“Throughout history…”

Have you ever seen a student begin an essay with that famous line? I have. Actually I used to start essays that way sometimes in high school. To my mind, it’s not the worst way to begin – it tells me that the writer has an understanding of the shape of an essay. They know that the opening of the intro will be broad, and as they approach the thesis, they zoom in closer and closer. “Throughout history” is quite broad (and overused) but it’s a start.

What’s a better way to begin? The other day I had a student who needed to write about the definition of justice – but before he could define justice, he had to make a pop-culture reference that would somehow tie into the rest of the essay. He was thinking about the movie Captain America, but he didn’t want to just open up with “Captain America is a movie about…” or “In the movie Captain America…” He thought that’d be too boring. So what could he do?

Hmm, I said. I decided to tell him about the way I often begin stories. Using the opening of a story I wrote a long time ago, I recited:

“The bucket swung wildly as I ran through the streets of Egypt in the dead of the night. All around me I could feel souls being extinguished like candles in a breeze. And I could feel that breeze too – the horrible wind of death drawing ever close to me. I dared not look back…”

I’d opened the story in an exciting moment, and wrote the rest of the story in the form of flashbacks. An essay, even though not a story, can be opened that way too, I told him. He could take an exciting scene from Captain America – maybe start it off with “‘Run for your lives!’ screamed Captain America,” or something like that (I’ve never watched it). Let the scene unfold a little – show, not tell – and then the rest of the essay connects back to that opening scene. “This scene in Captain America tells us that justice is…” for example.

He thought that was an interesting way to begin, and that he’d try it.

What are some of your ways of helping students write catchy intros?