Hook The Reader With A Strong Lede

Whether a Substack post, oped or email query your first line is critical

You may have heard: people are overwhelmed with too much information.

Which is why you must get to the point quickly in your writing.

The way to do this is with a strong lede.

lede /lēd/: the opening sentence or paragraph of a news article, summarizing the most important aspects of the story.

I learned this writing newspaper columns in the days when set word counts had to be obeyed. Every word mattered; there was no room for fluff or taking your time to make a point.

Nowhere was this harder than at USA Today, where my print column was an improbable 550-600 words, forcing me to master the skill of economical writing. Imagine trying to convince people to support immigration or health care reform with that word limit.

Infrequently, I'd be granted more space, but it was circumscribed by what was physically available on the page, unlike Internet writing, which has no real limit, at least when you are your own editor/publisher.

Either way, I had one shot to grab the reader's attention, and that was my opening sentence.

The columns I wrote there, and before that at the Daily Beast, were often impactful and frequently went viral. One of my viral columns reached over 1 million page views and was the number one read article, not just a column, at USA Today for nearly a week.

I don't think my writing went viral or had an impact just because of the ledes. But without a clear hook to attract the reader who had so much else competing for their attention, these columns would have reached a fraction of the audience.

The same is true of your Substack post or email query asking a public figure to be interviewed for your newsletter or to speak to your organization. If you have drafted an op-ed, it will have a far greater chance of being published if it has a strong lede.

So, what makes for a great lede?