I absolutely love introductions to books, especially if I love the author, but the introduction must be written BY the author. Otherwise there is rarely a good reason for it to even be there. What right does Joe Shmoe have to introduce someone else's work? Yes, he might be an expert on their writing, perhaps he's read the book hundreds of times, heck he might have it memorized from cover to cover, but that means little to me because no matter how awesome they are, they can never know the things that I want to read most in an introduction.
Most people skip the introduction to a book, but I seem inescapably drawn to it. I picked up the book in order to read it, but the procrastinator in me sees the intro and thinks, "Look! There's a little piece at the front that will keep you from beginning the book right now, but it'll LOOK like you're reading the book, and it'll FEEL like your reading the book, but you aren't actually reading the book yet! They've even conveniently put it at the very beginning where you can't miss it!" I can't understand it, but I've always read it whether I am supposed to be doing the reading for an English class or whether I picked the book up for fun. I'm strange, I know.
Now, I know what you're most likely thinking. Why on earth did she stick the previous paragraph in? It had nothing to do with what she wants to read most in an introduction, and now we're hopelessly curious! Well, no worries, because I'll tell you now. I just had to define my strangeness to you before I could continue.
The thing I love most about an intro is how you get to know the author just a bit. A good intro should include all of the questions I would most like to ask an author
–all of the things that go through my mind when I meet one. These include: What was going through your mind when you got the idea for this book, and how did it develop? What moments defined the journey from idea to book? How do you feel about your book? Even with just these three I'm sure I could keep any author busy for hours, but the beauty of an intro is that you often find the author is way ahead of you and has already written their answers to these down for all to see and has included it, once again, conveniently at the front of your book. You might learn a bit about the author by reading their work, but they were not writing as themselves when they wrote it. In an introduction, the author is writing wholly as themselves and is telling their own real life story of the book you're holding. Is that not a beautiful thing?
Another thing I love about intros is the freedom the author has. They can write whatever the heck they want because it doesn't have to fit in with a story; it is not beholden to anyone. If the author wants to blatantly teach you something, you will most likely find it in an introduction. I have gotten some of my best writing tips from books' introductions, and some of my best bits of knowledge too. Take this quote from Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead for example, "Once you get the beginning right, the ending almost writes itself". After reading that intro I felt like I'd gotten a crash course in writing, story telling, and learned a bit about being a publisher that I had never expected to learn in an introduction. I learned all about how he went about creating a magnificent story: what his friends did, what he did, and how it all came together. There is nothing better for learning how to write and publish a story than to read the stories of other people writing and successfully publishing theirs.
I do hope that authors realize the importance of writing an introduction. If they have something against an introduction derailing the reader even before they've gotten a chance to fall in love with the book, then I have nothing against putting the introduction at the back and calling it an introductory conclusion or something to that effect. I don't particularly care how or where just so long as there is, included somewhere in the book, an explanation as to h
ow the book came to be. It gives a taste of the author's thoughts on it. I just don't recommend them putting it somewhere in the middle of the story. That would be far more disruptive than putting it conveniently at the beginning.
Anywho, this post is beginning to look as long as an introduction itself now though I feel that is appropriately fitting considering it is pretty much the first post and therefore introduction to this blog. Let me hear your thoughts on the subject, and post what your favorite introductions of all time are. I would love more insight into the minds of the authors who created the wonders that I routinely fall in love with. :)
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