Issue 36 / 2009
36 / First Lede, Real Lead
Finding where the story really starts
In textbook journalism, the lede covers the famous Five W’s—who, what, when, where and why (and sometimes how). In creative nonfiction, the lede functions somewhat differently. Because the primary purpose is not so much to communicate quickly the basic information of a story as it is to draw readers in, the beginning of a story may not capture the Five W’s; often, some of the answers to those essential questions are purposely held back to enhance suspense and to allow the narrative to develop more organically.
During the editing process for this issue, with the permission of the writers, we eliminated the original beginnings of three essays and started them a few paragraphs or pages later. Our goal was to make the beginnings more immediate, to eliminate some writerly throat-clearing, to help plunge readers into the heart of the story—the action, the theme, the substance–from the very beginning.
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What’s the Story #36
Most nonfiction writers I know can’t really get going on an essay, a chapter or even a book until they have set the direction and tone of the narrative at the outset.A Mapmaker’s Error
First, three beginnings. Who is to say which is the source of all that followed?When he was a boy his father brought him a chunk of goldembedded in quartz. From British Columbia it was.Reclamation
High in the north central mountains of Idaho, up the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River, and farther on, where Jordan Creek is born, stands Mount Estes.Anechoic
Houdini leans to rise from the sofa on which he has been reclining and, in rising, receives a succession of punches to the lower abdomen. Although the magician endured a similar blow before a small crowd days before, it is backstage in the dressing room at the Princess Theatre that the story of his death often begins.The Path and Pull of the Moon
The phases of the moon are seven—not counting the “new moon,” which, for the most part, we don’t see—and all are gifts of sunlight.Crazy Talk
Craziness runs in my family like a current under waters that swell and recede with the seasons. My sister and I have stood at its shore and watched some of the adults in our life get close enough to the edge to be swallowed whole.Blood and Treasure
Three decades before your birth, and long before 19 men crashed four hijacked U.S. planes to protest American policy in countries that most Americans could not locate on a map, I was raised in the clean unease of the Cold War.WestCrossing the Threshold
Laura March* doesn’t seem particularly glad to see us. When I speak, her lashless eyelids flutter open then shut again. Her eyes follow my voice, find my face and then my partner’s face, try to focus.Pod City
In 1955, Jack Finney published his best-selling novel “The Body Snatchers,” a story that so captured the American imagination that it was made into a movie not once, but three times, having a much more lasting impact on popular culture than Finney’s more critically acclaimed novels.