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You may have noticed that we did not start this page off with walking you through how to write an introduction before showing you how to essentially write an entire paper. While it might seem contrary (or even go against your professor's trajectory), the introduction should be written towards the end of the writing process. Why? How are you supposed to adequately introduce an argument when you have yet to write one. If you try to start with a solid introduction (thesis included), you might divert from your initial argument when writing the majority of you paper.
You do still need to have a thesis statement when you are writing. Don't let me confuse that point. You just don't necessarily need to begin the writing phase with struggling through your introduction until you have written most, if not all, of you paper.
For novice writers, the introduction will always be the first paragraph of an essay. The objective of an introduction is to establish the topic of your argument for your reader. As you advance in you writing skills, you can experiment with the structure of an introduction, but for beginners, the easiest way to format an introduction is as follows:
The Hook: You want to start your paper off with something to grab your audience's attention: a "hook". Hooks can be an interesting fact or statistic about your topic, a rhetorical question, a common misconception about your topic, establishing the scene of your story (who, when, where, what, why, how?), an anecdote (a humorous short story) that encapsulates your topic, or a quotation that is relevant to your topic.
Introducing the Topic: After the hook, write a sentence or two about the specific focus of your paper. (What is your paper about? Why is this topic important?) This part of the introduction can include background information on your topic or a brief summary of your text that helps to establish context.
Thesis: The last sentence of you paragraph should be the thesis. Make sure that your thesis encapsulates the argument of your chosen topic; it should act as a one-sentence summary for what the whole paper is going to be about. Remember, be specific. The easiest way to derail your argument is to have a vague thesis or one that does not line up with you paper.
Example
Podcast Example of an Introduction
(I've removed the names associated with speaking parts in order to give a better impression of what an introduction looks like, but I have maintained the quotation marks to indicate that these are not my words.):
"The fear is to become a zombie,” explains Patrick Sylvain. “The moment a family member is dead, they will drive a stake into the person's heart or into the person's head so that their children and so forth will not be turned into a zombie. And so the people are taking precautions out of their own understanding that perhaps a dead person is not fully dead. The zombie is real.” […] "Zombies are a global phenomenon. They're in the news [...] and appear in the countless number of books, movies, video games, and TV shows that make up the zombie genre. A genre that's going strong – at least 10 zombie movies have come out in 2019 alone. Some people are so zombie-obsessed that they dress up like zombies and roam the streets – and not just on Halloween. And then there are those people who are prepping for a zombie apocalypse. […] Our collective fascination with zombies started almost a century ago, which made us wonder – who invented the zombie, and why are we still so drawn to these flesh-eating monsters?"
Breakdown:
Hook: "The fear is to become a zombie,” explains Patrick Sylvain. “The moment a family member is dead, they will drive a stake into the person's heart or into the person's head so that their children and so forth will not be turned into a zombie. And so the people are taking precautions out of their own understanding that perhaps a dead person is not fully dead. The zombie is real.”
Topic Introduction: "Zombies are a global phenomenon. They're in the news [...] and appear in the countless number of books, movies, video games, and TV shows that make up the zombie genre. A genre that's going strong – at least 10 zombie movies have come out in 2019 alone. Some people are so zombie-obsessed that they dress up like zombies and roam the streets – and not just on Halloween. And then there are those people who are prepping for a zombie apocalypse.
Thesis: Our collective fascination with zombies started almost a century ago, which made us wonder – who invented the zombie, and why are we still so drawn to these flesh-eating monsters?"
Additional Resources
How to Write an Effective Essay: The Introduction
Introductions & Conclusions
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