An editing trick for busy writers
Good writing needs a warmup but who on God’s green and busy and increasingly volatile Earth has the time for that? Instead, just delete the first paragraph you wrote because it was the warmup and it was probably bad.
What’s a writing warmup?
Some writing coaches recommend free writing as a warm-up. Free writing is the process of setting a timer and furiously writing whatever messed up shit your brain comes up with on any topic. Other writing coaches might recommend writing the body of the text first and once you’re warmed up, going back to the start to write a focused and punchy intro.
You’re not going to do any of that. You have 400 things to do today. Initiating a 20-minute free-writing session every time you need to fire off a tricky email to Dave in accounting who is being a turd to you is not going to happen. And it’s really hard to start writing in the middle because our brains like sequential order (which is why Tenet made me feel sick). Paragraphs don’t just float in a vacuum, they flow smoothly and quickly, like a greased-up toddler flying down a homemade water slide/tarpaulin. Warm-ups are good but they’re not realistic for the average person who barely has enough time in the day to order more soda canisters online and eat a vegetable and wash the never-ending pile of dishes accumulating to the left of the sink.
A 45-second editing hack
Instead, bang out whatever piece of writing needs doing as quickly as possible, drawing on whatever tidbits you can remember in the moment to make it coherent. Then you’re going to turn your brain on and spend 45 seconds either deleting or rewriting the first paragraph of your email/blog/social media caption/letter to the tax office/erotic fan fiction/DM to Jenna Ortega because your first paragraph was the warm-up and it probably sucked.
Do this after you’ve finished writing the whole thing and study it with critical eyes. A good opening paragraph should get straight to the point but they often don’t. Be brutal with your cuts. I think we’re all still conditioned by the strict rules of essay writing learned in high school and university that require us to formally introduce the topic at hand. This sort of writing is very niche and only appropriate for essays being graded on a matrix but it slinks into all sorts of writing. Kind of like this:
How to choose the best hair colour for you
Hair colour is defined as the colour of the hair on your head. Everyone has a hair colour - no one is born with transparent hair - and for this reason, it’s imperative you make the right choice about your hair colour.
Choosing a hair colour often comes down to factors like your budget, your hair type, and your skin tone.
The whole first paragraph can be cut. Like this example, your intro para will usually be a bit uncertain, too nice, or just plain unnecessary. People are busy; you are busy; we all know what hair is. It’s kinder to just get straight into what you’re saying and cut it.** First impressions are everything so put whatever brain energy you have into making a good one and the rest will probably be fine.
One more thing. If your intro para contains niceties and you want to keep them in because you’re a nice person and you want everyone to like you all the time and if they don’t you will just DIE, move the niceties to the bottom of the email, like a little email desert. A serious roast dinner with veggies and then a little ‘Hope the kids are well and your dog’s anal glands have calmed down! Speak soon!’ with ice cream for afters.
TL;DR? Brutally edit or cut the first paragraph of whatever you’re writing. It was your warm-up and it was probably bad.
*This was my terrible intro para that I deleted: “Good writing, like gymnastics, requires practice and good practice requires a warm-up otherwise you risk falling off and giving yourself a wedgie with the balance beam.*” I wrote it on a plane after watching an episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt that flashes back to Gretchen’s childhood as an ‘80s gymnast, with a hairy Eastern European coach, doing “Pepsi Cola flips” and a ”rock and roll Elvis dismount”. It makes very little sense! I just wanted to talk about gymnastics.
** The caveat here is SEO. Trying to get keywords into the first para or headings of a webpage will produce stilted paragraphs because you’re writing for a web crawler that will scan and index your copy rather than a person. But at least the bad intro paragraphs have a function.
Once again, in lieu of a relevant picture, please enjoy this image of a biblically accurate Furby, available to buy here on etsy for AUD$489.52