Doyle Online Writing Lab
Introductions
A good writer - a sophisticated writer - is not only aware of what he is saying but how he is saying it and how his choices in diction, organization, and focus affect the reader. Writers need to use techniques that will appeal to the readership and, as always, first impressions count.
Common difficulties encountered in writing introductions
Not having an introduction
Papers are generally more coherent and persuasive when the argument is easy to follow - that is, when the reader knows where the writer is coming from and where he is going. An introduction should do just that: describe what the subject of the paper is and why the reader ought to be concerned about it.
Repeatedly using the same introductory technique
It's important to experiment: different techniques are appropriate for different subjects. If you find yourself using the same introductory format over and over again you may not be considering what format is MOST appropriate for each topic.
Cliché introductions
An introduction should get the reader excited about the paper's content. It should shock, raise questions, or establish a context for discussion. In short, the introduction should make the reader think that you have something original to say. If you associate your argument with convention at the outset, what is this telling your reader?)
For Example: "A shot rang out, tensions ran high, and a nation was born..." Such an introduction leads the reader to believe that this essay - like others beginning in a similar vein - will be an emotional glorification of the American Revolution. That may be fine: the reader may not be hostile to that point of view, but he does not begin his reading with the expectation of discovering anything new.
Introductions that keep going and going...
An introduction should be brief. It should not be a series of eloquent phrases written just for the sake of eloquence. Make your introduction have a point. If you begin with a general statement make certain to become more and more specific throughout your introduction, and to culminate in a thesis that is lucid, deliberate, and complete.
The Foundation of a Good Introduction
According to Wayne C. Booth et. al. in The Craft of Rhetoric an "explicit" introduction includes three elements: (1) a sketch of a context for the issue to be addressed in the composition, (2) a direct statement of the research problem (especially some aspect of that problem that has been left up to debate), and (3) a statement of your response to that problem (in essence, your thesis statement). For example:
[Why can't a machine be more like a man? In almost every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the android Data wonders what makes a person a person. In the original Star Trek, similar questions were raised by the half-Vulcan Mr. Spock... The same question has been raised by and about creatures ranging from Frankenstein's monster to Terminator II.] [But the real question is why characters who struggle to be persons are always white and male. As cultural interpreters, do they tacitly reinforce destructive stereotypes of what it is about a person that we must think of as "normal"?] [The model to which we all must aspire, at least if we want to be real people, seems in fact to be defined by Western criteria that exclude most of the people in the world.] (Booth, 236).
In the first bracketed segment of this paragraph the writer establishes a context for discussion: he introduces the paper's topic in terms that most readers will understand. The second segment explicitly states that there is an unresolved issue manifest in the scenarios he has just offered. Finally, the writer states his position on the problem in a manner that is specific enough so that the reader will be able to follow the logic of successive paragraphs, but general enough so that the reader must read on in order to comprehend the writer's original approach to the matter.
It may help to think of this process in these terms: make a general statement about the subject matter of your paper. Then make a more specific statement. Narrow the topic just a little more with another sentence before your thesis statement. For the above example:
- General statement: Why can't a machine be more like a man?
- More specific: Why can't Data be more like a man? (or Mr. Spock? or Frankenstein? . . .)
- More specific: Why does the average person have trouble being like "a man" as society defines it?
- Thesis (answer): Because Western society has provided such a specific definition of prototypical man that most people are incapable of living up to it.
This "trickle-down" method contains all of the elements described by Booth's method, but for many writers it is a lot simpler.
Some basic forms for introductions
A story or anecdote
Recount a story that will somehow shock your audience or that can serve as an analogy for the situation that your paper addresses. Be sure to explain how the story is related to the thesis of your paper.
Describe a scene
Use creative writing skills to describe a scene that arouses curiosity or amazement in the reader.
Use a quotation
Quote an article, a literary work, an interview, etc. and explain how that quotation is related to the thesis of your paper. Sometimes you can really surprise the reader by quoting an unlikely source and proceeding to evaluate it in terms of your argument. For example:
"What a dull and dreary trade is that of critic," wrote Diderot. "It is so difficult to create a thing, even a mediocre thing; it is so easy to detect mediocrity." Either the great philosopher was deliberately exaggerating or else Americans have always lived in an entirely different continuum from Europe. For us the making of mediocre things is the rule while the ability to detect mediocrity or anything else is rare (Horton, 66).
A simple statement (or series of simple statements)
So many important academic, political, and social issues become obscured in the course of discussion that introducing your argument by stating it in the simplest manner possible may make it seem like a revelation to your reader. For example:
He killed his brother. He married his brother's wife. He stole his brother's crown. A cold-hearted murderer, he is described by his brother's ghost as "that incestuous, that adulterate beast" (I.v.42). The bare facts appear to stamp him an utter moral outlaw. Nonetheless, as his soliloquies and anguished asides reveal, no person in Hamlet demonstrates so mixed a true nature as Claudius, the newly-made King of Denmark (Trimble, 34).
The rhetorical question
Pose the reader with a question, evaluate that question, and propose an answer to it in your thesis. For example:
By the way, you shouldn't feel that you couldn't write the body of your paper without having developed the perfect introduction. If you're really stumped put the introduction to the side while you compose the rest of the paper (or write a brief, temporary introduction and revise it later). Sometimes it is better to get your ideas out on paper than to become frustrated trying to write a flawless paper the first time through.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
(check out these sources for more information on how to write an effective introduction):
- Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb and Joseph M. Williams. The Craft of Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 234-54.
- Horton, Susan R. Thinking Through Writing. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1982. 12-40.
- Trimble, John R. Writing With Style: Conversations on the Art of Writing. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975.30-6.
- Zinnser, William. On Writing Well. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. 142-55.