Writing an Essay: Beginnings and Endings

Coming up with ideas for writing an essay is actually not that much hard. The most challenging thing, however, is to write proper beginning and ending. Despite the fact that introduction is the very first paragraph of an essay, it is usually written after the body as it should be the most thought-provoking, inspiring, and dramatic. The same is with a conclusion – despite merely summarizing the paper’s ideas and content, it should not repeat the ideas in the same words. Thus, beginnings and endings of academic papers are the most challenging parts to write.

Writing Tips on How to Write Terrific Beginnings and Endings

1. The introductory paragraph can be regarded as the most important one as it contains the essay hooks. If the introductory paragraph is not catchy for a reader, the whole essay won’t be interesting to read. How to provide quality attention grabbers for your readers:
   • Write an introduction appealing to the author’s inner feelings. This introduction will hardly ever be used in academic papers as it is too personalized and suits best for creative writing. In such an introduction, the author writes about his/ her emotions and feelings, what makes readers sympathize or empathize with him/ her.
   • Infuse humor in the introductory paragraph. Before deciding to write some jokes, think about your target audience. As soon as you got to know who will read your essay, you can think of perfect ways of connecting with the audience. One of such ways is appealing to humor.
   • Write a thought-provoking introduction that will make one contemplate some issue or think about something really deeply. To reach this aim, raise a controversial or challenging question regarding the essay topic. The most important thing here is not to deviate from the topic when posing some kind of question.
2. The conclusion goes second after the introduction regarding its importance. You will definitely want to leave your readers with the feeling of logical completeness, won’t you? Therefore, in order to avoid any possible loose ends, your conclusion should naturally flow from the main body of your essay. So, how to make readers satisfied with your essay:
   • Provide a startling statement at the end. It does not mean that you need to write something too radical or shocking in the conclusion. Just leave some food for thought.
   • Finish your essay with what you have started it. Actually, it means that you might fit your essay in a circle. Despite the fact that your introduction and conclusion should not be the same, they might be similar.
   • End with a summary. This is probably the simplest tip on how to end your essay: briefly summarize your discussion/ findings/ the main ideas.

All in all, these are the main tips that were succinctly summarized to help you get the idea of how to start and end your essay properly. We truly hope that this article has been useful for you and now the process of writing an introduction and conclusion won’t be so dreadful for you.