The opening paragraph

I find writing opening paragraphs very difficult, because I'm writing and thinking at two different levels. On one level, a deeper level of argument, I try to begin with the key facts I need to set up in order to engage my reader. That forces me to figure out what the key facts are. Names? Dates? Definitions? Context? Conventional scholarly opinion, which I'll either work within or react against? Particular scholar I'm drawing on? Key moment in a larger chain of events? Three main questions drive me: （1） What's my topic? （2） What's my thesis? （3） What do I need to tell my reader right away?

　　On a more superficial level, I also need to figure out exactly how to start. With a quotation? A question? An anecdote? A surprising finding? A paradox or puzzle? Whatever I choose, if I'm writing well it'll be in sync with the deeper level of thinking I'm working on—the particular detail, image, quotation or whatever else will fit with my thesis, my whole argument. For instance, if I'm writing about the fall from grace of many Internet dot-coms, I might start with a particular example—say Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, and I might choose as a starting point to make a sharp contrast between his zenith （Time's man of the year in 1999） and the subsequent swoon in Amazon's stock price （down by two-thirds in half a year as I write this）.

　　An opening paragraph establishes a context for your exposition. If you are discussing an author, what is his or her full name? Is the time period you're discussing relevant? Is there a general scholarly tradition or conventional wisdom you're going to be working with, or reacting against? You don't need to cram every significant fact into the opening paragraph, but it's a natural place to put as much critical info as reasonably fits.

　　Here's an introductory paragraph that doesn't really clarify what the essay will be about. The writer was obviously looking for a way to start writing, and didn't cold-bloodedly ask herself,"What do I need to explain in order to make my argument?" After we read this paragraph, we have little idea what argument this essay will try to make:

　　Americans too often take their rights for granted. We hardly ever stop to think about all of the hard work that was involved in gaining the rights we enjoy under the Constitution. This Constitution was not ratified overnight. It took many years and a great amount of persuasion through a document called the Federalist papers to get the states to accept the Constitution. The Federalist papers were written by a group of men who were dedicated to the principles of the Constitution. They believed in the republican form of government, and did not trust democracy. The Federalists knew that under a democracy it is harder for a nation to include a large region of people in government assembly, and there is a greater risk that majorities and factions will form.

　　Is this essay about how difficult it was to ratify the Constitution? Is it about the anti-democratic views of the writers of the Federalist papers? Is it about the dangers of democracy? By the end, the paragraph seems to have moved past an introduction into a specific treatment of terms that haven't been defined yet, like faction, and some apparently important difference between democracy and the republican form of government. But we're not sure if our understanding of these things gibes with that of the author. And we still don't know what the argument is.

　　Here's an introductory paragraph that hasn't jelled:

　　Machiavelli incorporated many of his views towards religion into some of his works. There are three specific works, out of the many that he wrote, that deal specifically with Christianity. The three works, The Prince, The Discourses, and"The Golden Ass," each deal with various views he holds about modern religion. Machiavelli felt as though modern religion makes people weaker, is very political, and also causes people not to care for or defend their freedom.

　　At the end of the paragraph the writer delivers a thesis, but it's a grab-bag of ideas, not clearly connected to what's come before except in a very general way. The writer hasn't set up the thesis, told us how the things mentioned at the end relate to each other, or given us any sense of where the paper is going.

　　Here's an introductory paragraph that fails to give the reader a unified thesis. I've marked two possible theses:

　　In The Discourses, Machiavelli expresses strong feelings about Christianity. He says Christianity is weak because it does not practice the art of war. Any religion that does not practice the art of war is not destined to survive. Machiavelli believes that Christianity does not favor freedom, makes people slothful, and was unsuccessful in wiping out older religions.

　　All of the things the writer says here may well be true. But they're not organized in any helpful way. First one sentence comes at us like a thesis. The next sentence supports our understanding of this as the thesis. But then we get to the last sentence, which suddenly asserts itself as the"real" thesis. But this would-be thesis mentions three things, none of them obviously connected to the previous two sentences （except that they share a single topic, Christianity）. The middle part of the paragraph, in other words, doesn't prepare us for the thesis. So where's the thesis? More plainly, what exactly is this writer trying to say? She has nailed down the topic: Machiavelli's attitude toward Christianity. But she has failed to deliver a focused thesis. （The solution, incidentally, may well lie in integrating these various specific points into a general observation on Machiavelli's view of Christianity—but that will require additional thinking, not just jiggering with the opening paragraph.）

　　A last point on first paragraphs: sometimes a writer, feeling that the opening must sound like an opening, writes something formal, impersonal, and inert. Even strong writers fall into this trap. The following example is from an essay that on the whole was full of strong verbs and good, strong writing. The writer, concerned to establish a formal tone at the beginning, wrote a passage chock full of nominalizations and weak verbs:

ORIGINAL REVISION
This paper will seek to analyze the privatization effort of Ukraine and come to a conclusion about the factors contributing to the lack of success of the attempt to reform and revive the troubled economy of the country.
In the early 1990s a newly independent Ukraine, seeking to revive and reform its troubled economy, embarked on a major privatization effort. The effort largely failed. This paper analyzes Ukraine's privatization effort and the reasons for its large-scale failure.