A news story is a specialised and vastly different style of writing from writing an essay or producing a report for school, business or university.

In a competitive news environment with thousands of stories available, a news story has to grab the attention of the reader.

This can be done not with sensationalism but with a punchy introductory sentence.

In journalism, that first sentence is called an intro.

The intro must be succinct and must contain the most important elements in the news story.

A reader is likely to skip over a dull, poorly-worded intro, even if the body of the story contains interesting information.

Unlike other forms of writing, there’s no point leaving the punchline, or the best until last.

A reader might not get to the interesting facts if they are buried deep in the story.

The essential ingredients to be considered for the intro are called news points.

These are the most important and interesting facts in the news story.

They provide the tease that will hopefully make the reader want to read on.

A cleverly-written news story will flow effortlessly expanding on the information in the intro.

Importantly, it will hold the reader’s interest.