Follow your Planning Packet to make sure your Introduction paragraph includes the following:
Sentence 1: A Hook - This is something that will catch your reader's attention
- This is something that will "hook" your reader in and make them want to read your paper. It should NOT mention your book/characters in your book or be your thesis statement, although it may generally reference them. If you are stuck, consider the following ideas:
- Ask a question. Draw in your reader by asking a rhetorical question. Make sure you do NOT address the reader with "you" or use first person.
- Example: Is it possible for a boy to survive alone on the ocean?
- Describe a scene vividly. Have a favorite part of the book? Describe the scene briefly but with details, without character names or giving too much away.
- Example: Gome, gome, gome - the echoes of the gong vibrated through the village, calling everyone near and far.
Sentence 2: Opening Statement - Introduce novel information (full title of novel, capitalized and in italics) and give a one sentence summary of the novel, introducing the main character/event that you will be writing about in your essay.
Sentences 3-4: Mention Major Points - Provide a little more background about the main events of the book you read. What major events happen in your book that are most relevant to the topic you are writing about? *This should not be shorter than 2 sentences but should not be longer than 3 sentences.*
Sentence 5: Thesis Statement (claim) - What is your paper about? What are the main points that you will be discussing in your body paragraphs? Make sure this sentence is clear and sets up your argument for the rest of your paper (and for your reader).
The following is a bare-bones example for Fahrenheit 451:
Fire spreads throughout the pile of books - pages crackle and become unreadable. In Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451, the main character Guy Montag is a fireman who has been trained to view books as evil. He spends his life committed to destroying them until he meet a girl named Clarisse, who changes how he sees the world. As Montag changes he realizes the power of knowledge and how his society has put limits around what people can learn. The dystopian society that Montag lives in turns away from the knowledge inside books and their reliance on technology makes them believe that they are living in a perfect world.
