September 2014
Beginner
320 pages
6h 8m
English
Content preview from Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content
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17‘A Good Lede Invites You to the Party and a Good Kicker Makes You Wish You Could Stay Longer’
Give special love to the first and last sentences of your piece—the opening and closing, or the lede (lead)1 and kicker—in traditional journalism terms. Why do that? As Articulate Marketing's Matthew Stibbe explains, “A good lede invites you to the party and a good kicker makes you wish you could stay longer.”2 This rule honors him.
A good lead, then, sets the tone for your writing and hooks the reader into wanting to know more. Here are some options:
Put your reader into the story. Put your reader—or someone just like your reader—into the story. You might share an anecdote about someone grappling with a problem your piece solves, or set up a scenario your reader will recognize. For example, consider this lede to a MarketingProfs article by Ernest Nicastro, on what marketers can learn from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:
It is a crisp, clear autumn afternoon, about 1:30. A full sun hangs in a bright blue sky. A large crowd mills about.
Imagine that you are there. You jostle for position. You strain your neck to get a glimpse. You cup your hand behind your ear…as the 16th President of the United States steps to the center of the platform and begins his “few appropriate remarks.”3
- Describe a problem your reader can relate to. This lead from online publication Thrillist puts ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.