging assertions that lack a definite starting position. More precise facts, scenes and tensions will provide the story with a clearer trajectory.
A fact-centric lead is helpful when a single verified point can help move the narrative forward. Perhaps that fact is a number, a date, a price, a policy decision, a time adjustment or an official verdict. Crucial is verification. If your story opens with the count of students impacted, the level of the rent hike or a variation in the route of a campus bus, you will have to find out who said so. A lead of this sort should not expand the scope of the story beyond the limits of the information-gathering.
Scenes work a little differently. A scene-based lead opens with a specific observation: a line of people at the door to the administration building, a quiet classroom after a student-led forum has been cancelled, a pad full of crossed-out interview questions or a coffee table littered with MacBooks during finals week. This approach can facilitate the reader’s entry into the reporting, but it requires a modicum of caution, because a scene should not function as a creative writing sample. Rather, it should correspond with the question that is driving the article. If the scene doesn’t provide context, or reveal the relevant information, source or conflict, it likely isn’t the lead.
A tension-based approach can also be an effective lead. By “tension” I don’t necessarily mean drama or disagreement. I mean the discrepancy between promise and reality, between what administrators say and what students actually encounter or between a new campus policy and the members of the campus community who are trying to live up to it. Tension is a great approach when you want the reader to understand what it is that needs explaining, too, because it sets up the quotes, attribution and historical context that follow and it gives the writer a question to answer.
To work with it, pull out one set of field notes you’ve already done. Write three different potential leads. One should open with a fact, another with a scene and the third with a tension. Then determine which best corresponds to the angle of the story. Don’t pick the most elegant of these sentences. Choose the one that presents the most transparent way into the story and the smoothest entry for a second paragraph. If the second paragraph is hard to conjure, then the lead might be leading in the wrong direction.
Once you have selected a lead, review the remainder of the draft against it. Is this a story that matches what the lead promises? Are the details and numbers and claims all checked? Is the nut graf explaining why that opening bit is important? A good lead is not a flashy sentence; it’s a promise about the story that follows, and when that promise is specific and accurate and relevant to the reporting, it will provide readers with a clear path into the content.