Thursday, January 21, 2010
Christensen: Do's and Don'ts of leads
When writing a lead a couple helpful hints from the book have helped me to identify and create leads. The text says 1)Who? 2) Did what? 3) To whom? Although in the book this hint was used to help students from using a passive voice it has helped me figure out what really is the News of the story, and it also helps keep the lead more concise. Another helper for me is looking at sentence structure, the book says that most reporters follow the subject-verb-object word order, this helps me find leads and helps me organize the information in a manner that won't become confusing or grammatically incorrect. These tips are helpful to keeping the lead clear and short, however they don't really show how to make a lead interesting. A good way to make a lead short and interesting at the same time is by writing only the necessary information first, then spicing it up once the news is clear. However, not ALL leads follow these rules, but as a beginner these hints definitely make my life a lot easier.
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I'm glad we have the textbook to look back on when it comes to writing leads. However, like you mentioned, that only helps so much. I wish the text would provide more examples on how you can make any lead interesting. Granted, while it does discuss this topic, I think it could go into greater detail.
ReplyDeleteThank you for pointing that out. I'm going to remember the 1)Who 2)Did what? 3)To whom? I guess I passed over that piece of information in the book. I agree with you though, the book does provide hints in keeping leads short and concise, but it's up to the author of the lead to make it interesting and creative.
ReplyDeleteAngelina,
ReplyDeleteAwesome job on your blog post! Like Kyle, I also must have skimmed over that part as well and should remember that in order to make a strong and impacting lead!
Alyssa Peterson
I'll definitely have to remember the 1.)Who? 2.)Did what? 3.)To whom?
ReplyDelete:)
Grade: 9.5/10
ReplyDeleteMistake
• Run-on sentence: "Another helper for me is looking at sentence structure, the book says that most reporters follow the subject-verb-object word order, this helps me find leads and helps me organize the information in a manner that won't become confusing or grammatically incorrect." This should have been two to three sentences instead of one long one.
I like the straight to the point!
ReplyDelete