[elisehein]

I think beginning an academic or a research paper with a question or something like "Some people say..." or "Recently" or "Nowadays" is often a very good strategy even though it might be clichéd, because telling the reader exactly what is going to follow in the text is very much expected. When I read with the sole intention of finding a specific piece of knowledge, I want to be able to tell from the introduction (or the abstract) whether I will find that piece of knowledge in the given text.

That being said, I think all other kinds of texts should be as story-like as possible, in the sense that they should be gripping and interesting from the very first sentence -- I want to be a little bit lost and not know where exactly the writer is taking me. In this case, I really like the idea of jumping straight into a scenario (or anecdote), I remember having been suggested by my teachers in middle school to do so. Having opened the text with a scenario, you can also use it in the conclusion to wrap things up and let the reader know how the story ended, given the conclusions reached in the body of the text.

My book recommendation is "How to write a sentence (and how to read one)", http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/01/27/how-to-wri... It has whole chapters on both first and last sentences.

[smacktoward]

"Some people say..." openings can be problematic, because they can get the reader wondering, who? Who says that? Which pulls them away from the point you're trying to make. Better to start with a specific example of someone saying it: "John Smith thought men couldn't get breast cancer. On April 5, he found out he was wrong."

I really like the idea of jumping straight into a scenario (or anecdote), I remember having been suggested by my teachers in middle school to do so.

Yeah, this is an effective technique that's nearly as old as storytelling itself. It's called in medias res:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res

The name is Latin for "into the middle of things," which describes the idea: throw the reader into the middle of the story first, revealing earlier events later on where necessary. This lets you open on a dramatic note right away, which grabs the reader's attention, while setting up little enigmas -- who is this person? Why is she doing what she's doing? What does she want? -- for the reader to solve, which keeps them involved.