More on Writing Introductions

In the past few weeks, several of my students have been busy perfecting their introductions. What I have been trying to tell them: Writing introductions is really hard! Nobody writes a perfect (or anywhere close to perfect) introduction the first time around. But they're really important. Not only because often that's the only part of the paper that actually gets read, but also because writing that introduction helps you think more carefully about your own paper--why it's important, what you actually do, etc. Often times, it is when I'm writing the introduction that I think about how to improve the paper. 

But when you're first starting, it is of course helpful to have a guide, a step-by-step approach. I have already shown you one formula for writing introductions.  Of course, use that as a starting point, but I will say that different papers often require different formats. 

The good news: You are (probably) not writing the first ever paper on your topic.

What does this mean: You can use the most closely related papers as a guide ("as a guide" does not mean, copy the structure exactly!) for writing your own introduction. 

My specific suggestion: Find the 3-4 most closely related papers to yours. One should use your empirical technique, another one with your dependent variable, another one using your data source, etc. Write outlines of all of these introductions and think about why the authors chose that particular structure. Then write your own potential outline for your introduction. Better yet, maybe write two potential outlines. If you're my student, feel free to show me your proposed outline before getting into the details of paragraph structure. 

For insights on how to make and think about these outlines, see this guide on how to write introductions written by Raul Pacheco-Vega. 

And then get to writing. And rewriting. And re-rewriting.