When you write a lead paragraph, one question faces you above all: How do you connect with the reader? And right away? Whether you’re writing a book, article, blog, or op-ed, that isn’t just a question you need to answer. It’s the question.

How can you write so readers make instant sense of what you’re saying? Easily, accurately, and enjoyably? The challenge is not just how to choose words. It is how to choose verbal devices that fit the idiom of the times, the topic, and the reader.

By idiom, I mean the natural, familiar, and characteristic. Are you appealing to the way your readers think and communicate? To their logic and assumptions? Are you locking on their wavelength?

You can connect in various ways. Single words come first, of course, but more potent devices will create chemistry with your reader. Here’s what I ask myself to make sure I’m connecting:

• What words will convey my message? Plain words, unmistakable. Keywords and bywords. If you find the right ones, you can’t beat them.
• What metaphors, analogies, or figures of speech light up my message? Consider artistic ones to connect to right-brained people, analytic ones to connect to left-brained people.
• What patterns of thought do my readers prefer? Accountants favor reasoning with numbers; artists with intuition; scientists with first principles. Everyone uses different touchstones of logic.
• What images convey my essence? Can you paint a picture or evoke a scene that helps readers see what you mean? Seeing is believing.
• What situations allow readers to grasp my message? If you put readers into a scene, you can trigger empathy and quicken understanding.
• What emotions can I awaken? Can you evoke fear, sympathy, yearning, envy, ambition? Can you make people reflexively feel the moment?

A caution about overwriting: If you’re uncertain, plainly worded statements serve best. Metaphors and images, if not dead-on, can muddle things. But if they’re right-on, they can clarify meaning like nothing else—connecting with the mind, emotion, memory, and senses of the reader.

In the best of cases, combine devices. As evidence, read the lead paragraph from chapter 1 in 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi, a first-rate book by Mitchell Zuckoff, who engages readers with words, metaphors, patterns, images, a situation, and emotions all at the same time.

“Jack Silva leaned forward in his window seat aboard the Turkish Airlines jet as it approached Benghazi’s Benina International Airport. He looked outside at the plane’s shadow racing across the caramel-colored desert below. Jack believed deeply in the yin and yang, the Chinese concept that a connection exists between seemingly opposing forces, the dark and light, life and death. So it was unsurprising that two conflicting thoughts entered his mind. First was excitement: I wonder what adventures this place is going to bring. Then came its counterbalance, worry: I wonder if I’ll ever see my family again.”

Leave nonessential background and context until after the lead—readers can wait! The lead is just that, a means to guide readers down an enticing path. Once they are walking at your side, you point out elements of the landscape. That’s what Zuckoff did, showing his skill by waiting until paragraph 2 to explain Silva’s backstory.

[Revised January 2020. Originally published May 30, 2015]