The “lede” is the opening and most important sentence or paragraph of a news article (or email or poster or story or letter). Most of us write beautiful ledes and then bury them somewhere in the second or third paragraph. For some reason, the 1967 concert poster below has always reminded me of this helpful admonition.
“Finding the core” means stripping an idea down to its most critical essence. To get to the core, we’ve got to weed out superfluous and tangential elements. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is weeding out ideas that may be really important but just aren’t the most important idea.
– Made to Stick by Chip Heath
The Elements of Simple 