Start With The Punchline

"To get to the other side" is obviously the punchline to the kindergarten joke "Why did the chicken cross the road?"  The power of starting out a section of your story with the punchline as the headline or the first sentence is it's ability to create interesting confusion. If your punchline is interesting then the reader will hang in with you to find out what the heck you're talking about. 

Here is an example. In the following story passed on a from an uncle, he's put the most interesting part at the end. There was a girl in a flour barrel?  

So changing the title of the subsection from "Hannah Gilbert Wood" to "She's In The Barrel" suddenly makes it all more interesting. Add some historical context and now you've got something a bit more readable. 

[BEFORE RE-WRITE] 

Hannah Gilbert Wood

Hannah Wood maiden name Gilbert. She was born in Baltimore Maryland and buried in the Elmwood Cemetery in Winnipeg. Apparently Hannah Woods on more than one occasion was placed in an empty flour-barrel on the farm when the Yankee troops were riding through their farm during the American Civil War. There was a constant fear of the girls being molested and raped even by their own troops. 

[AFTER RE-WRITE]

She’s In The Barrel

While the American Civil War was dragging on in the early 1860’s Hannah Gilbert was a young maiden living in the town of York, in what was known as Canada West - before the area became part of the country of Canada in 1867. Hannah was born in Baltimore Maryland but somehow her family was in York by the time she was a teenager.

The American Civil War (1861–65) was fought between the northern (Union) states and the southern (Confederate) states, which withdrew from the United States in 1860–61. The war left cities in ruins, shattered families and took the lives of an estimated 750,000 Americans. The war also involved those living in what is now Canada, including roughly 40,000 who joined the fight.

The story that is handed down is that as Canadian men traveled through York on their way south to enlist in the US Union army they would stop at the Gilbert farm in York. Many girls and women had been mistreated by soldiers so Hannah on more than one occasion was hidden in an empty flour-barrel. She survived and later married Thomas Wood, give birth to Lillian Wood who married Franklin Bretz, Howard Bretz’s father. Hannah died in 1936 and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Winnipeg. 

Feel free to take artistic license with the stories you are reporting. Make them interesting, bold, maybe even shocking! Boring stories won't get read.