How to Begin Your Essay Paper: Top Tips For Students!

by Glenn Maxwell

One should never underestimate the power of a good introduction. It should inform your readers what the text is about and motivate them to continue reading till the end. However, it might be very hard to start writing, gather your thoughts, and put them into words.

Beginnings of everything are difficult. Let us break down step by step the way you can approach your essay paper and write efficiently your introductory part.

In case you feel daunted by your essay assignment and want to delegate your task, be sure to contact a good online essay writing service. Professional authors will help you make your essay paper stand out for sure. But if you feel you have the power and energy to tackle this assignment on your own, be sure to keep reading this guide.

Before you actually start your paper, we advise doing some preliminary work.

  1. First, you’d better brainstorm all the ideas you have related to the essay subject. You may ask your friends for help and think about your topic together.
  2. Write down the ideas that you think are the best and most suitable for your paper.
  3. Do some research to find the sources for your paper and intro as well. Make sure that you will quote credible sources and not just some bloggers.
  4. Get a consultation from your teacher. They should suggest which ideas should be kept or left.
  5. Considering all the previous steps, make a final decision on the direction of your essay.
  6. Understand who your audience is.
  7. Practice a captivating title.
  8. Start writing your intro.

Make a direct thesis statement

Do not mislead your readers by providing a long irrelevant introduction. But also try not to be plain or blunt by revealing too much too soon.

Experiment with a (rhetorical) question

Starting from a question is always engaging and intriguing. The readers might want to keep reading hoping to find out the answer to this question or they might just stop and think of an answer themselves. That is somehow an entertaining approach to begin your essay. An effective question will make your readers curious enough to read till the end. But, again do not mislead them. Do not use exciting questions that have nothing to do with the subject of your text.

Show misconception

Instead of giving direct instructions showing your expertise, you may start by saying that some common beliefs are not relevant anymore and that it is high time to debunk misconceptions by revealing the truth or just showing another angle to the problem which has been invisible so far. Such beginnings like clickbait titles attract people’s attention well.

Include interesting facts related to the topic

Mentioning relevant and true facts adds credibility to your paper. Moreover, in such a way you educate your readers and they will be more than thankful for that. However, be sure to use really interesting facts that could spark your audience’s curiosity and not dull them away. Be sure to provide sources for the facts.

Thesis as your discovery

Try to present the thesis statement you chose for the essay as something that is a revelation for you. In such a way you will intrigue readers as they will want to experience the same revelation as you. Plus, it adds your personality to the text. Thus, the whole essay paper would be perceived as personal and therefore interesting to immerse into.

Create the setting

Speaking of the immersion. To achieve that effect, you should try to create a background of a story. Your text should not be plain, dull, full of facts or statistics, and deprived of colors. Make sure to provide an engaging setting that might be curious to follow. Make a draft and reread what you have. Imagine you are a reader, so try to add flavor that would spark interest in you too.

Add some drama

To make your essay’s intro even more personal, you might try starting your paper from some experience that had a huge emotional impact on you. It could be some traumatizing or just a life-changing incident; something that is important to you and unforgettable. We all love reading other people’s stories and therefore your readers most probably will be curious to experience the same epiphany as you did in your paper.

Start from the middle

This is a very interesting approach. You might have noticed that some of the greatest essays in good magazines written by prominent authors do have not a chronological beginning. They begin their essays with some events that happened later. It could be a climax from which the audience wants to keep reading to see what lead to that situation in the first place. We recommend checking essays written by Neil Gaiman to see how he does it.

Present tense

Try writing about the past events in the present tense. Thus, you will create the effect of presence and the history will come alive. When you come to writing your experience, here you can mix present and past tenses. Write in the past tense when you want to bring the readers to the past and write in the present tense when you want to bring them back to reality.

Make fun

Another unusual approach to opening your essay is by beginning with a joke or some anecdote. The use of humor should be justified, of course, by the relevance to the topic.

Be sincere

Being candid always pays off. Be honest, reveal some secrets you have and you will win your readers’ hearts. Allow yourself to reveal your personality to the fullest. Write as if you are writing for yourself as if you were the only reader. People want to see that other people are also weak, vulnerable, and have the same emotions. Readers want to get the validation of their experience by knowing that the author’s experience is to some degree similar.

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