Good leads begin stories. Bad leads can finish them. If the first couple of sentences don’t make the reader feel helplessly curious and compelled to continue, your body copy won’t be read. Yearbook leads don’t sum up the entire article like newspaper leads. Instead, they give the reader a tempting taste of what lies ahead without necessarily addressing the main point of the story. They can tease, mislead, startle, amuse – anything that will invoke the reader’s curiosity. Study the following types of leads. Learn to write more creative and effective leads – leads that are real attention-getters.
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There is always an appetite for profiles because readers are always hungry to know about other people. This is different from gossip in that it is an insight into someone’s life that is different, unique, exotic. When it is reported professionally, this story seasoned with flavor and vivid descriptions is called a personality profile!
Before you begin to write, read over your interview notes and gather related terms and important information. Listing and clustering start the juices flowing; they put you in the writing mode.
The old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” However, without a caption, readers may get a thousand different messages from a picture-and all of those messages may be wrong.
Just as a story needs a captivating opening, it also needs a final thought that will leave a lasting impression with the reader. Review these four types of conclusions to better understand what makes a good feature ending. Some may be more than one type.
Story leads work much like ice cream toppings. They draw attention to the subject, making it more attractive, imparting a distinct “flavor” or “personality.”
Leads can inspire. They can question. They can shock, tickle, tease or entertain. But what is their ultimate purpose? Working together with headlines, designs and photographs, leads invite readers to come inside, kick off their shoes and stay for awhile. Good leads should not just grab attention; they should also harmonize with the tone or attitude of the copy. Even the cleverest lead, however, cannot salvage a poorly written story. A punchy lead followed by a boring story is a letdown. Instead, that same lead should pull the reader into a fabulous story that deserves to be read. All of the elements need to function together to make a meaningful presentation.
Talking with students about the 5 Ws and 1 H used to mean that the news lead most certainly was the topic at hand. No longer. Talking about the who, what, when, where, why and how could also mean you’re discussing the writing of in-depth captions for your yearbook.
I ask writers to find sentences or paragraphs that interest them in some way. Then they follow the same four-step process throughout the notebook. First, cut out the sentence and glue it down. Second, rewrite the sentence word for word to get a feel for the it. Third, try to describe on paper what it was they liked about the sentence. Finally, they use the same style technique, but with subject matter that could relate to a yearbook story.
Some yearbook evaluation booklets even grade books down if they use present participles to begin their captions. I think present participles are a really good way to begin a caption.
Text is the most important aspect of the yearbook. While pictures will be admired first, it is the body copy and the cutlines that accomplish the book’s final goal by capturing the tone of the year. Time and time again, I have had to deal with poorly written copy, whether it is riddled with grammatical mistakes or lacks the interest that draws in the reader. Cleaning up the text is an easy process, with a few basic tips.
