Is an introductory paragraph really necessary?
After writing for about three months, I finally got this question. Is it really that important to give the reader a boring introduction that you know isn’t that good?
For all the essays I’ve written from middle school to a week ago, I was forced to include an introduction. Somehow that habit stayed with me when I entered the world of freelance writing.
For just about every single article I’ve written, I have an intro paragraph as well. But as most of you writers know, the intro paragraph is the hardest paragraph to write in the entire essay/article. You actually need to prepare a draft for it, and go through the revision and editing process just for the little unimportant paragraph.
That same little unimportant paragraph has ruined some of the best ideas I had for writing. I remember brainstorming for ideas yesterday. It was one of the best brainstorming sessions I ever had. I ended up with a grand total of about ten to thirteen good ideas.
But then, I sat down to write articles based on them. That’s when all my creative genius died. I had no idea about how to start an article about the first topic. I kept on attempting to write a better intro for about twenty more minutes. Every intro paragraph I wrote, I thought to myself, “what a peice of crap!”, and I started over. By the end of the session, I was crying.
No, it’s not because I’m a teenage writer. It’s because my brain couldn’t take all that pressure, and just exploded in the form of tears (figuratively).
This has probably happened to even the best writers at least three or four times in their life. They think of one of the best ideas to write about, and then they abandon that same stroke of genius a few minutes later. It get’s really frustrating really really fast.
So what could be the solution to this wierd form of writer’s block?
It’s a really simple solution. I first tried this a few weeks back and got three articles without any brainstorming. All you do is just start writing about whatever subject you want to write about. Just dump everything you had in your brain dealing with that topic. It’s a scarily effective way to produce article after article without any planning whatsoever.
After finishing the article, then go back to provide a title and a description. After that, just fill in all the other stuff, and submit it to wherever you want to.
Also published at: http://writinghood.com/writing/the-hardest-parts-of-writing-part-one/
