Strategies for Beginning an Essay

Strategies for Beginning an Essay Below you will find a list of twenty-two opening sentences by a number of different writers. Each is an example of an effective opening. Read over the description of each kind of sentence and the examples of each kind of sentence. After you have read the sentences and read about them, write ten sentences of your own that might make effective opening sentences. You can make up the topics that the essays would address but you do not have to write the whole essay only the opening sentence. I. Simple Statements of Fact The examples the follow begin with simple statements of fact. Often this is the best way to start an essay though it seems rather obvious and potentially uninteresting. The first example is a beginning that is in keeping with the topic, the author is introducing himself and begins with a descriptive detail of himself. The next example, though, is curious. It is a simple fact but what has the tide got to do with Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina that appears to be the subject of the essay. This creates curiosity, one would hope, in the mind of the reader. The reader will want to find out why this opening statement is not a non-sequitor. 1. “I am a man of medium height.” E. B. White, “About Myself” 2. “Today high tide is at ten.” Thomas Mann, “Anna Karenina” II. Statements of Fact with a Twist The following examples are also statements of fact but they have a bit of a twist to them. In these examples there is a word or two that is amusing (ballyhooed), or odd (wandering as an activity of the poles), or out of keeping with the subject (bankruptcy and dancing), or contradictory (the energetic bad writer). They are statements of fact but they make the reader smile or chuckle, which is something most enjoy doing so we may read on in the hopes that we will chuckle or smile some more. Humor is almost always an effective strategy when it is done well. 3. “The royal visit was the most ballyhooed event that I can remember in South Africa” Dan Jacobson, “A Visit from Royalty” 4. “The poles of the earth have wandered.” John McPhee Annals of the Former World, “Basin and Range” 5. “The bankrupt man dances.” John Updike, “The Bankrupt Man” 6. “To be a really lousy writer takes energy.” Clive James, “A Blizzard of Tiny Kisses” III. Statements of Fact That Take a Step Further These examples take the statement of fact a step further. There is an element of nonsense, surprise, or the unexpected, perhaps the quirky detail from later in the essay. Shaw is making a critical judgment about a book that would probably be received as a pedestrian comment about an anticipated book if he were not praising himself at least as much, if not more, than the book he is reviewing. He is in a sense taking a bit of the credit for the book that Chesterton wrote. But he does it in an amusing way that though conceited, is not offensively conceited. The example from Truman Capote’s sounds like a pleasant introduction to Tangiers until the police are brought into it about two thirds of the way through. Again this is unexpected in light of what has come before, but it interjects humor. Ralph Ellison plays with our concept of sound and equates it with life and death. There is a dark humor to the statement that makes us smile on the one hand but prepares the reader for the subject’s serious undertow. Orwell states a fact (or what is for him a fact) but it presents the reader with an oxymoron in that we are encouraged not to revere the saint but to predispose ourselves to his guilt. The first example begins by introducing the serious subjects of “social and political organization” and pairing them with the superficiality of “a cheerful way of life”. Each of these openings through humor or the unexpected capture the reader’s interest while also preparing the reader for what will follow. 7. “America, as a social and political organization, is committed to a cheerful view of life.” Robert Warshow, “The Gangster as Tragic Hero” 8. “Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases.” George Orwell, “Reflections on Gandhi” 9. “This book is what everybody expected it to be: the best work of literary art I have yet provoked.” George Bernard Shaw, “Chesterton and Shaw” 10. “In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.” Ralph Ellison, “Living with Music” 11. “Tangier? It is two days by boat from Marseille, a charming trip that takes you along the coast of Spain, and if you are escaping from the police, or merely escaping, then by all means come here:” Truman Capote, “Tangier” IV. Reflective Openings Then next examples are reflective openings. The author is suggesting an idea that is the product of reflection, either focused on the self or an issue in the world at large. In one example Virginia Woolf is reflecting on her father and her childhood. The first of these examples introduces the peacock and Marianne Moore’s response to the bird and its beauty. Graham Greene is theorizing about reading and childhood. The writer is beginning meditatively and the reader is thrust as well into a meditative frame of mind. 12. “The peacock spreads his tail, and the nearly circular eyes at regular intervals in the fan are a sight at which to marvel – forming a lacework of white on more delicate white if the peacock is a white one; of indigo, lighter blue, emerald, and fawn if the peacock is blue and green.” Marianne Moore, “What There is to See at the Zoo” 13. “Perhaps it is only in childhood that books have any deep influence on our lives.” Graham Greene, “The Lost Childhood” 14. “By the time that his children were growing up the great days of my father’s life were over.” Virginia Woolf, “Leslie Stephen” (Leslie Stephen was Virginia Woolf’s father.) V. Appeal to Authority The next two examples appeal to authority. Stevenson begins his essay on Monterey by quoting what a famous person has said about Monterey. The fact that the authority in question may be a dubious one in regards to travel, geography, or the various aspects of the community of Monterey is not relevant to Stevenson. He likes the way Sherman has described the place, which might have relevance if he were considering Monterey as the object of an assault or siege but seems a bit odd if he is focusing on Monterey as a place to visit. Epstein is using the essayist George Orwell as his authority. Orwell is an esteemed essayist whose views on many things are taken seriously. Using Orwell’s comment on the face and its appearance works on a number of levels. First, the statement is relevant to the topic of the essay “About Face” (which is itself a play on words). Second, Orwell is a respected 20th century thinker whose views will be taken seriously by most educated readers. Third, and perhaps most importantly, it is a humorous observation that makes a serious point. 15. “’At fifty,’ Orwell wrote, ‘everyone has the face he deserves.’” Joseph Epstein, “About Face” 16. “The Bay of Monterey has been compared by no less a person than General Sherman to a bent fishing-hook; and the comparison, if less important than the march through Georgia, still shows the eye of a soldier for topography.” Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Old Pacific Capital” VI. Opening with a Question These next examples begin by asking a question. P. J. Kavanagh kind of backs into the question and is really using the question as a means for stating a fact. It is a strategy the reader can recognize while at the same time the reader also recognizes that the writer is having a bit of fun with the convention (if he is even thinking in terms of a convention; we must recognize that here as in most instances the writer is just looking for an interesting way to get started and is not likely thinking in terms of strategies or conventions). The next two examples ask questions that pique the reader’s interest. Who are these people that are lying? What is Dorothy Parker trying to remember? Both writers are using a familiar strategy to begin their essays but they are using the strategy in ways that are unusual, atypical. 17. “Recently I have started doing sums in my head: how old was my father when I was my son’s age, and how did he deal with me?” P. J. Kavanagh, “Is It Alas, Yorick?” 18. “Why is everybody here lying – every single man?” Fyodor Dostoevsky, “Something about Lying.” 19. “And what was it I had to remember, the minute I woke up?” Dorothy Parker, “The Middle or Blue Period” VII. Just Plain Quirky These last examples are just quirky. The last example is not even a sentence, it is a single word used in a way to attract our attention. The first of these examples is a series of words and fragments that do not seem to relate to anything concrete until we get the final clause where there is a reference to “he” though we do not know who “he” is. Again, this provokes the reader’s curiosity. Martin Anderson Nexö begins with an exclamation that creates an air of mystery around Tangiers and perhaps suggests why one would go there when, as Truman Capote suggests, “escaping the police”. 20. “Fragmentary, pale, momentary; almost nothing; glimpsed and gone; as it were, a faint human hand thrust up, never to reappear, from beneath the rolling waters of Time, he forever haunts my memory and solicits my weak imagination.” Max Beerbohm, “A Clergyman” 21. “How near is Tangiers – and yet how far and strange!” Martin Anderson Nexö, “Tangiers” 22. “Adventure.” Katherine Anne Porter, “St. Augustine and the Bull Fight” Exercise INSTRUCTIONS: Write ten potential opening sentences in response to the prompt below. There are seven categories of opening sentence so use each one at least once. American essayist and social critic H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) wrote, “The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.” In a well-written essay, examine the extent to which Mencken’s observation applies to contemporary society, supporting your position with appropriate evidence. Complete this exercise on a separate sheet of paper.