4 ms·
Agreed, this wasn't great (and as idlewords points out, how could he use such a lackluster opening of his own?). The straw man and exaggeration approaches both
by jtheory 12y ago
Agreed, this wasn't great (and as idlewords points out, how could he use such a lackluster opening of his own?). The straw man and exaggeration approaches both struck me as poor suggestions in particular.
Here's my main suggestion -- the "shitty first drafts" strategy is important with openings in particular. Take a stab at an opening, and probably fail (but start your brain thinking about it). Write the rest of the article, polish your ideas as you go and gain a bit more insight into what you're talking about. Think how it looks from the perspective of a reader. THEN you'll be in a much stronger position to go back and write a good opening.
Of course, you may realize that your inspired opening also implies a different structure for the piece, but so be it.
- idlewords 12y agoThis is really good advice. Another technique that sometimes works is to chop off the first few paragraphs of whatever you wrote. Writing can be like making whiskey-better if you throw the first and last parts away.