Help with Beginnings and Endings
Leads
Purpose: To teach some of the principles of effective openings by having actual readers (the students' peers) respond to the opening of their drafts. This activity draws on their intuitive responses and shapes them into principles the students can remember. It also invites them to practice what they've learned about leads as they revise their essays, so this activity becomes a revision exercise, as well. Students will also learn to refocus on the purpose and tension in their essays by experimenting with different leads.
Time Required: about two 50-minute periods or one 75-minute period
Materials: a handful of opening paragraphs to use as samples for your students. Both Dr. Bruce Ballenger and Dr. Michelle Payne have several transparencies you can use, or you can have students look at the leads in the essays in their reader.
Newsprint, tape, and markers
Drafts that students are working on for the week
Steps:
Begin, with students' own writing so they can begin thinking about how opening paragraphs work in their peers' writing. On a day they have a draft due, have them do the following:
- Give everyone a piece of newsprint.
- Write your first sentence on top of the newsprint (leaving room for the rest of the paragraph)
- Discuss which opening lines seem intriguing and why. What promises do they seem to make about what the essay will be about? Opening lines should have some tension in them, the bringing together of ideas that are surprising or conflicting or the expression of an intriguing question.
- Write your first paragraph on the newsprint
- Write your title.
- Move to your right.
- On a peer's newsprint:
- predict what the paper is going to be about;
- make a list of questions you hope the essay will answer
- circle the question you think is the most central;
- characterize the tone (preachy, funny, sarcastic, etc.)
Discussion
Many of your students will realize from this activity that their opening paragraphs go nowhere-they may simply be throat-clearing paragraphs or overly general and obvious statements about their subject. Don't focus on the weak leads of the students, but move toward a brainstorm list of qualities of effective and ineffective leads. At this point you might read some published leads aloud. Here are some things you can add to whatever the students come up with.
Ineffective Leads
- statements of the obvious
- alarm clock leads ("Bbrringg, the alarm went off")
- dictionary leads (using dictionary definitions)
- leads that promise too much or begin with overly general statements
- overly dramatic leads
- openings that make the reader say, "So What?"
- blind leads (openings that make promises which aren't fulfilled)
Qualities of Effective Leads
- tend to be specific rather than general
- show rather than tell
- deliver on their promises
- have strong first and last lines
- unmask the writer
- raise interesting questions quickly
- don't begin at the beginning
After you've established what seems to be key for an opening paragraph to draw in a reader, read some sample published leads aloud and ask the same questions as you did in Step 7 above. Try to categorize them as examples of some of the following types of leads so students will have examples of different kinds of leads they might try:
Types of Leads
- announcement
- scene
- profile
- quotation
- background
- description
- anecdote
- dialogue
- turning point
- climax
- "Wake up, stupid"
- enlist the reader
- symbol
- trigger point
- question
- contrast
By the end of the class period (this may take two class period if you teach a 50 minute class), students should have a list of qualities of strong and weak leads, as well as a set of principles (below) of what kind of work openings do in an essay:
What Leads Do
- make promises
- capture the reader
- point the direction of the essay
- establish the tone of the essay
- introduce an individual writer
- get the piece out of neutral
- raise the question, the dilemma, the problem the essay will explore
Follow-up work for students:
Assign them to bring in at least three different leads for their draft for the next class. Then, the next class period, workshop the leads with groups of two or three and have students choose which ones seem most effective and why. Do this activity later in the semester as well as a revision activity.
Endings
Endings are always difficult for writers, but this activity can help students think through what an ending needs to do in an essay. You have several options:
- Use Katherine Brush's short short story "The Birthday Party" (available in the Writing Program Office)
- Choose other short stories or short essays
- Use two sample student essays (if they are from your current class, be sure the samples are fairly strong)
The key in this exercise is to leave off whatever ending the author has crafted.
Steps:
- Read the sample aloud and tell students that when you're finished, you want them to write an ending for the story or essay that seems most plausible given what the author has written.
- Collect the endings and randomly choose three or four to read aloud, INCLUDING the original ending (photocopy it so students will not be able to tell that you're reading the original).
- Ask students which one seems the most plausible ending to them. They may get into discussions about which ones they like and dislike, but try to shift the conversation to why, given what the author says in the story/essay, one ending is stronger than another.
- On the board, make a list of the qualities of an effective ending:
- it lights a fire and flows out of the piece-that is, the details and ideas are connected to the essay
- it ties threads together, key details
- can use metaphors (that aren't forced) which pull the ideas together and make readers think about the issue in a deeper way;
- we leave with an interesting question that may make us want to go back and re-read the essay underscores an unspoken theme in the piece
- Try to make a list of qualities in a bad ending. The students will probably be able to come up with these qualities themselves, but they can also draw from the endings they wrote that weren't convincing. Here's a list to get started with:
- seem tacked on
- vague, general, cliche
- don't add anything
- no surprises
- Finally, return to some of the essays you've already read for class (from the reader you are using) and discuss how and why the endings "work" for these pieces. Connect the discussion to the principles about endings you've just discussed.
- Assign students to craft two or three endings to a draft they are working on, bring to class to workshop and discuss using the principles they learned.