Hello, nuggets. In this video, you're going to learn what a lead is and how to write six different types of leads. So, this is a useful video if you have written a wonderful essay, but you don't know where to start. Also be sure to check out the second video in the series, Little Red Riding Hooks, that will also give you some other great ideas. Let's get started. First, what is a lead? A lead is the opening of your essay. Now depending on whom you're speaking to, some teachers use lead to refer to a single sentence, the very first sentence of your essay in your introductory paragraph. Other teachers will use this term more generally to refer to your entire introductory paragraph. Either way, we're talking about the beginning of your essay. And the most important thing that your introduction must do is to hook your readers. Otherwise, why should they keep reading? You need to write such a wonderful attention grabbing opening that they feel compelled to keep reading. They can't help themselves. They just have to. Okay? This is very important if you want to accomplish your purpose as a writer. Otherwise, in the real world where people aren't required to read what you write, people will read the first line, YAHN, set it aside, or click the next link to read something else. You don't want that. You want to achieve your purpose. Alright? So, especially for my class, you want me to be excited and you want other fellow students to be excited to read your work. You don't want them to be yawning before they even get into the story or into your argument. The lead is also important because it establishes the tone of your writing. Now the tone is your attitude. It should give them some inkling of where you're going with the particular piece. So you want your readers to feel a certain way. That's mood. And your tone that you create with that opening is going to help start establishing the mood and manipulating, perhaps manipulating is too negative a word, encouraging your readers to feel the way that you want them to feel as they read your work. So the first lead that we're going to look at is called an action lead. This one is very popular with TV shows and films especially. This lead gets the reader quickly involved in the story by starting with an exciting event or some kind of action. When we cover epics, we'll talk about this type of lead as something called in media as which literally means in the middle of things, in the middle of the action. So think of crime television shows for example. They often start with an exhilarating car chase or you might see someone perpetrating a crime or someone committing a murder. It hooks you in right away and it grabs your attention because it's a startling, shocking and it's action packed. So it makes you eager for more. Let's look at a student example. So it doesn't have to be a car chase. This example says, I threw on my favorite red dress and scrambled down the stairs as fast as I could. It was my eighth birthday and I couldn't wait for the party to begin. So this is a very sweet opening. You have this moment in time and the action of course that's being highlighted to grab attention is her running down the stairs for her birthday party. So you're eager to see what will happen next. So you don't necessarily have to kill someone off or rob a car and go speeding somewhere to grab your attention. It just has to highlight a particular action. Next. Next up we have our snapshot lead. If you've ever played with the camera you know that it's able to zoom in and zoom out. So the snapshot lead is going to zoom in very closely and give rich, descriptive images. So the slide says this lead begins with the author painting a picture for the reader. So you give them something amazing to visualize. So let's look at a student example. It's 10 degrees below zero and the river is frozen in a foot thick. It makes snapping sounds like the limbs of a tree cracking. A lone figure glides along the black ice moving towards the city. The only sound is scraping of each blade as it bites into the river. That's me doing my favorite sport by skating. So this snapshot has a lot of things going for it. It's extremely descriptive. It zooms in on the scene in certain details. For example the snapping sounds like the limbs of a tree cracking. So you use this wonderful simile here which is great. We have the lone figure on the black ice which makes it seem sort of mysterious and solitary. And then we have another reference to sound. The scraping of each blade is it bites into the river. Of course the blade can't bite anything. So you even have a little bit of personification here. So zeroing in on the details. If you're a person who loves descriptive writing or if you're very skilled at poetry and your poetic devices, this is a great one to use. Our next lead is the sound effect lead and it is what it sounds like. It begins with a specific sound to get the reader's attention. Often common sounds work the best because readers can relate to them and readily identify with them. You also might find yourself using a lot of onomatopoeia. As you do in this student example, smash the window cracked, the wind howled and the door flown open, rain poured in through the screen, drenching the welcome mat inside our house. I will never forget the fierce storm that invaded my house last night. So you see we have smash, cracked, howled, lots of good descriptions that start out with sound. The next one I sort of feel like this one can be cheating because it's so overused, but it can be done well. So this lead begins by asking the reader an interesting question and this is often called the rhetorical question because when you ask a question in a piece of writing, you're not really expecting an answer. No one's going to write back to you. So you're just asking the reader to consider something. Often times you can hint at your theme by using this type of question. Here's one example. How bad could it be? That's what I wondered before my family left for our camping trip with all seven of us piled in one car. So how bad could it be? That instantly gets the reader thinking, oh, well what was so bad? And then they followed up by introducing their topic. So this is one way that you can also start. And now we are to the flashback lead. This one takes a little bit more effort and investment on the part of the writer because what you'll do, as you know, from your literary terms, you will take the reader literally back in time to a prior event that relates to the topic that you're going to discuss. So here's an example. I could feel the sweat pouring off my body as I watched the seconds tick off the clock. It was if I was dribbling in slow motion, weaving in and out of the defenders and heading towards the hoop. As the buzzer sounded, I felt the ball roll off my fingertips. And I watched anxiously as it spun around the rim for what seemed like an eternity. I finally heard the swish of the net. I had won the game for my team. Now the problem with this example is I can't include the whole essay here. So the important thing with a flashback is to smoothly transition back to the moment in time where the rest of the story or the exposition is taking place. So just be very careful to put in skilled transitions so your readers know exactly when everything is taking place and what's happening. Don't want them to get lost. And I believe this is our last technique for today, the Talking Lead, aka Dialog. Dialog is always a great way to start out because much like our first strategy or technique, the action lead, it's like you're jumping into the middle of the conversation or you're jumping into the middle of the action, only people are speaking. So this can be a really effective way. It's also interesting to readers because it forces them immediately to start visualizing and asking questions about who are the people speaking, what's going on, what is the intent of this conversation, etc. So it raises lots of questions which lead to predictions and keeps readers reading. So let's look at an example. Quick, hit the floor, my dad yelled. Whatever you do, don't look up my mother added as I dropped to the floor and flied myself under my bed. It was a terrifying night from my family when we discovered a bat in our house. Now I don't think I would have revealed the problem as quickly as this student did, but this is a great example of dialogue that raises interest. You know when dad's saying hit the floor and the mother's saying don't look up, it makes the readers start asking questions, well what is going on? This is another very effective and creative way to begin, especially narratives. And that's it for now, guys. See you if you have any questions and don't forget to check out the Writing Leads Part 2 video, Little Red Riding Hooks. See you in class.