Download - Expository Leads
Expository Leads
The Right Start
• Grab your audience’s attention
• Be clear
Cliché
a trite, stereotyped expression; a sentence or phrase, usually expressing a popular or common thought or idea, that has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long overuse, as sadder but wiser, strong as an ox, or faster than a speeding bullet
Don’t be boring or put your audience to sleep by using tired expressions everyone’s heard before!
Question Leads
Beginning a piece by asking the reader a question is very risky because that lead has been over-used and lost its uniqueness. It’s also difficult to avoid being cheesy since frequently the questions are rhetorical.
A rhetorical question is NEVER asked with the purpose of receiving an answer!
Quote Leads
• Maybe you want to start with a quote.
- from a text you are writing about
- connected to a point you are trying to make
- from a person you are writing about
Call to Action/Entreaty Leads
• Tell your audience of something that people should be doing – and tell the audience to do it!
Note: This is very useful for speeches and OpEd (opinion pieces in the newspaper).
Anecdote Leads
• Tell a short story related to your topic. This:
- can help make the topic clear
- can influence the audience’s emotions
Set-up/Background Leads • Provide background about the topic.
- tell who a main character is and the challenge s/he is facing
- tell the history behind a problem
Fact/Statistic Leads
• Introduce the topic with a shocking fact or statistic that will surprise the audience.
Misleading Leads
• Set up expectations, then surprise the reader.
Works Cited• Cliché Definition - http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cliche