Leads

1. Leads

2. Leads What do I mean when I say LEAD? A lead is the opening sentences in the first paragraph of a piece of writing. Today you will be seeing a series of leads. I will be asking you to answer a few questions for each lead. This document can be found on my website.

3. Lead #1 I knew it was my mom kicking. I finally hit the ground with a THUD! I wasn’t sure where I had fallen to. All I knew was that it was dark. So I just sat there a while letting my eyes adjust to the dark. When I could start seeing thing the first thing I looked for was a light switch. I couldn’t find one but I did find a few matches and candles lying around. Once the candle was lit I was surprised with what I saw. I saw medical stuff. But the thing that scared me was in a dark corner was the little girl I saw him strangle. The first thing that rushed through my mind was what was happening to my mom. The second thing was that I got to get out of there. First I looked for a door of some sort. I looked along the wall. I didn’t find anything so I looked behind bookcases that were against the wall. I finally found a trap door behind the last one. I opened it and ran as fast as I could. It led me to this one room. I stood there for a few seconds. I heard voices. One was Rovers and the other ones were my moms. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. But what I see was my mom all tied up. I knew I had to help her.

4. Lead #2 When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. I was wishing I looked like Paul Newman—he looks tough and I don’t—but I guess my own looks aren’t so bad. I have light-brown, almost-red hair and greenish-gray eyes. I wish that they were more grey, because I hate most guys that have green eyes, but I have to be content with what I have. My hair is longer than a lot of boys wear theirs, squared off in back and long at the front and sides, but I am a greaser and most of my neighborhood rarely bothers to get a hair cut. Besides, I look better with long hair.

5. Lead #3 Everyone would say my life is perfect. I live in Hawaii, get good grades, have the best friend a person could have, and I am the best surfer on the island. Sometimes, though, things happen to me that drastically throw my life out of balance. This summer of ’09 would be another one of those times…. “Are you excited about the surfing competition, Lyla?” Rosie, my best friend from the age of two, asked. Now we were both seventeen, but our friendship was still unbreakable. “Yes!” I exclaimed, I can’t think about anything else.” We were sprawled out on my brightly lit room. I was sprawled out on my sunny yellow comforter reading boring old magazines, while Rosie was studying my ocean-sized aquarium. “I wonder who will win this year,” Rosie speculated. I felt a little hurt because I thought she would have known I had the best chance of winning with my talent, plus I had won the past three years. I felt a guilty thinking about this. I wasn’t one to brag, but Rosie noticed the look that stole my face. “What?” she asked. “Nothing,” I answered to quickly.

6. Lead #4 When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles with his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn’t have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt. When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out. I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch never would have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t?

7. Lead #5 It was February 13. A Friday that I would never forget….I’m not even sure the bet was worth it. I wouldn’t mind being called “chicken” for the rest of my life. I wish I walked out with Alex but all I knew was that I was trapped in a haunted mansion with blood sucking creatures. Every one avoided the big old mansion. It was believed to have ghosts of the people who lived there. One day, Tom and his friends were hanging out in the school playground. Apparently the haunted mansion wasn’t that far away from the school, “I dare Tom to go the mansion,” Taylor joked. “Fine but you guys are coming with,” Tom agreed to the bet and Alex nodded too. All of his friends made a bet that whoever ran out of the mansion, would be called “chicken” for the rest of their life. “Alright but we all stay together or else one of us is going to get lost and…you get the idea,” Tom shivered at that thought. Everyone went to their houses to ask their parents if they could hang out at the park. Of course they’re not going to tell their parents that they were going to a haunted mansion. Their parents agreed and told the boys to be back by 9:00. While they were at their houses, they grabbed flashlights. They all agreed to meet up at the entrance of the mansion.

8. Lead #6 The trouble with running away is you know what you’re leaving behind, but not what’s up ahead. Paris Richmond learned that a year ago when she and her brother Malcolm ran away from their foster home in Queens. They slipped out of the brick two-story house one morning in late summer, hours before the heat would ring them dry. Malcolm moved free and easy in shorts and T-shirt, his head shaved cool and clean for the summer. Paris, on the other hand, felt weighed down by the humidity. Her sundress kept her body comfortable enough, but her thick halo of blond waves hung limp and heavy this time of year. She kept stopping to brush stray strands off her eyes, or off her damp forehead. Sometimes she’d rest her suitcase on the sidewalk so that she could use both hands. Paris trudged down the street after her brother, totally oblivious to the main swath of sky, a marble of sun-streaked clouds and marine blue patches. Her attention was on Malcolm’s rapidly receding back. “Hurry up!” said Malcolm. “Or we’ll get caught. Is that what you want?” Paris shook her head no. The last thing she wanted to do was get caught.

9. Lead #7 “Who would do such a thing as to steal my most precious possession?” Thumbozer thought as he noticed a change in the placement of the room. He had just been let out of the basement, being a cat, his owners limited his accessibility to the house and yard when they were gone. His family had just arrived home prematurely from their dinner due to contact from the security company that an alarm had been triggered. “Thank goodness nothing is gone,” said the father, relieved after checking the house. “The security system must have scared them away.” Thumbozer knew they only partially correct. The intruders were most likely scared off by the security alarm, but something was missing. Thumbozerbegan search the house, starting with the basement. He made his way to the place he had been earlier as fast as his legs could carry him. “Maybe I left it down here,” he said to himself as he arrived at the basement. He searched every nook and cranny and that was accessible to him, but he couldn’t find it. He noticed an unfamiliar smell at the place he had last seen it. It smelled like…dog! His family didn’t own a dog. Thumbozer reached a conclusion; the intruders were really robbers and they had a dog with them.

10. Lead #8 In a city called Stonetown, near a port called Stonetown Harbor, a boy named Reynie Muldoon was preparing to take an important test. It was the second test of the day—the first had been in an office across town. After that one he was told to come here, to the Monk Building on Third Street, and to bring nothing but a single pencil and a single rubber eraser, and to arrive no later than one o’clock. If he happened to be late, or bring two pencils, or forget his eraser, or in any other way deviate from the instructions, he would not be allowed to take the test, and that would be that. Reynie, who very much wanted to take it, was careful to follow instructions. Curiously enough, these were the only ones given…Although he was only eleven years old, he was quite used to figuring things out for himself.