How Long a Story?

How long should an introduction be? How long should a man's legs be? (Long enough to reach the ground.) The introduction should be long enough to ensure that you and the reader are "standing in the same place" before you take him by the hand and lead him through your reasoning.

Generally this means two or three paragraphs, arranged as previously shown. The Situation and the Complication can each be as long as three or four paragraphs, but never more than that. (How much more can it take to remind some one of what he already knows?) Indeed, if you find yourself littering the introduction with exhibits, you can be sure that you are overstating the obvious.

By contrast, the introduction can also be as short as a sentence: "In your letter of January 15 you asked me whether ...” The closer you are in your everyday dealings to the person to whom you are writing, the shorter the introduction can get. But it must always say enough to remind the reader of his Question.

These examples demonstrate that the length of an introduction is not necessarily related to the length of the writing to follow. Rather, it is related to the needs of the reader. What does he have to be told not only to comprehend fully the significance of your main point, but also to want to read on to learn how you arrived at it?

If you are beginning to think that it might be difficult to write a good introduction, you're right. More botches are made of introductions than of any other part of a document. However, by reading enough examples you should get a sense of when an introduction sounds "right," and keep working at yours until they do.