Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Start Your Story With Killer Paragraph.

By Garry Beau

The formal definition of an intro is a brief introductory passage. What is important is that you get the story right; it needs to encapsulate the essence or spirit of your overall point, try communicating through example. Capturing the essence is not enough; if nobody reads far enough to grasp the main point of the story then its purpose is lost.

The important point about writing an intro is that it must be short. When you write a headline and then put content below it, your reader will expect the headline to correspond to the story below. Readers really won't give much time to an intro which talks about sports, when the headline talks about vacations.

Furthermore, you may have captured the essence of the story very well in the intro, but you have to ask yourself the question.. is the intro short enough to engage reader interest before the content return to elaborating on the subject a hand?

The piece above contains an intro that's quite short. This kind of intro has the potential to work very well as long as the reader knows what they are reading. Readers know what the article is going to tell them in broad terms and so they know what to look-out for within the story.

Starting with a long introduction that appears to bear no relevance to the headline is the number one killer of otherwise good writing.

In case you use big anecdote, you must let your reader be aware of how it is connected to your subject, otherwise you will find that readers will opt out of reading your topic, even before you bring out your point.

More essence in fewer words; the function of an introduction is to convey something about your broader point.

If you want to do this right, you have to think about your intro in a broader sense and include those details which bring this out and leave out those that don't. So, if you have extra details such as dates, names, descriptions and diversions but which are not really necessary for the essence of the anecdote, do not mention them as they will only distract the reader.

Check out my site mentioned in the Author field to get even more details about this and find out more on what inspired me to write out this article.

In order to gain reader attention, you have to write out a good introductory passage by giving it that much thought and consideration. It is how you present the introduction that leads the rest of the story for the reader. So, think about our intro carefully and only put into it those details which help to do this and leave out those that don't.

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