13 strategies of beginning and essay

1. HOWTOWRITEANESSAY INTRODUCTION "Don't make me doze off while reading your essay, grab my attention! I am old." "Hope you won't sleep on my essay" GRAB MY ATTENTION THIS WAY: TIPS EXAMPLES 1 Use a The last time I tasted my blood was during the war. It was very salty... startling, true & verifiable information Every two minutes, the disease claims over five hundred people in the world. Cancer is such a menace that... What will you do if you find a lion that has just eaten your mother? Ask a thought- provoking question 2 Have you ever wondered how long you would live? What if you drop dead while reading this essay? Did you know that you could be smoking without knowing? 3 It is time, at last, to speak the truth about Thanksgiving, and the truth is this. Thanksgiving is really not such a terrific holiday. . . . State the thesis briefly and directly Avoid bald announcements, such as "This essay is about . . ."). The jet engine works like the human body. It eats food, its fuel, digests it to propel the plane and excretes waste products just like you. 4 State an interesting fact about your subject. Present your thesis as a recent discovery or revelation I've finally figured out the difference between neat people and sloppy people. The distinction is, as always, moral. Neat people are lazier and meaner than sloppy people. 5 It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. Briefly describe the place that serves as the primary setting of your essay. 6 Myanmar 7 One October afternoon three years ago while I was visiting my parents, my mother made a request I dreaded and longed to fulfill. She had just poured me a cup of Earl Grey from her Japanese iron teapot, shaped like a little pumpkin; outside, two cardinals splashed in the birdbath in the weak Connecticut sunlight. Recount an incident that dramatizes your subject 8 They woof. Though I have photographed them before, I have never heard them speak, for they are mostly silent birds. Lacking a syrinx, the avian equivalent of the human larynx, they are incapable of song. According to field guides the only sounds they make are grunts and hisses, though the Hawk Conservancy in the United Kingdom reports that adults may utter a croaking coo and that young black vultures, when annoyed, emit a kind of immature snarl. . . . Use the narrative strategy of delayed gratification Using 9 Ben and I are sitting side by side in the very back of his mother’s station wagon. They have just taken us out to dinner, and now we are driving home. Years from this evening, I won’t actually be sure that this boy sitting beside me is named Ben. What I know for certain right now is that I love him, and I need to tell him this fact before we return to our separate houses, next door to each other. We are both five. the historical present tense, relate an incident from the past as if it were happening now. 10 I like to take my time when I pronounce someone dead. The bare-minimum requirement is one minute with a stethoscope pressed to someone’s chest, listening for a sound that is not there; with my fingers bearing down on the side of someone’s neck, feeling for an absent pulse; with a flashlight beamed into someone’s fixed and dilated pupils, waiting for the constriction that will not come. Briefly describe a process that leads into your subject. 11 I spy on my patients. Ought not a doctor to observe his patients by any means and from any stance, that he might the more fully assemble evidence? So I stand in doorways of hospital rooms and gaze. Oh, it is not all that furtive an act. Those in bed need only look up to discover me. But they never do. Reveal a secret about yourself or make a candid observation about your subject. 12 As a child, I was made to look out the window of a moving car and appreciate the beautiful scenery, with the result that now I don't care much for nature. I prefer parks, ones with radios going chuckawaka chuckawaka and the delicious whiff of bratwurst and cigarette smoke. Offer a contrast between past and present that leads to your thesis. They aren’t what most people think they are. Human eyes, touted as ethereal objects by poets and novelists throughout history, are nothing more than white spheres, somewhat larger than your average marble, covered by a leather-like tissue known as sclera and filled with nature’s facsimile of Jell-O. Your beloved’s eyes may pierce your heart, but in all likelihood they closely resemble the eyes of every other person on the planet. 13 Offer a contrast between image and reality—that is, between a common misconception and the opposing truth. ClosingRemarks Avoid Beginning with Overly Vague and General Statements or Broad Generalizations Avoid Beginning with Dictionary Definitions Obvious to Readers Avoid Beginning with a Direct Statement of What You, as the Writer, are Doing Write the introduction after you have written the body of your essay. CuteWritersInc.