Hi, I’m Jennifer. You can learn more about me here. This being my first post, it’s appropriate that we discuss writing introductions. The introduction can make or break your paper. Within those first few sentences, your reader will decide whether or not to give your work the attention that you want. It’s hard to muddle through a paper that introduces itself by rambling on without coming to any firm conclusion, or that wades around in poetic frivolity while the reader just wants to know what the heck the paper is about.

The problem: The ineffective introduction:

• is not organized by key points
• is too long and becomes repetitive, losing the reader’s attention

The solution: The effective introduction:

• is organized by a thesis listing the key points
• is brief and concise

Even after all my English courses in college, the most helpful advice I ever received on writing essays came from my 8th grade Language Arts teacher. For months, he drove the Five Paragraph Essay format into our adolescent brains. His mantra (which I later adopted) was: Tell ‘em what you’re going to say, then say it, and then tell ‘em what you just said. There. It’s that simple. Need an introduction? Tell ‘em what you’re going to say. The following example is an introductory paragraph to a research paper on Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair. While this introduction is for a scholarly paper, the process is the same, no matter what kind of report you’re writing.

In many of the modernist British novels, the views of God and of the church can be described as cynical, at best.  A majority of the modern novels view the church as defunct, void of meaning, and behind the times, and view themselves as spiritual orphans wandering in a hopeless world with no God to guide them.  Graham Greene, however, is the rebel among these writers.  In a novel that appears on the surface to be about an adulterous love affair, he brings the subject of an ever-present church and an all-loving God to the forefront.  Through the different perspectives of Sarah, Smythe, and Bendrix, Greene displays his theme of the importance of God in a dismal, profane world.

Let’s break down this introductory paragraph to see how the pieces make a unified whole. To get an A-worthy introduction, you need to start at the end: the thesis. In one sentence, what is your paper about? That sentence is your thesis. The thesis for this work is the last sentence:

Through the different perspectives of Sarah, Smythe, and Bendrix, Greene displays his theme of the importance of God in a dismal, profane world.

To get your thesis, you will need to:

1. Pick your topic (don’t get too specific yet, or you’ll box yourself in).
2. Research the topic. The more you read, the more you will start to narrow down your topic in your mind.
3. Find 2 or 3 supporting points to your topic. Those will become your main body points.

Now that you’ve got your thesis, you can build the introductory paragraph around it. The thesis almost always comes at the end of the paragraph, so that it will be fresh in the reader’s mind as he transitions into your first main supporting point. But what do you say before it? This paper was for a course on the Modern British Novel; therefore, I began the paper by discussing how it related to the course, and the era, as a whole. I discussed how the majority of the modern British novels viewed the church negatively, and then contrasted that statement with Graham Greene’s religious views. Relevance is key. Whatever you are researching and reporting about, whether it’s a modern British novel or the results of a scientific study on the effects of music on bees, follow these simple rules:

1. Don’t dawdle about. Get to the point. This is not Creative Writing 101.
2. Make it relevant. Why should we bother reading this? What will it add to existing knowledge? And finally…
3. Have a good thesis. It will organize your entire paper, and it lets the reader know what to expect. Or, in the words of Mr. Austin, “Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em!”

For more information on writing introductory paragraphs, visit the following sites:

• A Proper Introduction
• Handout on Introductions
• Writing the Essay Intro and Conclusion
• Bologna - An Interesting Approach to Writing Introduction Paragraphs (I-TESL-J)

This article was written by Jennifer Roach http://jennifermroach.com Jennifer is a fiction writer, blogger, and freelance editor/proofreader. You can follow her on Twitter @jennifermroach or on MySpace . To see more posts click here

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