Ms.
Gokturk
Effective
Beginnings Begin Today!
The
beginning of your feature is vital to drawing your reader into your piece. If
you make us snooze, you’ll lose. Good journalists win when they capture their
readers’ interests and keep it. So, let’s get you thinking about an effective
start! There are many ways to begin without killing the life out of your
subject and reader – let’s try and break out of the high school essay mode and
get creative!.
YOUR TASK
Choose
three (3) of the methods from below
and write the beginning to your piece following the format for each. Please
hand in your three intros at the end of the period that demonstrate
your reflection of your topic.
While
there is no formula on the length of an effective intro, remember that your goal
is to try and gain our interest. Use vivid and descriptive language, and don’t
be afraid to be creative. Stay away from lazy adjectives and verbs.
These
are potential introductions, and they
are not written in stone. Nevertheless, please note that your introduction will
set the tone of your piece as well as set the groundwork for what will be
covered.
YOU
MUST CHOOSE TWO OF THE FOLLOWING (but you may choose three)
ANECDOTE
Introducing
your feature with a brief narrative drawn from current news events, history, or
your personal experience can be an effective way to capture your reader’s
interest.
A couple of nights ago, someone
offered me a cigarette at a party. I started to say no, but I had to reflect
for a minute. Why don’t I smoke?
I looked around the room and could
barely see across the basement, not because it was dark or because of the low
ceiling, but because of the clouds of smoke billowing around the masses of teen
groups. I saw a really good looking girl light up, and all I could think was,
“What a shame” and “How disgusting.” I imagined her lungs filling with smoke,
tarring her young, pink lungs. I pictured her 30 years from now, no longer
beautiful, but yellow and haggard, coughing up juicy bits as she strolled the
supermarket aisles, aching for her next cigarette. I imagined her wheezing into
an oxygen mask.
I looked back at the generous soul
dangling his cancer my way. I said, “No thanks, I don’t smoke.”
ANALOGY/COMPARISON
An
analogy or comparison can be useful in getting readers to contemplate a topic
they might otherwise reject as unfamiliar or uninteresting. By pairing
seemingly unrelated concepts, you introduce an idea and illustrate it.
The gods, they say, give breath, and
they take it away. But the same could be said—could it not?—of the humble
comma. Add it to the present clause and, all of the a sudden, the mind is,
quite literally, given pause to think; take it out if you wish or forget it and
the mind is deprived of a resting place. Yet still the comma gets no respect.
It seems just a slip of a thing, a pedant’s tick, a blip on the edge of our
consciousness, a kind of printer’s smudge almost. Small, we claim, is beautiful
(especially in the age of the microchip), yet what is so often used, and so
rarely recalled, as the comma—unless it be breath itself? (Pico Ayer)
DIALOGUE
Opening
your feature with brief dialogue can attract a reader’s attention and can
succinctly illustrate a particular point of view you want to discuss. It shows
rather than tells, and it appeals to our innate curiosity about what others
say. Be careful not to sound artificial or contrived.
“This would be excellent, to go in
the ocean with this thing,” says Dave Gembrius, fifteen.
He is looking at a $170 Sea Cruiser
raft.
“Great,” says his companion, Dan
Holmes, also fifteen.
This is Herman’s World of Sporting
Goods, and Gembrius and Holmes are two of this
nation’s fastest growing sport, ocean kayaking.
FACTS/STATISTICS
Begin
with brief facts of statistics that support the purpose of your story. These facts
or statistics will drive your piece. While shock is an effective
attention-grabbing device, don’t lie! Don’t be Fox News either and exaggerate ad nauseum.
Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln
were born on the same day –
Twenty thousand teens will die this
year from AIDS. Twenty thousand thought it couldn’t happen to them.
IRONY/HUMOR
Irony
or humor is an effective way to begin. Humor, especially, signals to the reader
that your story will be entertaining to read, and irony can indicate an
unexpected approach to a topic.
In Moulmeim,
in lower
The
desk is so untidy, the student thinks.
I must do my laundry. Maybe I need to
mow the lawn? He goes downstairs and starts talking to his mother, helping
her put the groceries away. “Mom, you want to watch Seventh Heaven with me?”
Sounds like a great person, right? Considerate? Think again. This is the procrastinator
extreme. He would rather help around the house than complete his homework!
You may only choose
one of the following.
SHORT
GENERALIZATION
It’s a miracle
STARTLING
CLAIM
It is possible to stop drug
addiction in this country in a very short time. (Gore Vidal)
RHETORICAL
QUESTION
Just how interconnected is the
animal world? If we damage one area, what else might suffer?
AVOID IT,
BUCKY
- APOLOGY: I am a
student who is not an expert…
- COMPLAINT: I would
rather write about something else, but here it goes…
- DICTIONARY: The
dictionary defines the verb snore
as follows….
- PLATITUDE:
- REFERENCE TO TITLE: As you
can see from the title, this story is about…
