Toolkit: May I Introduce You
Introductions are tricky. I like to think of them as a big, warm “hello” to your readers, welcoming them into your book and starting them off on an adventure.
They’re the "once upon a times” of scholarly writing, but instead of a fairy tale kingdom, you’re describing the terrain of your book’s subject, telling readers its central question and plot motivator, and laying out the backstory in its relevant elements, at the most effective stages for story pacing and clarity.
Because we grow up on stories, even those of us who have not been trained to understand the mechanics of fiction in its different forms are intuitively familiar with how stories work and what an opening will tell us and how. We tell each other stories in conversation constantly, and usually manage to put them in clear, dramatic order. And when we don’t, our friends let us know — sometimes gently, sometimes impatiently.
Scholarly books work the same. The introduction does the most complicated work of the whole volume, and it does it as simply, clearly, engagingly, and logically as possible.
We know how to write stories. With introductions, the biggest challenge comes in as we try to figure out what sort of structure will best lead readers through the set-up and what we need to include as the backstory and frame for the journey readers are about to take with it.
How Best to Untangle Your Thinking and Give Them What They Need?
Introductions need to lay out the general terms of engagement for readers: political/historical background, relevant scholarly material or conversations you're joining or disagreeing with, facts that nonspecialists won't necessarily know, and your own conceptual thinking about the material. All of these elements need to be there so that readers can grow with you across the book. As a general rule, assume that your readers don't know anything about your material, although they're coming in as educated and capable readers.
The most logical way I think to figure out your introduction is to ask, what does someone need to know to understand the point you want to make, and what do they need to know before that even? And then start with the most basic stuff people would need to know, without becoming too boring. (The last part is the challenge!)
Put very simply, the way you order your introduction often mirrors the structure you’d use to tell someone your idea. This relies on you knowing the journey you want to take readers on, and it’s worth stepping back from focusing on what you’re arguing to how you’re doing it. Look at the structure of your book and see if you can locate for yourself what the narrative structure is.
Where does your “once upon a time” start? When you get to “the end,” what does that look like? What is the conceptual logic underlying how you get from the first to the last? Another way of saying this is, what is your book arc and how does it work?
Is it a chronological study? A set of case studies illuminating separate points about your topic? A classic argument that builds on itself by adding a new conceptual element in each chapter, something entirely different?
Once you know how you’re arguing across the book, you will have the clarity needed to turn to the introduction and start figuring out how best to set up that arc, using the introduction to give information they’ll need to understand the journey and a sense of how you are narrating it.
How Might You Do That?
Here’s an exercise. Practically, this can look like making a chart or graph with two points: first, a general statement about your topic (the “once upon a time” statement) and second, your big claim for the book. Then orient yourself backward. In order for people to understand your final claim, ask yourself what big elements they need. Put them on the chart. Order them from most basic to more complicated.
When figuring out order, ask yourself these questions:
What can be understood on its own and what needs other things to make sense?
What hidden information are you relying on readers already knowing?
What do you need to establish before you could tell the next thing?
And then where can you go from there, with added depth of analysis, detail, and understanding?
Logically, the more complicated ideas come later, so put those labels/titles on your chart in those orders. These main elements might become section headings, or you might combine a couple to make a section heading. The important thing is to order them so that they build off each other, incorporating information from before into the next step, so that you can move forward.
Then, show this to a colleague, friend, or editor, and talk it through with them. You’ll probably find they will have questions about information you might need to add, or might think a different order would make more sense. That’s all part of revision — as is then turning this chart into cohesive writing.
It’s easy to get lost amid all the things you could write. But if you come from a position of narrativity from the start, it can help you gain the distance you will need to meet your reader from the opening and see what exactly needs to be in your introduction, why, and when, what it makes sense to write — from the reader’s perspective and therefore your book’s.
