Hook, Line, and Sinker:
Writing Effective Papers
/Introductions
In many ways, the introduction is one of the most important parts of a paper. It’s frequently one of the more difficult parts to write. Many of your friends, and perhaps you yourself, have experienced writer’s block, sitting there staring at a blank computer screen with no idea where to begin. It often seems that you have no idea how to fill that much blank space. The minutes tick by with agonizing slowness, but the hours fly by until suddenly it’s nearly time for the paper to be due and you’re still on the first page.
The focus of this section will be on writing introductions that are concise and effective. You’ll find that once you’ve mentally laid out your essay in the process of writing the introduction, the rest of it flows rather smoothly and the barriers start to fall away. Of course, all of this presupposes that you have an argument you want to make or something you want to say about this topic. Developing and organizing an argument are addressed below, but that’s not all there is to a paper. Papers are content, yes, but there’s also a matter of presentation. You could have the best argument in the world, but if I can’t tell what it is from your paper then you have a problem. You’ve only got a few lines to hook the reader’s interest, so use them well.
Good introductions have four functions. Depending on the length of the paper the introduction is attached to, each can be a sentence, a paragraph, or even a page. We can use a four-part generic introduction template to address everything in a systematic manner, no matter the paper topic you want to insert. Better, once you become comfortable thinking about issues in these terms, you will find that you will have an easier time finding viable paper topics and generating arguments about them. This section will first explore what makes a ‘good’ introduction, then discuss how to formulate good introductions for maximum effect. Finally, I provide several examples of good introductions written using the template described here, and give practice topics for student experimentation.
An introduction should do four primary things.
1) It should catch my interest. Obviously, you must have been interested in this topic, or at least this angle on the assigned topic, or you wouldn’t have written on it. Make it catch my interest as well. I should want to read more and see what you have to say about this topic.
2) It should give a reason to want to read it. This is not the same as point 1. When I sit down to grade, I have 50 papers in front of me. Reading 50 repetitions of the same argument is not my ideal way to spend an evening. Why should I want to sit up and pay attention to your argument? Make your argument or angle relevant and/or original-seeming by thinking outside of the box.
3) It should suggest the argument you’re going to make. If I don’t know what you’re going to argue, or what point you’re trying to make, by the end of the first paragraph (first page for papers over about five pages), that’s a very bad sign.
4) It should tell me what to expect in the rest of the paper. No one likes nasty surprises – enough said.
Good introductions will do all four of those. Most undergraduate papers in lower-division classes tend to be no longer than 8-10 pages, so the introduction should not normally exceed two paragraphs or a full page. Let’s start, however, with a short paper and thus a shorter introduction. The shortest possible introduction would read something like,
This is a problem. It’s an important or interesting problem. Here’s how I think we can solve/explain/understand it. Here’s how I’m going to convince you/explain it.
You can substitute ‘quandary,’ ‘anomaly,’ or ‘unexplained or seemingly inexplicable phenomenon’ for ‘problem’ if you like. With that established, let’s walk through what belongs in each part.
This is a problem. Here’s something I (or a theory) can’t explain, or that scholars should, in your opinion, be concerned about. At this point you should be stating, clearly, the topic of the paper. If you can, you might put a spin on it that will lead you into phrasing a sentence in the next part as a question.
It’s an important or interesting problem. Yes, you can write on cyclical movement trends for the price of beets in Swaziland if you want—provided that you can tell me why I should care about it. This is the ‘so what?’ question. No matter the topic, it’s important to relate it to either a theory or reading that it appears to support (or refute), or some other thing that will convince your reader that it matters. Make your topic relevant to the class.
Here’s how I think we can solve/explain/understand it. Political scientists write to make arguments as well as convey information. This sentence serves, approximately, as a thesis statement. It tells me what’s holding your paper together other than ‘this is what the assignment told me to do.’ What’s your take on this question or problem that you’ve brought up? What makes this paper different or distinguishes it from others? In essence, what argument are you going to make in this paper?
Here’s how I’m going to convince you/explain it. This part of the introduction is probably the most important to the success of your argument. I often refer to it as a road map or a structure sentence. How will you proceed to discuss this topic? Use the logic of your argument to organize your paper. A wise professor I once had said, “Essays are not mystery stories. I shouldn’t be guessing what’s going to happen next.” A roadmap or structure paragraph or sentence prepares your reader for the logical manner in which you intend to go about supporting your argument.
One major problem that beginning writers face with introductions (and the first sentences of new paragraphs) is an urge to make sweeping generalizations. “From the founding of Rome to the present day, mankind has always known the horror of war. The present war in Iraq will prove to be no less horrific…” Unfortunately, your paper is not about the founding of Rome, the present day, or the horror of war. Your paper is about Bush’s public diplomacy towards Iraq. Stay on topic, and stay focused. Likewise, avoid opening your paper with anyone else’s words but your own. Fight the urge to use the common high school technique of opening with a quotation, or even worse, citing the dictionary. “Webster’s defines cooperation as….” is a sure way to sour the reader’s stomach from the start, as are long digressions on the history of your thinking on the paper topic (“When considering the nature of politics, one must first examine the cultural preconceptions of…”).
Some Examples of Introductions
A 3-5 page paper on how the faces of power can be used to analyze a current event
On January 10, 2003, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Many in the United States interpreted this as a signal that North Korea intended to develop nuclear weapons, and they feared that the cash-strapped country might sell these weapons to other rogue states for hard currency. The United States has since tried to use several forms of power, but particularly persuasion, to defuse this perceived threat to its security. In this essay, I will discuss American attempts to persuade North Korea to rejoin the NPT as well as other uses of rewards, punishment, and force which have been considered. [TYPE 2 THESIS]
An 8-10 page paper on comparative political institutions
Many democratizing countries have imported governmental institutions from developed democracies, hoping that they could shortcut the institutional development process and shorten the transition period. This approach has met with limited success in several countries: many countries adopting presidential systems, as in the United States, have drifted back into authoritarianism, and a number of new parliamentary systems have suffered severe disruption as parties splintered into factions. This mixed success is particularly noticeable in those countries adopting mixed or hybrid institutions. The semi-presidential systems of government in France and Russia share certain common characteristics, such as the ability to dissolve parliament and the ability to name the prime minister, but particular features of the Russian government, such as the president’s ability to dissolve parliament after three prime ministerial nominations have been rejected, have contributed to Russia’s limited progress toward democratic maturity. This paper will contrast presidential powers in these two countries and discuss their effects on democratic development. [TYPE 3 THESIS]
A 5-7 page paper on U.S. foreign aid
Many Americans are poorly informed about U.S. foreign aid practices. They consistently over-estimate the annual value of humanitarian and development aid, whether in dollar value, percent of GDP, or percent of the federal budget—sometimes by a factor of ten times or more. When asked how much aid they feel is appropriate, survey respondents often name values five times above the current budget (Crossette 1995). Why, then, does Congress persist in being so stingy when voters are so generous?
I argue that Congress faces competing pressures on spending. Constituents want more spending on foreign aid, but they also desire more spending on domestic programs which benefit them directly. The U.S. electoral system is designed for individual members of Congress to be accountable to specific constituencies, so Congressmembers prefer to allocate scarce resources to domestic supporters rather than to foreign aid or other international programs. By considering the electoral incentives of the representatives and the constraints those representatives face, we can explain the foreign aid contradiction. [TYPE 4 THESIS]
Hook, Line, and Sinker: Writing Effective Papers in Political Science 1
Theses and Thesis Statements
The traveling salesmen in the prologue of The Music Man sat around on the train to River City discussing a swindler who often posed as a salesman. “What’s the fella’s line? Never worries ‘bout his line??!! What’s his line?” they asked each other. “Fella’s gotta have a line!” Just like the swindling Professor Harold Hill and the other salesmen on the Iowa Line, you’ve gotta have a ‘line,’ a sales pitch of sorts. Unfortunately, you are not selling anvils, sewing machines, or even boys’ bands; you are selling an idea, and you have to sell it in writing. This means having an argument and drawing it out in the course of your paper. In order to do that, you have to find an argument first.
That argument is normally called a thesis. Most instructors in most social science disciplines prefer to see an explicit thesis statement at the front of the paper, which sets out the argument you’re going to make. It is possible to have a thesis without having a thesis statement; it’s also not the easiest type of argument to follow. The reader spends most of the paper wondering how all of these pieces of information and analysis are supposed to fit together, rather than evaluating how well your evidence and analysis support your argument. Social science writing values development of an argument, so for disciplines like political science, it’s best to have the thesis statement up front. The introduction format suggested above includes room for a thesis statement as the third element.
Theses matter because they drive the analysis included in a paper. Your thesis is the line that connects all of the pieces of information, and it also shapes how you ‘spin’ the evidence you present. Bland recitations of facts are boring; it’s like reading the news pages of the local paper. The op-ed pages are much more interesting. Read the editorials and letters to the editor sometime. You’ll see examples of authors making arguments, and you’ll also see letters which are little more than barely coherent strings of random facts. Editorials and better-written letters to the editor have a point they want to make, and they’re not shy about making it: you can usually tell right from the start what the author’s view is.
Editorials and letters to the editor represent analyses of a situation from a specific point of view. You should aim to have a point of view, a specific angle on the topic—one you can support with evidence. When you have a point of view, or an argument to make, it’s very difficult to write a string of facts. The simple act of having an argument stated at the top of the paper will contribute greatly to having analysis in the rest of the paper. Analysis is interpreting the facts for the reader, discussing the implications or assumptions related to the facts, or similar things that show the reader that you have thought about the facts and are producing original insights about their meaning. The easiest way to do this is to present facts as part of an argument: in other words, using evidence to support your thesis.
Crafting arguments for papers is an art. You shouldn’t expect to be doing incredible, amazingly sophisticated analysis as a freshman. Professors have had years of experience crafting arguments, and many of them will be the first to tell you their writing is nothing brilliant or earth-shattering. Instructors understand the progression of writing development and gauge written assignments accordingly. That’s why intro courses often have paper assignments that are a page long, full of specific questions to think about or address, and upper-level classes and graduate courses may only have a line in the syllabus that says, “a 15-20 page researched paper on a topic of your choice, worth x%, due on Week 11.”