News Comment #3/Lede
The first thing to catch my attention when it came to Tim Mulkerin’s article “How exposure therapy helped me hack my OCD brain and eliminate my greatest fear” on mic.com was his lede. The first thing he mentions in his article is knives, and connecting the lede with the title, I knew I wanted to continue reading.
Mulkerin writes this article about his difficulties with OCD thoughts, in this case his thoughts about taking a knife and stabbing his loved ones with it. He relays that his violent thoughts are from his OCD and his fear of him being capable of committing these acts, then continues with telling about his exposure therapy and the little steps he took to slowly control his fear into something manageable.
Mulkerin says he is now better, and he is “doing [his] best to accept that” he “can’t have total assurance about anything.”
Read the original article here.
This is a rare sort of story. It’s a feature, and it’s written from a first person perspective. I work on this sort of writing in the features class, only because this style of confessional is becoming more common.
I would agree it’s a good lede.