Making the Very Power of a Story: A Success

Tsk tsk. Difficult, isn’t it?

As the Editor-in-Chief of our school paper for a year back in high school, the only thing I do is to feature and praise significant people in the school and community- schoolmates who received recognitions in out-of-school competitions, a duly awarded principal, a newly-paved pathway and new buildings in which the school waited several years until finally granted in, and our Barangay Captain’s project plans in the next years of his second term. I don’t really care to start a story at all- I just write whatever I think will interest readers, do some sort of revision and edit, and then publish and before I knew it, it was finally on my mom’s fists. I witnessed how powerful the school paper is when it comes to influencing the readers. Yes, they have praised my staff only to realize that we could have actually done better. And so I decided to take up this course.

News writing is a bit different from that in high school. Same rules and patterns, but the way it needs to be written and appeal to readers made it quite complex yet challenging. Writing the lead is one heck of its difficult parts- a crucial and exciting part, perhaps.

Perhaps it would be easier to make a lead with a guide in the form of a transcribed interview. You know the issue and how it flows from the most to the least important details. The challenge, however, is on how to organize the ideas and arrive at a very interesting, eye catchy, flavourful, and complete lead in which the appreciation and satisfaction of the entire story, depends.

Just like any other story, writing the lead is just that difficult and demanding, in some ways. It seems that the narrative, descriptive, and summary types of lead appear the same on our naked eye when read without complete understanding. What fate awaits me if I had to make my own lead? Thank God, background, stocked-knowledge really helps this time around. Time-consuming, requires a lot of your patience and effort, and forces you to revise again and again. Just as everybody else, I tried and tried and eventually composed a lead for every type. I just hope it will be correct. Do I have to say “please”?

To sum it up, lead is the very power of any story. The impression and life of the entire story lies within it. Whether as future writers or effective readers, we must learn how to make and/or distinguish how lead is constructed to fully understand the essence of a story- not by being critics, but being educated enough to react well and appreciate development as a form of reality and possibility.

Lead, summary or not, it must appeal to readers just as how you want them to figure out what you really want to pursue in writing your article. Else, be contented in reading those boring stuffs in newspapers’ front page. Peace!