How do I Start?

Developing The Lead

In the case of a digital story, your lead and your opening image will dictate whether or not your audience will keep watching. Each of the leads below, written by published authors and college students, strives to hook the reader in the first 10 seconds.

"My first victim was a woman - white, well dressed, probably in her early twenties. I came upon her late one evening on a deserted street in Hyde Park, a relatively affluent neighborhood in an otherwise mean, impoverished section of Chicago."
- Brent Staples, from "Black Men in Public Spaces"

"With the first busloads of Katrina refugees about to arrive in San Antonio, the call went out for physician volunteers, and I signed up for the 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift. On the way, riding down dark, deserted streets, I thought of driving in for night shifts in the I.C.U. as an intern many years ago, and how I would try to steel myself, as if putting on armor."
- Abraham Verghese, M.D., from "Close Encounter of the Human Kind"

"Once I met a woman who grew up in the small North Carolina town to which Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins, retired after their circus careers."
- Francine Prose, from "Gossip"

"A young boy molts. Tender skin falls off, or gets scraped off, and is replaced by a tougher, more permanent crust. The transition happens in moments, in events. All of a sudden, something is gone and something else is in its place. I made a change like that standing in the back of a pickup truck when I was 15."
- Jay Allison, from "Back at the Ranch"

My mom says I was born under a lucky star. The truth is there have been many moments when I could say I have felt exceptionally lucky. If it was because of the lucky star I do not know, but I am certainly starting to believe in it.
- Katarina Futova, from "Lucky Star"

"My mother, dead now to this world but still roaming free in my mind, wakes me some mornings before daybreak. 'If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a quitter.' I have heard her say that all my life."
- Russell Baker, from "The Good Times"

"Like a good many New Yorkers, I've often wondered whether I was going to be mugged."
- Edward Hoagland, from "The Courage of Turtles"