The first sentence is doing one job
By Ryan Jaffe ·
In film, a first page that does not create a question gets put down. An essay works the same way, only faster.
The most common opening I see is orientation: where we are, what year it is, how the writer was feeling. All useful information, none of it a reason to keep reading. The second most common is a quote from someone famous, which tells the reader about the quote, not about you.
A good opening usually drops us into something already in motion and withholds one thing. It does not have to be dramatic. It has to be specific enough that a reader wants the next piece.
A test that works: cover your first paragraph and start at the second. Nine times out of ten the essay is better, which means the real opening was there all along.