Skip the first paragraph

A while ago I read the book “On Writing Well” (amazon affiliate link) by William K. Zinsser. A fantastic book on how to write non-fiction. Amongst the many great suggestions made in the book, there is one suggestion that I find most useful: skip the first paragraph.

Most of us struggle to write the first paragraph and ‘introduce’ our topic. Zinsser suggests to just do away with the first paragraph and start by writing the second paragraph, the meat of the subject matter.

I would offer to extend that gem of advice and suggest that it applies when reading material as well.