In your intro, dare to sound like yourself.
Are you looking for a way to turn off readers in your first paragraph? Try to impress them.
That’s what two amateur writers did in articles I reviewed this past week.
Rather than sound like themselves, they tried to sound like writers — or at least the way through thought writers sounded. Their introductions were long-winded and pompous, with an inflated vocabulary — exactly what no one enjoys reading.
Rather than sound like themselves,
they tried to sound like writers.
Fortunately, by the time they’d finished their introductions they’d forgotten they were trying to impress people. They got into their topic, with which they were comfortable, and they wrote in a way that came naturally.
If only they’d trusted their writing enough to begin that way.
Doing that, you have a much better likelihood of leaving readers impressed.
