Good leads

This unit was much harder than me than I thought it would be. I haven't taken a whole lot of media classes, so I didn't really know much about what makes a good lead, and I had never put much thought into it before. This unit really opened my eyes to the challenge that journalists and other writers take on when they write a lead sentence to a story. It has to be simple yet engaging, understandable, yet entertaining. And that's hard! As an English major, I figured that this would be pretty simple for me as just another form of writing, but I was wrong. English majors generally tend to be long-winded, and I definitely fit the bill as a typical English major. So trying to learn how to write good leads that were short and to the point was a growing experience for me.
It helped me to analyze the stories and find exactly what information would be the most important to the reader, whether it was the "who" "what" "when" "where" "why" or "so what." Then make sure that this information was part of the first and last information revealed in the lead to hook the reader and entice them to read on.
Even though I'm not going into journalism, I feel like this is the kind of stuff that any writer should learn. We should all know how to write long-winded sometimes, but we all should also know how to dive straight into the meat. Every piece of writing needs a hook, whether it be journalism, novel writing or even technical writing.
I wasn't able to find an editing mistake this week, but I'll be looking extra hard over spring break to find a couple for next time!