Most leads will be written right-side up, not upside down. In
other words, the subject and verb of the main clause will come
first: "An early morning tornado ripped through central Florida
Thursday..." This structure is so important I made it
Tool #1 in
the book "Writing Tools": "Begin sentences with subjects and
verbs. Make meaning early, then let weaker elements branch to the
write."
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Poynter Online - Roy's Writing Tools - Tool #23
Two-Minute Tools
Roy Peter Clark talks about Writing Tool #23: Tune your voice.
Produced by Meg Martin |
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I learned this lesson from
Dennis Jackson, the great journalism teacher
at the University of Delaware. He taught me the power of the right-branching sentence, how meaning flows through a sentence when the subject and verb of the main clause come first.
But for every writing strategy I know, there is a counter-strategy that
works some of the time. For suspense, for dramatic effect, for
variation, to show off a little, the writer can save the subject and verb until
later in the game.
The example in my book comes from
Kelley Benham, writing an important
story for the
St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times,
the obituary of Terry Schiavo:
Before
the prayer warriors massed outside her window, before gavels pounded in
six courts, before the Vatican issued a statement, before the president
signed a midnight law and the Supreme Court turned its head, Terri
Schiavo was just an ordinary girl, with two overweight cats, an
unglamorous job and a typical American life.
That sentence structure, action near the end, was once called a
"periodic" sentence, and it has a long history in important
literature. Back in the day, many English majors were
required to memorize the first 18 lines of "The Canterbury Tales
."
You can read the
original Middle English version (circa 1385)
here. Or
a translation. Or, better yet,
listen to me read
the original:
In summary, Chaucer tells us that when this happens, when that happens,
when this happens, when that happens, and when this happens, then
people from all over English like to go on pilgrimages to visit the
tomb of
Thomas Becket. And so the journey and the storytelling
begin.
This reflection was inspired by a
Michael Kruse story in the
St. Petersburg
Times about the brief life of Jessica Lunsford,
a girl kidnapped and
murdered by a man whose trial for the crime is about to begin:
Before Feb. 24, 2005, before she was taken from her room in her home
in the dark, before she was kept and raped and buried alive in black
plastic trash bags, before her name and her face conjured a crime and a
law and a cause, she was just Jessie.
This occasional inversion of the norm works well enough that it deserves its own name. Let's call it
the upside-down lead. Overuse will turn it into a cliche. But use it as a rare
variation, and for the right purpose, and you, too, can join the Kelley
Benham/Geoffrey Chaucer/Michael Kruse club.
Thank you, Linda, for your encouraging words. It is always...
