Writing good essays is an art that all UPSC candidates need to master. To do this, candidates can appear in several essay test series conducted by different UPSC coaching centers online.

The introduction of the essay should be just like the opening scene of a movie - engrossing. Therefore, you should make sure that the beginning of your essay is vital, provides a brief idea about what lies underneath in the remaining portion of the essay and maintain a good standard to keep your audience hooked till the last word of your essay.

There are a few techniques that you can follow to write an excellent introduction to an essay. UPSC aspirants should use an engaging introduction for the following reasons:

• To spark interest in the reader

• Have relevance to the essay topic

• Be clear and concise

Here are some impactful beginnings with which you can start an essay:

1. Tell a story

This is psychologically true that people like reading stories. You can begin the story by creating some fictitious and exciting characters. Then, weave a narrative around the characters. While incorporating a narrative, make sure you do not deviate from the topic. Writing things that are not relevant to the topic will yield negative marking. However, the story that you build up should be clear, concise, and relevant to the topic of the essay.

2. Narrate an anecdote

Many candidates start their essay by narrating an anecdote. If you have read any recent event in a newspaper, you can incorporate it into your essay. Make sure that the incident is related to the essay topic. If you want to write an engaging introduction to an essay, you can also begin with a real-life incident. However, in the case of real-life happenings, your essay should not show any biasness towards any political party or organization as such.

3. Mention an interesting fact or statistics

Including facts into your essay, enriches your writing and makes it authentic. The more you include facts into your essay, the more reliable it becomes. A word of caution. Make sure that the facts that you state in the essay are not forged or wrong in any way. Stating facts wrongly will add to negative marking in your paper and bring in a wrong impression in the minds of the examiner. It is better to write correctly than forging facts and making the examiner believe you are not entirely prepared.

4. Ask a question

If you want the UPSC examiner to get intrigued by your essay, begin with a question. The question should certainly not be asked in a friendly tone. Since the UPSC is a serious matter, one should not write anything frivolous or cannot be taken seriously.

5. Begin the paragraph with a quote

This is another good technique for beginning an essay. Starting an essay's introduction with a relevant quote can help a UPSC candidate in several ways. First, starting an essay with a quote will form a good impression of you to the examiner. Second, it will prove you have in-depth knowledge about the subject matter. Finally, the quote that you begin with should be thought-provoking.

Conclusion

Therefore, to get a good flair for writing, all UPSC candidates need to practice writing essays as much as possible. Since essay writing cannot be made possible overnight, you can sit for various essay test series to check your capacity.