How to write g-string leads This exercise took an idea I was already using and improved it with ideas that I stole and adapted from Mike Schwartz and John Hatcher: This was for my "Make Every Word Count" workshop. The first few times I did this workshop I developed a PowerPoint presentation in which I showed a wordy passage from the host paper. I ask the group how we can tighten it and they make some suggestions and then I show the tighter version (sometimes they had better ideas than I did, which was good).
This was effective, but as the examples went on (I probably used 12-20), the participation tailed off. So I livened the exercise up by stealing a live-editing idea from Mike and a competition idea from John. Here's what I did when I presented the workshop in July at the Times of Northwest Indiana: After a couple examples as described above, I exited the PowerPoint presentation and put Word up on the screen, with a wordy lead showing. I had talked about suitcase leads that the writer tries to cram everything into. I had encouraged them instead to write g-string leads (brief and enticing). I had a suitcase lead on the screen. I broke the participants up into groups of three or four and gave them three minutes for each team to come up with an alternate lead, either tightening the suitcase lead or coming up with a g-string lead. I asked someone to read their group's lead and I typed it on the screen (warning: you don't type nearly as well with a roomful of people watching, but make a little fun of yourself and just fix it and move on). Then I asked if anyone could do better. A couple more groups read their leads. Then we voted on the best one and I rewarded the winning team with candy. After that, the passages were not leads, but just wordy passages that needed tightening. People were getting into it. I did four passages and the last couple times, every group read its offering. We had a couple ties and I passed out a lot of candy.
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