To summarise:

The intro should be

1. newsworthy

2. 20 words or less

3. attractive to the reader

4. appropriate in style

When writing your intro:

• List the key points

• Put the key points in order of importance.

• Choose the main key points as your news angle for the intro

Writing the intro, the golden rules

In Chapter 4: Writing the Intro in simple steps you learned what qualities made a good intro, the importance of newsworthiness and of answering the questions Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? (WWWWW & H) - but not all in the intro!. You also took the first steps in actually writing an intro from raw information to the finished short, crisp sentence based on the news angle.

In this chapter, the second part of intro writing, we discuss some golden rules to help you write the best intro possible.

KISS

As we have mentioned in Chapter 4, all news stories must answer the questions Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How?  Each of these questions may have several parts, depending upon the nature and complexity of the story. 

Do not try to answer them all in the intro. You will only confuse your reader or listener. Stick to one or two key points per sentence, especially in the intro.

Remember the golden rule is KISS - Keep It Short and Simple.

You will overload your sentence and make instant understanding difficult if you include unnecessary details which can be explained more fully later in the story. 

Your intro is like a canoe being paddled against a fast flowing current. Every word in the sentence should be like a rower with a paddle, helping to push the sentence forward. There is no room for lazy words sitting back without paddles in their hands. They just make work harder for the rest of the words. So look closely at every word and ask yourself: "Does it have a paddle in its hand?" If it doesn't, throw it overboard!

Some of the fattest and laziest words to be found in the intro canoes are titles. Inexperienced journalists often think that they have to put full titles in the intro when, in fact, they belong later in the story. Try to shorten titles for your intros wherever possible. In the following example, you will see that a general description of the person in the intro, followed by the full name and title in the second paragraph, works much better:

RIGHT:  A Port Moresby union leader yesterday condemned politicians who try to interfere in labour disputes. Mr Mug Wump, president of the Port Moresby Waterside Workers' Union, said...

WRONG: Mr Mug Wump, president of the Port Moresby Waterside Workers' Union, yesterday condemned politicians who try to interfere in labour disputes.

Active voice

Use the active voice wherever possible. An active voice sentence uses the simple grammatical structure of subject-verb-object.

The sentence "the man hit the table" is in the active voice, where the table is the object of the verb "hit". The sentence "the table was hit by the man" is in the passive voice. As you can see, the first sentence is not only shorter, but it is far simpler and easier to understand. This is especially important when your reader or listener speaks English as a second or third language.

The following examples will demonstrate this rule:

RIGHT: Copra growers have demanded a new subsidy scheme. RIGHT: Angry villagers attacked three Japanese tourists in Western Province yesterday.

WRONG: A new copra subsidy scheme has been demanded by growers. WRONG: Three Japanese tourists were attacked by angry villagers in Western Province yesterday.

The main exception to this rule is when the object of the sentence is much more newsworthy than the subject. For example:

RIGHT: The Prime Minister was attacked by angry villagers in Western Province yesterday.

WRONG: Angry villagers attacked the Prime Minister in Western Province yesterday.

Note that we used the passive voice in the final intro version of our cyclone story. This was because the victims - the six dead and more than 100 homeless - were more important than the cyclone itself. Remember, news is about people. We could have written it in the active voice, putting the cyclone as the subject of the sentence:

Cyclone Victor left six people dead and more than 100 homeless when it hit the Solomon Islands yesterday.

However, this delays the big news until the middle of the intro, instead of putting it at the very beginning.