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Getting started is often the hardest part of writing an essay, and it’s one of the main reasons many people put off writing until the last minute.
However, there are certain tips and proven strategies to get started writing. Writing a solid thesis and supporting it with well-crafted arguments are complex skills in themselves that take an entire article to explain. For now, we will focus on how to grab the reader’s attention from the beginning. After all, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, or in this case, an introductory phrase.
Phases of creating an essay.
Carrying out the following phases in order allows you to create an essay (and, indeed, any piece of writing) with a minimum margin of error. Even when writing with these phases in mind, the only concern would be choosing a good topic. The phases are:
- Pre-writing . This phase is made up of brainstorming possible topics, gathering information, structuring ideas, and creating an outline of your essay.
- Writing . Here you must clarify the main ideas, support yourself with details and examples, and create a workflow that has organization and structure.
- Edition . In this phase the writer can receive feedback and rewrite (if necessary) to incorporate the changes.
- final edition . Here you must correct spelling, grammar, punctuation and citation format (if required).
- evaluation . Here the written document must be evaluated based on the requirements (purpose, audience, structure, style and reference format).
- Publication . Delivery or disclosure of the finished product in the required format.
Purpose of an essay introduction
Essentially, the purpose of the introduction is to accomplish two things:
- Guide the reader.
- Motivate the reader to keep reading.
An effective introduction gives the reader a clear idea of what the essay is about. This can be done by providing the necessary background information or explanations. Once this is done, a thesis statement should be written that informs the reader of the essence of the position of the essay, whose arguments will be discussed in the paragraphs of the body of the text.
How to hook the reader
It is known that every essay has a beginning, a development and an end. However, if we don’t learn to capture the reader’s attention in the first sentence, we will have a hard time keeping our readers’ attention long enough to move from the middle of the text to the end.
To become effective writers, we must learn to write opening sentences that grab the reader’s attention. The best way to do this is to use “hooks”. The suitability of each of these hooks depends on the nature of the essay being written. Therefore, before starting to write, we must consider the topic, purpose, tone and audience of the essay we want to write and use that information to decide the best way to start.
There are several types of hooks that we can choose from. However, with any of them it is important that we try to use our own voice; this will give each writing a different touch from the writings of the others. Next we will see the most effective hooks:
the anecdote
Anecdotes are an effective means of capturing the reader’s attention. Furthermore, when the anecdote is based on the personal life of the author, a relationship is created between the author and the reader from the beginning. Anecdotes are an especially useful starting point when the essay explores abstract themes, as they allow you to go down the scale of abstraction and fit the overall theme of the essay into the author’s way of life.
Anecdotes are effective because they are personal, and by being personal, they infuse emotion into the underlying theme of the essay. This expression of emotion helps us create a connection with the reader and it is this connection that keeps the reader reading. It is proven that readers find this approach interesting, especially when the topic is complex and difficult to understand.
One way to access our personal stories to tell an anecdote is to use sentence starters, writing clues, or familiar stories and their themes as a starting point. To use them we must choose a topic to write about. For example, if we look at the story of the lying shepherd boy, the initial anecdote would be something like: we must not tell lies or people might not believe us when we tell the truth.
Fairy tales and fables are great places to find simple themes or moral lessons that explore the use of anecdotes. Once we have chosen a topic, we must remember a time when that topic was at stake in our lives. This memory will serve as the basis for a personal anecdote that will serve as a “hook.”
the audacity
Making a bold statement at the beginning of an essay is a sure way to grab the reader’s attention. Bold claims inspire confidence and reassure the reader that the author has something to say worth listening to. A bold statement placed at the beginning suggests that the author will not display a passive stance throughout the essay.
The bold statement technique is not only useful for writing a compelling opening sentence, but the formula can be used to generate a dramatic essay title. For example, one of the New York Times best sellers , “Everybody Lies” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, is a good example of the bold statement technique in action.
Here, our statement must be short, concise and, above all, as bold as possible.
The appealing fact
In this age of fake news, opening an essay with a scientific fact or statistic is a good way to give our writing authority from the beginning. To do this, we must choose the statistic or fact carefully, since it must be related to our general thesis (idea) and it must also be remarkable enough to arouse the curiosity of the reader. The best way to do this is to choose an unusual or surprising fact or statistic to start the essay with.
When we have identified each of the topics that we could use for our essay, we must search the Internet for data and statistics related to these topics. From there we highlight the most interesting ones and think about how we could use them as a hook to write a striking essay from the beginning.
Use an interesting quote
This strategy is as simple as it sounds. We should only start the essay by quoting a well-known authority or personality on the topic of the essay or a related topic. This quote serves as a springboard for the topic of which it is written and guarantees the interest of the reader. Now, the quote chosen does not necessarily have to coincide with the statement of our essay, but it must be related to the central idea.
To practice this strategy we must develop a list of possible thesis statements for our essay. Once we have a list of statements, we must generate a list of possible citations related to the central argument of the possible essay. There are several websites dedicated to collecting relevant quotes from prominent people on a seemingly endless variety of topics. These sites are invaluable resources for finding great citations for any essay.
the rhetorical question
What better way to make a reader think than to start with a question? Starting an essay with a question not only tells the reader where the essay is going, but encourages them to respond personally to the topic. Rhetorical questions are asked to make an observation and make the reader think, rather than to get an answer. Plus, they provide useful transitions between paragraphs.
An effective way to use a rhetorical question in an introduction is to build on your thesis statement and use it as your opening sentence. Thus, we can end the introductory paragraph with the statement of our idea itself, giving there a brief sample of what the answer to this question will be.
For example, starting from the thesis statement “Health is more important than wealth,” we could rephrase a rhetorical question as “What good is a million dollars to a dying man?”
the end of the beginning
These are not the only options available for starting a trial, but they do represent some of the best for those who have difficulty getting started. With practice, anyone can select the best strategies for her needs in a variety of contexts.
It should be remembered that a good introduction is only the beginning. In the body of the essay we must develop the main idea that we presented in the introduction. Here you can use connectors that maintain the coherence of the idea and give order to one paragraph and another. Short essays usually have five paragraphs in the body (or development), so we must use them in the best way.
To end with a flourish, the conclusion should have the same emotion as the introduction, only here you should not go around the subject or leave loose ends. The body of the essay and the conclusion will make our readers feel like their time was invested, rather than wasted.
Fountain
Gamboa, Y. (nd). Guide to essay writing .
