Friday, April 9, 2010

A Questionable Lead

The lead sentence of any written piece is unquestionably the most important sentence, so starting it with a question seems, well, rather questionable.

Tongue twisters aside, catching your audience's attention and then holding it is the main role of the lead sentence. If you ask a question, particularly a close ended (yes/no) question, then you are taking a huge risk of immediately losing a large percentage of your audience.

It's much better to lead into your article with the facts. We learn it in journalism school and we need to remember it- lead with the five w's and you rarely go wrong. Who is this about, when did it happen, where did it happen, what happened and why did it happen? The challenge as a writer is to make those five w's have enough flair to catch your audience and enough information to keep them reading.

There are dozens of books to read on writing a good lead but one you might want to check out is News writing By George A. Hough. Of course, a good lead isn't restricted to writing a news release or news article -- it's important when writing an email message, a letter, even a memo. Because bottom line, if you're going to invest your time in writing something, you want your audience to feel invested in reading it -- all of it.

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