Ooh, yes, exactly! It's the moment where you tell the reader exactly what your piece is about, ideally in a way that "hooks" them to continue reading. The difference between legal/scientific writing and other journalistic forms of nonfiction (at least as I understand it) is in the latter, you have a little more flexibility in both the way the lede is written and its overall placement--you can do a straightforward "summary" lede as the first sentence of the article, which is more akin to a statement of the issues, and which you'll see in typical news articles, OR you can do a more delayed lede for longer and more complex pieces. It all depends on what you're doing and the way you frame it!
The lede is the thing that I think about the most while writing nonfiction because it's the most important part of any piece and what makes it work (or not). Sometimes I know right away what it is, and sometimes I only figure it out after paragraphs of material, which I then examine for the central theme/commonality/most important point and distill that into becoming the lede.
Ledes don't have to be flashy or dramatic, but my favorites are always the ones that it makes me writhe with jealousy and mutter, "oh my god, I wish I'd written that".
no subject
Ooh, yes, exactly! It's the moment where you tell the reader exactly what your piece is about, ideally in a way that "hooks" them to continue reading. The difference between legal/scientific writing and other journalistic forms of nonfiction (at least as I understand it) is in the latter, you have a little more flexibility in both the way the lede is written and its overall placement--you can do a straightforward "summary" lede as the first sentence of the article, which is more akin to a statement of the issues, and which you'll see in typical news articles, OR you can do a more delayed lede for longer and more complex pieces. It all depends on what you're doing and the way you frame it!
The lede is the thing that I think about the most while writing nonfiction because it's the most important part of any piece and what makes it work (or not). Sometimes I know right away what it is, and sometimes I only figure it out after paragraphs of material, which I then examine for the central theme/commonality/most important point and distill that into becoming the lede.
Ledes don't have to be flashy or dramatic, but my favorites are always the ones that it makes me writhe with jealousy and mutter, "oh my god, I wish I'd written that".