Writing Hooks: How to Begin Your Essay

The first paragraph or so of an essay is usually the most important part of the whole essay to get "just right". Not only is it an opportunity to grab the reader's attention, but also a chance to set the agenda for the rest of the essay in terms of tone and content. Strictly speaking, there is no single "right" way to begin an essay — just as it's possible to write essays about countless subjects, so too is it possible to begin an essay in countless ways. However, most good beginnings to essays share certain qualities which, if taken into account, can greatly improve essay intros that may otherwise be lacking. See Step 1 below to get started.

1. Start with an attention-grabbing sentence where you take the reader in with your plot hook. While your essay may (or, admittedly, may not) be interesting to you, the writer, it's not necessarily interesting to the reader. Readers, by and large, are somewhat picky about what they read and what they don't. If a piece of writing doesn't immediately catch their attention in the first paragraph, there's a good chance they won't bother to read the rest of it. Because of this, if you want to write a special essay it's often a good idea to begin your paper with a sentence that commands the reader's attention from the get-go. So long as this first sentence is logically connected to the rest of the article, there's no shame in being attention-grabbing right out of the gate.

• You may want to start with a fascinating, little-known fact or statistic to grab your reader's attention. For instance, if you're writing an essay on the growing danger of childhood obesity worldwide, you might start with this: "Contrary to the popular idea that childhood obesity is only a problem for rich, pampered Westerners, the WHO reports that in 2012, over 30% of preschool-age children in developing countries were overweight or obese."
•  On the other hand, if it fits into your essay more logically, you may want to start with a particularly gripping image or description. For an essay on your summer vacation, you might start with this: "When I felt the Costa Rican sun filtering through the jungle canopy and heard the sound of howler monkeys far off in the distance, I knew that I had found someplace very special."

2. Draw your reader into the "meat" of your essay. A great first sentence can get the reader's attention, but if you don't keep pulling the reader into your essay, she or he can still easily lose interest. Follow your very first sentence with a sentence or two that logically link the attention grabbing "hook" in the first sentence to the rest of the essay as a whole. Often, these sentences will expand on the narrow scope of the first sentence, placing the specific snapshot you present initially in some sort of larger context.

• For example, in your obesity essay, you might follow your first sentence as follows: "In fact, childhood obesity is a growing problem that is increasingly affecting rich and poor countries alike." This sentence explains the urgency of the problem described in the first sentence and gives it a broader context.
• For your vacation essay, you might follow your first sentence with something like this: "I was deep in the jungles of Tortuguero National Park, and I was lost in more ways than one." This sentence tells the reader where the imagery in the first sentence comes from and pulls the reader into the rest of the essay by teasing that it will eventually be revealed how the narrator is "lost."

 
3. Optionally, outline the structure of your essay. Sometimes, it's appropriate to go one step further in the intro to describe how your essay plans to achieve its purpose. This can be useful if your essay can easily be broken down into distinct, specific sections in a way that will make the topic easier to grasp for the reader. It's also useful to know how to do this if you're a student because some teachers will require you to do so. However, specifically outlining the different pieces of your essay in the introduction isn't always a good idea. In some cases, especially for light-hearted essays, this can read as somewhat mechanical and can intimidate the reader by presenting too much information upfront.

4. If necessary, include a thesis statement. In essay-writing, a thesis statement is a single sentence that describes the "point" of the essay as clearly and concisely as possible. Some essays, especially five-paragraph essays written for academic assignments or as part of a standardized test, more or less require you to include a thesis statement as part of the opening paragraph. Even essays that don't require this can benefit from the concise purpose-defining power of a bold thesis statement. Generally, thesis statements are included at or near the end of the first paragraph, though there are no hard and fast rules about where, specifically, thesis statements must be.

• You probably wouldn't include a single thesis statement for your vacation essay. Since you're more interested in setting a mood, telling a story, and illustrating personal themes, a direct, clinical statement like "This essay will describe my summer vacation to Costa Rica in great detail" would sound oddly forced and unnecessary. 

5. Set an appropriate tone for your essay. In addition to being your space to discuss what you're going to talk about, your first paragraph or so is also a space to establish how you're going to talk about it. The way you write — your writing voice — is part of what encourages (or discourages) your readers from reading your article. If the tone in the beginning of your essay is clear, pleasing, and appropriate for the subject matter, your readers will be more likely to read than if it's muddled, varies greatly from sentence to sentence, or is mismatched to the topic at hand.

6. Cut to the chase! One of the most important rules when it comes to introductions is that shorter is almost always better. If you can convey all the information that you need to convey in five sentences rather than six, do it. If you can use a simple, everyday word in place of a more obscure word (e.g., "start" vs. "initiate"), do it. If you can get your message across in ten words rather than twelve, do it. Wherever you can make your introductory passages shorter without sacrificing quality or clarity, do so. Remember, the beginning of your essay serves to get your reader into the meat of the essay, but it's the sizzle and not the meat of the essay itself, so keep it short.

7. Try writing your introduction last, rather than first. When the time comes to begin their essay, many writers forget that there's no rule that says that you have to write the beginning of the essay first. In fact, it's acceptable to start anywhere in the essay that suits your purpose, including in the middle and the end, so long as you eventually stitch the entire essay together. If you're unsure of how to start or don't even know exactly what your essay is about yet, try skipping the beginning for the time being. You'll eventually need to write it, but once you've written the rest of your essay, you may have a much firmer grasp of your topic.