Openings and Endings
Create and edit literary texts, that may be a hybrid, that experiment with text structures, language features and literary devices for purposes and audiences.
A marker forms an impression in your first two lines and confirms it in your last two. These are the highest-value sentences in any piece you write, and most students waste both.
Method
Never open by restating the question
In this essay I will discuss whether… wastes the most valuable sentence you have.
Never end with a summary alone
A conclusion that only repeats is a paragraph the reader can skip. Land something.
The circular ending is the safest strong ending
Return to the image or phrase you opened with, changed by what has happened in between.
Worked example
e.g. Four openings that work, and how to close each one.
- The specific detail. Start with one concrete thing, not a general claim.The paint on the window frames had lifted in strips.
- The short declarative. A flat, confident statement the essay then complicates.Nobody in the street owned a car.
- The question that is not rhetorical. One you actually answer.What does a town do when the work leaves?
- In medias res. Begin inside the action and explain afterwards.By the time I found the gate, it was already open.
- For the ending, return to your opening image and show what has changed.The frames had been repainted. Someone had come back.
- Or end on the shortest sentence in the piece.Contrast does the work. After long sentences, four words land hard.
- Read the first line and last line together. They should feel like one piece of thinking.If they could belong to different essays, one of them is wrong.
Practice
Rewrite each weak opening or ending.
1
Rewrite: In this essay I am going to discuss the topic of whether social media is good or bad.
AnswerThe average teenager unlocks their phone ninety times a day. Almost none of them chose to. Concrete, arguable, and it has not wasted the sentence.
2
Rewrite: In conclusion, I have discussed both sides and given my opinion. Thank you for reading.
AnswerThe connection is real. So is the sleep loss. Only one of them can be measured, and that is the problem.
3
Why does a circular ending work so reliably?
AnswerIt gives the piece a shape the reader can feel. Returning to the opening image, altered, shows the writing has travelled somewhere.
4
What is the risk of opening with a rhetorical question?
AnswerIf you never answer it, it reads as filler. Only open with a question you intend to spend the essay answering.