On E-Zine Leads: Keep Them Short, Stupid
Harvey Kurtzman, the comic book genius who created Mad magazine, was once asked about his writing.
“I don’t write,” he answered. “I do movement.”
If only more e-zine writers saw it that way. For example, I’ve got a colleague who on occasion writes well. But he recently authored one of the worst leads I have ever read—120 words of incoherent nonsense on a conference session.
He started by providing the name of the event, the physical location, the title of the session, the headquarters of the company being discussed, what it did, when it was founded and the fact that it was publicly traded.
And that was before we even got to what the story was about.
It’s a given that e-mail readers will give up on copy like that. But so will print readers.
As Kurtzman implies, the writer’s job is to get the reader through the material as smoothly and with as much impact as possible. (At least that’s what I think he was saying).
So here’s a couple of simple rules about how to start your story:
*Keep your leads down to 30 words.
*State what the article is about—dramatically when appropriate, but precisely. There is no substitute for clarity.
*Don’t start a lead sentence with a subordinate clause.
*Avoid compound modifiers.
Finally, remember what the late Bill Jayme said about old-time direct mail copy: “We tried to reward the reader for his reading time.” That includes making it easy to read.
