When I saw “lede” instead of “lead,” I sorta squealed a bit with glee and couldn’t click on that link fast enough! Inkstained newsies are my community... I made a tshirt once that is the framework of every article; hed, dek, lede, graf, graf, graf, kicker. All you ever need for any story ever. If it’s too long to fit, keep honing until you get there. If the reader doesn’t have the 5Ws by the bottom of the first graf, rework that sucker.
I have a friend who writes historical literary essays ... she’s very good, but she always writes her lede in the second paragraph. She doesn’t do it intentionally, but she knows when she asks me to edit something, I’m gonna tell her to whack away the entire first graf, that her lede is her second graf. But she needs to write that first graf to get to her second/lede ... but then *really* doesn’t want to let her words go... (I use the metaphor of a muffin top... you can’t just bake muffin tops without making a whole muffin. It needs the stump, even when you discard it. That’s why making just the tops failed! She hates that metaphor because she knows I’m right... 😀)
Good ledes probably have a lot of discarded muffin stumps along the wayside.
Yes, I can’t remember who on Substack wrote about this recently. They basically said take your first line and cut it. And then they talked about how people fall in love with their words and they can’t let go of them. You absolutely cannot fall in love with your words you have to be sort of a mercenary in making cuts. I was lucky that I learned this right in columns because I just didn’t have the space for words that didn’t make a point just because I liked them. I also feel like if you’re really in love with it, find another place farther down to use it.
I, too, got cut and scarred in print to GTTFP! There was no endless scroll... you hit that word count or the night copyeditors trying to fit your bullsh^t into unmovable column inch limits would hunt you down like a rabid AARP marketing exec! Seriously, though the worst they would do is start slashing and cutting to fit right after the newsroom walls would reverb from them using your name in vain. Rule one; thou shalt not piss off a copy editor. They had no emotion whatsoever connected to your words. Newsprint and radio folks... they know how to write and speak tight!! Some of these substackers and podcasters didn’t cut early and it shows... (and hell yeah I’m rambling on for effect because I’m not anything except 100% committed to the bit!!! 😀😀😀😀😀)
Omg had the same reaction to lede! And as for cutting first line or first graf--as an editor--is something I’ve had to do with nearly every new young writer. People love really flowery prose and yet readers don’t. Perhaps readers of wonderful literary fiction do but in terms of creative nonfiction, and straightforward journalism, readers do not like to mess around. I think you’ve got something like eight seconds to catch their attention before it wanders.
Could you please repost this about once a month, because that's about how often I seem to need the reminder. 😂 And this is a really well said reminder!
Emma Gannon is an incredibly talented writer on Substack. I find myself enjoying the majority of her work, and she has truly inspired me to delve into the depths of my soul. Additionally, I had never realized the significance of the 'lede' until reading this post, which, for me, has become one of the most captivating reads. Previously, I believed that writing merely involved putting pen to paper and hoping to connect with those who appreciate and understand my writing, gradually discovering my own niche. However, immersing myself in insightful pieces like this feels akin to attending a literature class every single day.
I think it's both -- you definitely need to keep just writing and finding your niche. But also editing and revising to make it tighter and clearer for the reader. Brene Brown calls it the first shitty draft. That's how almost all pieces start
I think it was Malcolm Gladwell who said something about spending a lot of time on thinking about the "right" title. His seven books are good examples. I agree with you about this being an insightful piece, helpful to all us who are trying to get better at this craft of writing.
Thank you! I am exploring, finding, discovering, walking, observing, thinking, feeling, wondering, meditating, reading, writing, celebrating and living fully in the present. That is more than enough for now.
Kirsten, I looked up your viral article on despair and Suicide you refer to here and got immediately pulled in. And so what I am writing here has not much to do with a great lede but with the utter lack in our culture to even understand “despair,” the very phenomenon which apparently leads to suicide, the theme you write so honestly and courageously about. Is it because despair actually defies the academic and cultural boxes available to us? Because it neither fits the mental health box nor what religion once taught about it?
The father of modern existentialism, Kierkegaard, understands despair as a spiritual phenomenon, namely as the way we relate to our very being, our circumstances, our past and future. Or better, as an expression of our mis-relation to the meaning dimension built into us. It leads us (if we let it) to the liminal space where we either loose our selves or break into a deeper dimension of our being human which must transcend the cultural ideas of happiness in order to survive.
I am so glad you did survive, dear Kirsten, and that you are doing this hard work here to transcend those cultural obstacles!
Your story also gives anecdotal evidence that antidepressants prescribed for existential sufferings (rather than pathological ones) might rather lead to suicidal motivation rather than healing them. (Why do we know so little about that?)
My heart has been aching hearing about the grief you went through and the little help you apparently got from the established medicine men of our time.
What if much of our mental health treatment today might strengthen the psyche but cut it off it’s spiritual longing in the same time? What if some pills are strengthening the ego, the very domain depth psychology and also all spiritual traditions understand as the one we need to overcome and to transcend in order to come to the deeper self? What if that strengthened ego then puts a radical end to a life of despair to which our ego world apparently knows no solution?
Your very search for meaning expressed in your article opens a door into a dimension neither medicine nor today’s medicalized psychology can fathom yet.
I have had a book on grappling with despair in me for a long while and your writing is nagging me to come forward with it.
Now I need to find a lede for it 😇
Ps: would you be open to a dialogue on this project?
I learned to write from my dad who was a journalist/journalism teacher. As an adult, I have been studying creative writing and memoir composition; it has taken me while to learn how to write in a way that does bring in a lot of metaphor and more flowery language. My original directive from dad was just the facts, but as interesting as possible in as few words as possible. I love this essay you’ve written and reminds me there are skills for many types of writing and I can sharpen them always.
The first 3 sentences I added as the new lede of a personal essay. Hopefully, it is an improvement in gaining reader attention (The first sentence also relates to the final sentence of the complete essay titled The Life Lessons of Grease, Sawdust and the Guru Oak Tree.)
Look over here, there was once a vast and continuous forest of ancient trees. Only a few remain. This is the story of Guru, one of the ancients I came to know.
So many years ago before the kind, old lady's house was built on the corner, before and during the horror of Civil War, before the granite retaining walls and concrete sidewalks, before power lines and water lines, before cobblestones and street cars, before the Town of Winston offered the Town of Salem a hyphen of community, before the diesel powered machines and chain saws growled in February of 2016 their existential summons; there was a great, white oak tree on a hill. From modest sapling to maturity, the tree and the emerging, southern tobacco town grew and prospered. As craftsmen built magnificent homes on the hillsides near downtown, the oak proudly built its own canopied tower of magnificence at the corner of 5th Street and the aptly named Summit Street -the topographically advantageous summit upon a town in the rolling hills of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
It's def a much better lede! What about making the title What I Learned From The Guru Oak Tree , sub: Life lessons come in the most unexpected places (these are just suggestions to get juices flowing). The other headline feels a little overwhelming. Just food for thought -- i haven't read the whole essay obv so follow your instincts.
Super column Kirsten. As a retired pastor who writes a weekly “blurb“ to my little 35 member congregation I realize that if I don’t get to the point they don’t even bother reading it!
I know of your former commitment to Christianity but here’s a verse that might encourage you: 1 Samuel 3:19 “Not one of his words will fall to the ground.” I wish some of my colleagues could “get it.”
Oh thank you so much for this post. I have never taken any courses on how to write and it’s something I’m pursuing to improve 🙂 Except this class will be in Italian! Mamma Mia! I’m going to re write a few posts as practice.
Wow that's impressive! I was saying to my husband (who is also a journalist) that I feel bad for many of the writers on Substack who are learning without having an editor breathing down their neck (never thought i'd say that!) I learned so much from having editors destroying my copy or just by being forced to be concise b/c of the word count.
You know when you know something deep down but you hesitate to bring it to the surface? That's how I felt reading your article. You're right. We are experts and unless we fully own our own opinions, what are we actually doing here? Thank you. This really inspires me to keep doing, but to keep getting better at that doing.
I read this just before I wrote today's post which publishes tomorrow. It's 1200 words (my shortest yet) and I think it's some of my best work. It also only took me two hours to write (the quickest yet). I think the mindset your words in this put me in is largely responsible for that. So THANK YOU.
This is great and helpful, Kirsten, thank you! And your title “Hook the Reader with a Strong Lede” is what “hooked” me -- I stopped scrolling and started reading!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! That's for emphasis and deep appreciation. Please write more about writing more.
so glad it was helpful! i love writing about writing so I'm glad there is an appetite for that here!
Agreed!
When I saw “lede” instead of “lead,” I sorta squealed a bit with glee and couldn’t click on that link fast enough! Inkstained newsies are my community... I made a tshirt once that is the framework of every article; hed, dek, lede, graf, graf, graf, kicker. All you ever need for any story ever. If it’s too long to fit, keep honing until you get there. If the reader doesn’t have the 5Ws by the bottom of the first graf, rework that sucker.
I have a friend who writes historical literary essays ... she’s very good, but she always writes her lede in the second paragraph. She doesn’t do it intentionally, but she knows when she asks me to edit something, I’m gonna tell her to whack away the entire first graf, that her lede is her second graf. But she needs to write that first graf to get to her second/lede ... but then *really* doesn’t want to let her words go... (I use the metaphor of a muffin top... you can’t just bake muffin tops without making a whole muffin. It needs the stump, even when you discard it. That’s why making just the tops failed! She hates that metaphor because she knows I’m right... 😀)
Good ledes probably have a lot of discarded muffin stumps along the wayside.
Yes, I can’t remember who on Substack wrote about this recently. They basically said take your first line and cut it. And then they talked about how people fall in love with their words and they can’t let go of them. You absolutely cannot fall in love with your words you have to be sort of a mercenary in making cuts. I was lucky that I learned this right in columns because I just didn’t have the space for words that didn’t make a point just because I liked them. I also feel like if you’re really in love with it, find another place farther down to use it.
I, too, got cut and scarred in print to GTTFP! There was no endless scroll... you hit that word count or the night copyeditors trying to fit your bullsh^t into unmovable column inch limits would hunt you down like a rabid AARP marketing exec! Seriously, though the worst they would do is start slashing and cutting to fit right after the newsroom walls would reverb from them using your name in vain. Rule one; thou shalt not piss off a copy editor. They had no emotion whatsoever connected to your words. Newsprint and radio folks... they know how to write and speak tight!! Some of these substackers and podcasters didn’t cut early and it shows... (and hell yeah I’m rambling on for effect because I’m not anything except 100% committed to the bit!!! 😀😀😀😀😀)
Omg had the same reaction to lede! And as for cutting first line or first graf--as an editor--is something I’ve had to do with nearly every new young writer. People love really flowery prose and yet readers don’t. Perhaps readers of wonderful literary fiction do but in terms of creative nonfiction, and straightforward journalism, readers do not like to mess around. I think you’ve got something like eight seconds to catch their attention before it wanders.
Could you please repost this about once a month, because that's about how often I seem to need the reminder. 😂 And this is a really well said reminder!
haha! i know it's so easy to forget!
Agreed, Kelly! 😅
Don’t we all?! 😂
Here’s a line I’ve been wanting to start something with:
“Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my shortcomings.”
PS: It’s true. But I think it’s true of many of us.
that could be a great lede!
Means a lot, coming from you. Thank you.
Do it! I’d read that essay.
Yes, I wonder if there's a way to think about longcomings?
Emma Gannon is an incredibly talented writer on Substack. I find myself enjoying the majority of her work, and she has truly inspired me to delve into the depths of my soul. Additionally, I had never realized the significance of the 'lede' until reading this post, which, for me, has become one of the most captivating reads. Previously, I believed that writing merely involved putting pen to paper and hoping to connect with those who appreciate and understand my writing, gradually discovering my own niche. However, immersing myself in insightful pieces like this feels akin to attending a literature class every single day.
I think it's both -- you definitely need to keep just writing and finding your niche. But also editing and revising to make it tighter and clearer for the reader. Brene Brown calls it the first shitty draft. That's how almost all pieces start
I think it was Malcolm Gladwell who said something about spending a lot of time on thinking about the "right" title. His seven books are good examples. I agree with you about this being an insightful piece, helpful to all us who are trying to get better at this craft of writing.
Each reading and writing leads us to a different setting of our craft @Gary
And every day that I have chosen to write, I’ve made the right choice. I hope that you find healing too. 😉
Thank you! I am exploring, finding, discovering, walking, observing, thinking, feeling, wondering, meditating, reading, writing, celebrating and living fully in the present. That is more than enough for now.
Kirsten, I looked up your viral article on despair and Suicide you refer to here and got immediately pulled in. And so what I am writing here has not much to do with a great lede but with the utter lack in our culture to even understand “despair,” the very phenomenon which apparently leads to suicide, the theme you write so honestly and courageously about. Is it because despair actually defies the academic and cultural boxes available to us? Because it neither fits the mental health box nor what religion once taught about it?
The father of modern existentialism, Kierkegaard, understands despair as a spiritual phenomenon, namely as the way we relate to our very being, our circumstances, our past and future. Or better, as an expression of our mis-relation to the meaning dimension built into us. It leads us (if we let it) to the liminal space where we either loose our selves or break into a deeper dimension of our being human which must transcend the cultural ideas of happiness in order to survive.
I am so glad you did survive, dear Kirsten, and that you are doing this hard work here to transcend those cultural obstacles!
Your story also gives anecdotal evidence that antidepressants prescribed for existential sufferings (rather than pathological ones) might rather lead to suicidal motivation rather than healing them. (Why do we know so little about that?)
My heart has been aching hearing about the grief you went through and the little help you apparently got from the established medicine men of our time.
What if much of our mental health treatment today might strengthen the psyche but cut it off it’s spiritual longing in the same time? What if some pills are strengthening the ego, the very domain depth psychology and also all spiritual traditions understand as the one we need to overcome and to transcend in order to come to the deeper self? What if that strengthened ego then puts a radical end to a life of despair to which our ego world apparently knows no solution?
Your very search for meaning expressed in your article opens a door into a dimension neither medicine nor today’s medicalized psychology can fathom yet.
I have had a book on grappling with despair in me for a long while and your writing is nagging me to come forward with it.
Now I need to find a lede for it 😇
Ps: would you be open to a dialogue on this project?
I learned to write from my dad who was a journalist/journalism teacher. As an adult, I have been studying creative writing and memoir composition; it has taken me while to learn how to write in a way that does bring in a lot of metaphor and more flowery language. My original directive from dad was just the facts, but as interesting as possible in as few words as possible. I love this essay you’ve written and reminds me there are skills for many types of writing and I can sharpen them always.
Kirsten.
The first 3 sentences I added as the new lede of a personal essay. Hopefully, it is an improvement in gaining reader attention (The first sentence also relates to the final sentence of the complete essay titled The Life Lessons of Grease, Sawdust and the Guru Oak Tree.)
Look over here, there was once a vast and continuous forest of ancient trees. Only a few remain. This is the story of Guru, one of the ancients I came to know.
So many years ago before the kind, old lady's house was built on the corner, before and during the horror of Civil War, before the granite retaining walls and concrete sidewalks, before power lines and water lines, before cobblestones and street cars, before the Town of Winston offered the Town of Salem a hyphen of community, before the diesel powered machines and chain saws growled in February of 2016 their existential summons; there was a great, white oak tree on a hill. From modest sapling to maturity, the tree and the emerging, southern tobacco town grew and prospered. As craftsmen built magnificent homes on the hillsides near downtown, the oak proudly built its own canopied tower of magnificence at the corner of 5th Street and the aptly named Summit Street -the topographically advantageous summit upon a town in the rolling hills of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
It's def a much better lede! What about making the title What I Learned From The Guru Oak Tree , sub: Life lessons come in the most unexpected places (these are just suggestions to get juices flowing). The other headline feels a little overwhelming. Just food for thought -- i haven't read the whole essay obv so follow your instincts.
Thank you Kirsten!
Super column Kirsten. As a retired pastor who writes a weekly “blurb“ to my little 35 member congregation I realize that if I don’t get to the point they don’t even bother reading it!
I know of your former commitment to Christianity but here’s a verse that might encourage you: 1 Samuel 3:19 “Not one of his words will fall to the ground.” I wish some of my colleagues could “get it.”
Thank you for your generosity in offering this information and feedback!
WOW! This is so helpful. Thank you for this one, Kirsten.
I'm so glad!
Oh thank you so much for this post. I have never taken any courses on how to write and it’s something I’m pursuing to improve 🙂 Except this class will be in Italian! Mamma Mia! I’m going to re write a few posts as practice.
Wow that's impressive! I was saying to my husband (who is also a journalist) that I feel bad for many of the writers on Substack who are learning without having an editor breathing down their neck (never thought i'd say that!) I learned so much from having editors destroying my copy or just by being forced to be concise b/c of the word count.
I'm taking a FLASH workshop this afternoon, excited and nervous. Planning to take a longer course soon, so much to learn and practice.
Heather Sellers is a good and interesting teacher. FLASH is a fascinating exercise.
You know when you know something deep down but you hesitate to bring it to the surface? That's how I felt reading your article. You're right. We are experts and unless we fully own our own opinions, what are we actually doing here? Thank you. This really inspires me to keep doing, but to keep getting better at that doing.
I read this just before I wrote today's post which publishes tomorrow. It's 1200 words (my shortest yet) and I think it's some of my best work. It also only took me two hours to write (the quickest yet). I think the mindset your words in this put me in is largely responsible for that. So THANK YOU.
This is great and helpful, Kirsten, thank you! And your title “Hook the Reader with a Strong Lede” is what “hooked” me -- I stopped scrolling and started reading!
Kirsten please do a lede writing chat exercise with us!! Or let me pay you to look at mine and make them better 😅