The first paragraph of an essay is usually the most important part of the whole essay to keep the reader interested. Not only to attract the reader's attention, but also as a prefix that will set the style and content of an essay. There is no one right way to start an essay – just as an essay can be about many things, it can be started in any way. However, most good prefixes of an essay have some qualities which, if done, will greatly add to the quality of the preface of an essay. See step 1 below to get started!
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Part 1 of 3: Creating Leads For Your Essay
Step 1. Start with an attention-grabbing sentence
Even if your essay doesn't appeal to you, the author, it doesn't have to be uninteresting to the reader either. Readers are usually picky about which essays they want to read and which essays they don't want to read. If a piece of writing doesn't immediately grab their attention in the first paragraph, there's a good chance they won't want to read the rest. Because of this, it is better to start the essay with a sentence that grabs the reader's attention from the start. As long as the first sentence has something to do with the rest of the article, there's nothing to be ashamed of trying to grab attention from the start.
- You may need to start with an interesting, little-known fact or statistic to grab the reader's attention. For example, if you were writing an essay about the growing dangers of childhood obesity in the world, you might start with this: “Contrary to the popular idea that childhood obesity is only a problem for wealthy and spoiled Westerners, WHO reports in In 2012, more than 30% of preschool children in developing countries were overweight or obese.”
- On the other hand, if it fits your essay, you can start with a compelling image or description. For an essay about your summer vacation, you might start with this: “When I feel the hot Costa Rican sun through the forest and hear the sound of monkeys in the distance, I know I have found a very special place.”
Step 2. Draw the attention of your readers into the “meat of the flesh” of your essay
A good first sentence will grab the reader's attention, but if you don't continue to attract the reader, he or she will easily lose interest. Continue your very first sentence with a sentence that logically connects the first sentence with the rest of the essay. Often, this sentence will expand the scope of the first sentence, giving a broader view of the first sentence.
- For example, in your obesity essay, you might connect the first sentence with this: "In fact, childhood obesity is a growing problem and affects both rich and poor countries." This sentence explains the pressing issue described from the first sentence and gives it a wider context.
- For your vacation essay, you could continue your first sentence with this: “I was in the woods of Tortuguero National Park, and I was totally lost.” This sentence tells the reader where the image of the first sentence comes from and draws the reader into the rest of the essay by telling the reader that they will find out how the narrator gets lost later.
Step 3. Tell the reader what the main content of your essay is
Often, essays are not always full of explanations; essays don't just explain something in basic, easy-to-understand language. Usually, essays have more purposes than this. Essays can be anything. An essay may be aimed at changing the reader's mind on a topic, persuading the reader to take a certain attitude for a particular reason, explaining something they did not understand, or simply telling a thought provoking story. The basic purpose of the first paragraph of an essay is to tell the reader the purpose of the essay. This way, readers can quickly choose whether or not to continue reading the rest.
- In your obesity essay, you may want to summarize the content in this way: “The aim of this essay is to analyze trends in childhood obesity in the world and recommend some regulations to combat this growing problem.” This clearly tells what the purpose of this essay is.
- For your vacation essay, you might want to try something like this: “this is the story of my summer in Costa Rica, the summer that changed my life.” It tells the reader that they are going to read a person's journey in a foreign country without going into too much detail in the body of the essay.
Step 4. You can outline the structure of your essay
Sometimes, you can explain the "how" of how your essay achieves its goals. This can be useful if your essay can be easily divided into sections for readers to understand easily. This is also useful to know if you are a student as some teachers require you to do so. However, explaining the parts of your essay in the introduction is not always a good idea. In some cases, especially in light essays, it can seem complicated and intimidating to the reader by giving too much information at the outset.
- For your obesity essay, you could proceed like this: "This essay describes 3 health problems in the world: the increase in high-calorie foods, the lack of exercise, and the growing popularity of sedentary activities." For a clear research essay like this, it's a good idea to share the main topic of discussion in the essay because it can make the reader immediately understand the justification for the purpose of the essay explained in the previous sentence.
- On the other hand, for your holiday essay, you may not need to share an essay like this. Since you've made it clear that your essay is light and easy to read, it would be odd to continue with: “After experiencing city life in the capital city of San Jose and country life in the Tortuguero jungle, I changed during that trip.” This isn't a "bad" sentence, but it doesn't connect well with the previous one because it seems tight and stilted.
Step 5. If required, enter a thesis statement
In essay writing, the thesis statement is a single sentence that explains the "purpose" of the essay as clearly and concisely as possible. Some essays, especially 5-paragraph essays written for schoolwork or as part of a standardized test, more or less require you to include a thesis statement as part of the opening paragraph. Even essays that don't require this can benefit from a brief and clear definition of the thesis statement. Usually, the thesis statement is included at the end of the first paragraph, although there is no definite rule as to where you should include it,.
- For your obesity essay, since you are dealing with a serious topic and are writing about it in a clear and clinical way, you may need to be more direct in your thesis statement: “By analyzing existing survey data, this essay aims to provide some wisdom as a way to reduce obesity worldwide.” This thesis statement briefly explains to the reader the purpose of this essay.
- You may need to include a thesis statement in your vacation essay. Since you're more likely to describe a setting, a story, and describe personal themes, a clear and clinical statement like “This essay will explain my summer vacation to Costa Rica very clearly” will sound strange and forced.
Step 6. Set up the right atmosphere for your essay
The essay, apart from being a place where you will describe what you are going to talk about, your first paragraph is also a place to set out the "how" of how you will explain it. The way you write – the voice of your writing – is part of what attracts (or prompts) readers to read your article. If the setting at the beginning of your essay is clear, easy to read and appropriate for the subject of the essay, your readers will be more likely to read it again than if it seems messy, varies from sentence to sentence, or doesn't fit the topic at hand.
See the sentence for the example essay above. Note that although obesity essays and vacation essays have different ways of speaking, they are still clearly written and appropriate to the subject. The obesity essay is serious analytical writing and gets to the point. While the holiday essay focuses on interesting and fun experiences that have a big effect on the writer, because it makes more sense the sentence is a little more cheerful, contains interesting details and illustrates the writer's curiosity
Step 7. Get straight to the point
One of the most important rules of writing prefixes is that shorter is always better. If you describe all the information you need to explain in 5 sentences instead of 6, do so. If you can use colloquial words instead of words that are rarely used (eg “to start” vs. “initiate”), do so. If you can describe a message in 10 words instead of 12, do it. Whenever you can make your essay prefix shorter without sacrificing quality or clarity, do so. Remember, the beginning of your essay serves to make the reader continue into the body of the essay, but this is only the beginning and not the content, so keep it short.
As explained above, while you need to keep it brief, you don't have to shorten your prefix so that it becomes unclear or illogical. For example, in your obesity essay, you don't need to shorten this sentence: "In fact, childhood obesity is a global problem that is increasingly affecting rich and poor countries," …become this: "In fact, obesity is a big problem," this second sentence doesn't explain everything – it's an essay about the rise in childhood obesity in the world, not the fact that obesity is bad for you in general
Part 2 of 3: Making Introductions According to Essay Content
Step 1. For an argumentative essay, summarize your argument
While all essays are unique (other than plagiarized ones), several strategies can help you make the most of your essay based on the type of subject you are writing about. For example, if you are writing an argumentative essay – which contains arguments on a particular point in the hope of persuading the reader to agree – it can be helpful to focus on summarizing your arguments in the first paragraph of the essay. This will give the reader a quick summary of the logic you used to support your argument.
For example, if you're arguing against a local sales tax proposal, you might include something like this in your first paragraph: “The local sales tax proposal is simply backwards and fiscally irresponsible. By proving that the existence of a sales tax will place a disproportionate burden on the poor and will have a negative effect on the local economy, this essay intends to prove this point beyond any doubt.” This approach tells the reader directly what your main argument is, and it will give your argument legitimacy from the start
Step 2. For creative writing, try to grab the reader's attention
Creative writing and fiction can be more emotionally charged than other types of writing. For this type of essay, you can usually start your essay with something metaphorical. Creating catchy and memorable initial sentences is a good way to attract readers. Also, because creative writing isn't based on mechanical aspects of argumentative writing (like sharing the structure of your essay, explaining its purpose, etc.), you have a place to be creative.
- For example, if you're writing a heartwarming short story about a woman running from the law, we could start with an interesting imagery: “Sirens blared through cigarette-burned walls and glowed blue like paparazzi cameras in shower curtains. Sweat mixed with the dirty water on the barrel of the gun, “Well, “this” sounds interesting!
- It's also worth noting that your initial sentences can be interesting without being action-packed. Consider the first few lines of J. R. R.'s "The Hobbit" Tolkien; “In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. Not a hole that is dirty and wet, filled with worms and an unpleasant odor, nor is it a hole that is dry, empty, sandy and with nothing to sit on or to eat; it's a hobbit hole, and that means comfort." This will immediately lead to some interesting questions: What is a hobbit? Why does he live in the hole? Readers have to keep reading to find out!
Step 3. For art/entertainment writing, incorporate some specific details into your headline
Writing in the arts and entertainment (such as film reviews, book reports, etc.) has some rules and expectations over technical writing, but the beginning of an essay written like this is still useful for an overarching strategy. In these cases, although you can fill in a bit of cheer at the beginning of your essay, you usually still need to make sure you describe your overall theme even when you go into small, specific details.
For example, if you write reviews and analyzes of the film P. T. Anderson's “The Master,” you might start with: “There are moments in “The Master” that are small, but hard to forget. Talking to his teenage girlfriend for the last time, Joaquin Phoenix suddenly burst into tears behind the window that separated them and embraced the woman in a kiss. It feels beautiful yet false, and perfectly portrays the symbol of mad love in this film.” This opening uses small, interesting moments from within the film to capture the main theme in an engaging way
Step 4. For technical and scientific essays, keep it clinical
Of course, not all writing can be wild and interesting. Intelligence and fantasy have no place for serious, technical and scientific writing. This type of writing exists for a practical reason – to inform the individual concerned about a serious topic. Since the purpose of an essay written on this topic is genuinely informative (and sometimes persuasive), you should avoid including jokes, colorful pictures, or anything else that has nothing to do with the current topic.
- For example, if you are writing an analytical essay about the strengths and weaknesses of the different ways to protect iron from corrosion, you might start with this: “Corrosion is an electrochemical process in which iron reacts with its environment and becomes weaker. Since this can pose a serious problem to the structural strength of ferrous objects, various ways to protect against corrosion have been developed,” The start is blunt and straight to the point. No time is wasted on style.
- Note that essays written in this style often contain an overview or summary before the essay that succinctly tells the reader what the essay is about.
Step 5. For journalism, convey the most important information first
Journalistic essay writing is different from other essay styles. In journalism, the focus is usually on the facts in the story, not the author's opinion, therefore the prefix sentence in a journalistic essay is usually descriptive, not argumentative or persuasive. In objective and serious journalism, writers are usually encouraged to put the most important information in the very first sentence so that the reader can understand the main content of the story in a matter of seconds.
- For example, if you're a reporter assigned to write a story about a local fire, you might start something like this: “4 apartment buildings on Cherry avenue 800 suffered a severe electrical fire on Saturday night. Although there were no deaths, 5 adults and a small child were taken to Skyline Hospital to be treated for their burns.” By starting with a core topic, you can get as many readers as possible the information they want to know firsthand.
- In the next paragraph, you can explain in detail what happened so that readers who continue reading will understand better.
Part 3 of 3: Using Strategies for Intro Writing
Step 1. Try writing your introduction at the end, not the beginning
When writers begin their essays, many writers forget that there's no rule that says you "must" write the beginning of the essay first. In fact, it's acceptable to start anywhere in the essay, according to your goals, including the middle and the end, as long as you'll end up putting it all together. If you're not sure how to start or don't know what your essay is about, try skipping the beginning first. You'll need to write it down later, but when you've written the rest of the essay, you'll be much deeper into the topic of the essay.
Step 2. Brainstorm
Sometimes, even the best writers can run out of ideas. If you're having trouble getting started, try brainstorming. Take a piece of paper and write down ideas as they appear in a row. It's not always just a good idea – sometimes, getting an idea you shouldn't use can inspire you to think about an idea you think you “should” use.
You may also want to try an exercise called freestyle writing. When you write freestyle, you start writing with anything – really anything – and keep writing sentences that come to your mind to sharpen your brain. The final result doesn't have to be obvious. If there is a little inspiration in the writing, you have benefited
Step 3. Revise, revise, revise
Initial concepts that cannot be developed by editing and reviewing are very rare, even almost non-existent. Good writers know never to show a piece of writing without looking back at it at least once or twice. Reviewing and revising allows you to find spelling and grammatical errors, correct parts of your writing that are unclear, eliminate unnecessary information, and much more. This is especially important for the beginning of your essay, where small mistakes can reflect negatively on your entire work, so be sure to revise your essay thoroughly.
For example, consider an essay where the first sentence contains a minor grammatical error. Even if it is a minor error, the fact that it occurs in a prominent place may lead the reader to perceive that the writer was careless or unprofessional. If you're writing for money (or value), this is a risk you definitely don't want to take
Step 4. Find out what other people think
No writer writes in a vacuum. If you're feeling down, try talking to someone whose opinions you respect to get their perspective at the start of your essay. Since this other person isn't as dependent on your writing as you are, he or she may be able to offer a different perspective, pointing out things you might not expect because you're too focused on writing the perfect start in your essay.
Don't be afraid to ask teachers, professors, and other individuals who assigned you essays. Most of the time, the person will take your asking for advice as a sign that you are taking the essay seriously. Plus, since that person will be the judge on the final result, they can give you advice that will lead you to create the essay they want
Tips
- Make sure you can write enough on a topic and make your sentences a little interesting. There's nothing worse than reading boring text over and over again. Interest is key – if you can't get into the subject, your readers will likely not get it too and get poor grades.
- Edits are your friends, save your work so you don't have to write it all down again. Essays with good and neat content can be improved easily – no matter how bad the reading, punctuation, and grammar are
- When asking for editing help, be polite and respectful. The best person to ask for an edit is from the teacher or professor who gave you the assignment.
