In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
This is a great opening if youre writing a biography of the Messiah.
When youre writing an essay, its OK to start with a few warm-up paragraphs.
But remember to delete them.
Sometimes you spend your first paragraph trying to justify the existence of your piece.
If the piece is any good, it justifies its own existence.
Sometimes the first paragraph is where you make a run at contextualize your specific topic.
Open with a specific thing, then loop back to the general.
I made this a habit in the last year or two in my own Lifehacker posts.
Sometimes you do the reverse: telling a personal anecdote as an intro to a larger topic.
You should probably move this intro down as well.
If that robs the personal story of its purpose, delete it.
Sometimes you spend the first paragraph making jokes.
Or at least I do.
These are the darlings everyone tells you to kill.
Which, by the way, is an unhelpful metaphor.
Editing isnt infanticide, its birth control.
Fix your conclusion
you’re free to probably delete the last paragraph too.
Hell, it’s possible for you to probably delete the last three.
If your last lines add no new information, cut them.
Better to end abruptly than to ruin your piece like Bart SimpsonsLibya is a land of contrasts.
If your last lines massively expand the scope of your essay, cut them.
But you gotta hit the brakes before you drive off a cliff.
Ive driven a few Lifehacker posts off the cliff in the last few paragraphs.
Thats outside the scope of the piece!
It weakens my point.
If I had another chance, I would cut that paragraph.
Go and do likewise.
