Great Leads From All Kinds of Writing : A Giant Ongoing Lead Board

[Barry Lane]

Here is an idea from my book Reviser's Toolbox that we can do together. Lets create a massive collection of the best leads from literature, non-fiction and fiction, picture books etc. and fill this forum with them. Writers can draw inspiration and teachers can cut and paste into a Word file to share with their students.

What is a lead? A lead is the opening of a piece of writing. It can be a sentence or a paragraph or even a page or two. It is the door that opens the piece or as John Mcphee says, the magic flashlight that shines down through a piece of writing. Leads make the reader want to read and the writer want to write.

Just post one lead per entry.

[Barry Lane]

Every poem we write is in some way a self-portrait.

Sandford Lyne Writing Poetry from the Inside Out

[Gaetan Pappalardo]

This is from one of my students. "Give me your finger!" Got my attention.

[Gaetan Pappalardo]

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

Tolkien, of course. That sentence changed my life forever.

[Barry Lane]

"None of them knew the color of the sky."
Stephen Crane The Open Boat

[Gaetan Pappalardo]

Sophie couldn't sleep.

BFG

[Barry Lane]

"How can you buy the sky?"

Brother Eagle, Sister Sky Susan Jeffers

[Regina Locke]

TRUE! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?

[Barry Lane]

I like that one!

Regina Locke said:

TRUE! - nervous - very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?

[Amber White]

If your teacher has to die, August isn't a bad time of year for it.
Richard Peck The Teacher's Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts

[Mary Palmer Nowland]

"Cruising the seven seas on a rickety old ship called the Salty Carrot sailed a wild, rowdy band of Buccaneer Bunnies."
from Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies by Carolyn Crimi
The whole book is a hoot!

[Jason Lilly]

WARNING! This one isn't appropriate for younger readers, but still good:

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974"

Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

[Valdosta]

My all-time favorite lead comes from a former second grade student of mine:

"Cannonball Carson was the only flying gecko in the world. He just didn't know it yet."

--Jacob