Education

Writing The Intro Of Your Article

Writing the intro to your article, whether you’re writing for the Internet or a print publication, is not as difficult as you might initially think. In fact, I encourage writers in my coaching programs to tackle their introductions last. This is an essential step I initially resisted, because it felt really against my writer’s training.
But I strongly recommend writing the body of your articles first, then writing those interesting tidbits that you can’t quite fit into the body last as your introduction. Unless your editor has asked otherwise your introduction for any article should not simply be a summary of the article.
Following this advice will create less headaches for you as you write each article and ultimately less rewrite requests from your editors. Also, another problem with writing introductions first is they sound either generic or too similar to what you’re discussing in the body of the article.
If you’re writing for popular content mills such as Demand Media Studios, the first paragraph or “overview” is designed to introduce the subject but not rehash the full content of your article.
As you work, always remember the classic spiritual saying of “Progress, not perfection.”
If you just can’t write an article without doing the introduction first, then write the article even without following my tip. But likely, you’ll eventually see that writing article introductions last can be more fruitful to your work flow and results. Besides, you may end up with a 370 word body and only need to write a 50 word introduction. If you spent time writing an 80 to 100 word introduction and then write a 370 article word body, you’ve wasted a little precious time that could’ve been spent enjoying a hobby, time with loved ones, or making more cash. Even a few minutes of wasted time here and there really adds up. Remember that time is your most valuable currency and you cannot make more of it, so protect it by writing and living as efficiently as possible.
In summary, writing your article introductions last is a big point crucial to success that took me 12 years of trial and error to fully learn and implement. If you try to write the introductions first it is far easier to get stuck and falsely assume writing just is not for you, when actually most reasonably educated people can succeed in some aspect of article writing.

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