Feature Writing Leads

Feature Leads give the writer a more creative approach to beginning a story. These leads all strive to be engaging, to give the story a compelling opening that will make a reader (or viewer/listener for TV and radio) keep reading. In this post, I will be showing examples of nine types of feature leads. 

Here are nine types of feature leads:

Anecdote - start with an insightful short story

Description - set the mood by describing how someone or something looks

Quotation - good if it catchy, insightful

Question - pose an engaging question

Suspenseful leads - intrigue makes a reader keep reading

Ironic leads - play on the unexpected

Direct-address - use of “you” as if talking directly to the reader

Words used in unusual ways - be clever and creative with the English language

Shockers: lead with an unexpected twist

Below you will find my examples of feature leads 

Words Used in Unusual Ways Lead 

Times Newspaper - Dec. 16, 2022

For many of us, 2022 was the year we emerged more fully from our pandemic cocoons, venturing out to movie theaters, museums, concerts — exploring our entertainment with eager, if weary, hearts and eyes before returning home to our TVs.

Suspenseful Lead

Times Newspaper - Feb. 4, 2023

The United States shot down a Chinese spy balloon on Saturday that had spent the last week traversing the country, an explosive end to a drama that put a diplomatic crisis between the world’s two great powers onto television screens in real time.

Ironic Lead 

New York Post - Jan. 26, 2023 

This Colorado grizzly could not bear the opportunity to take a good selfie. Park rangers discovered hundreds of photos taken by bears on wildlife cameras meant to simply observe animals.

Direct-Address Lead 

Stuff Magazine - Jan. 27, 2023

2023 is looking like a bumper year for games on Switch, PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Have you recovered from the holidays and had the chance to catch up on all the big games from 2022? Well, ready or not, it’s already time to gaze ahead to the best games to play in 2023, which looks similarly packed with massive titles to compete for your attention.

Anecdote Lead 

The Post and Courier - Feb. 5, 2023

It's pitch-black outside when David Bonezzi wakes up at 4:30 a.m. He words out, showers and makes his son lunch. About two hours later, he back out of his driveway and heads to his job as a teacher at Carolina Park Elementary. 

Description Lead 

The Post and Courier - Jan. 31, 2023

Just inside the front doors of Husk, the tall wooden board still lists some 30 purveyors, just as it did at the end of 2010 when the restaurant seated its first customers. Back then, the white lettering on those long black panels seemed almost like incantations, as if merely inscribing the name of a turnip farmer or ham-maker might invoke culinary magic.

Shocker Lead 

The Rolling Stone - Feb. 6, 2023

The 65th Grammys was collaborative, witty, tear-jerking, and surprisingly touching for a music awards show often defined by its inability to get with the times - which is why Beyonce's insulting snub for Album of the Year felt all the more shocking and like an indictment on the Recording Academy itself. Why is music's biggest night so averse to giving black women their due? 

Question Lead 

LA Times - Feb. 6, 2023

What does Beyoncé have to do to win the Grammy Award for album of the year? That was the question swirling around Twitter on Sunday night after Harry Styles won the top Grammys prize in yet another controversial upset over Queen Bey. Styles received the honor for his third solo record, “Harry’s House,” while Beyoncé was nominated (and expected by many to finally win) for her seventh studio album, “Renaissance.”

Quotation Lead 

The Catholic Miscellany - Feb 2023

Some years ago, a student in my psychology class sighend in anguish, "Don't make me think, just give me the answer." Of course, this took me aback as a teacher. It also delighted me because thinking is my hobby!