Leading Stories

Leads should be easy.  Writing the first paragraph of an article sounds like something that should just come naturally.  Boy, was I wrong.  When I cracked open the pages of my new All the News textbook, I was expecting the same introductory information I've always heard.  But, there are so many other ways out there to start a story!  Number one, anecdotal leads are amazing.  Not to directly quote the book, but one featured story started out explaining the story of a man who wanted a tattoo.  It gave his reason, but at the last possible sentence, we find out that he was actually getting a form of scarification.  It freaked me out that someone would want to do that, but the way this writer portrayed the data gave me chills.  Descriptive leads set up a scene, describing the main points of a story.  Questions never work.  Well, ok, that's a lie.  Sometimes they work, but I feel someone like me would never get them to.  The section in the book definitely gave me tips on how to start a story.  Maybe I'll actually put them to work sometime.