
How to begin a text - mwidell
https://micaelwidell.com/how-to-begin-a-text/
======
unoti
In so many endeavors the hardest part is beginning. Starting a new job.
Starting an exercise program. Quitting smoking. Leaving your comfort zone to
do something new. For many people, starting a new software project can be
intimidating: the open green field of endless possibilities can be paralyzing.
Starting a machine learning class has made me feel dumb at first, so I quit.

The trick is to just start, and understand that you may stumble, and when you
do know that you will learn from the failure and keep moving forward. Wanting
perfection immediately without the failure first is where we usually go wrong.

This is what the growth mindset talk is all about. If you absorb these ideas
it can be transformative.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing...](https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve)

~~~
fossuser
As an extension of this I've also found asking questions helps with the growth
mindset.

Often people are afraid to ask questions because they don't want to look
stupid or admit ignorance, but explicitly admitting ignorance and asking what
things mean or how things work in conversation actually has the opposite
effect. You learn a lot faster and more often than not people feel more
comfortable because you're being honest with what you don't understand.

The side effect is that you usually end up looking 'smarter' anyway - somewhat
ironically not asking questions because of fear of looking stupid can lead to
it becoming clear you don't actually understand something you're pretending to
which then _does_ make you look stupid.

I've seen two negative things that can come out of this - the first is the
person that feigns surprise and says 'You don't know what X is?!". More common
in college and around other people who are insecure about their own
intelligence, best response to this is to admit ignorance again and re ask the
question (usually becomes apparent that the person doing this doesn't know
what they're talking about anyway and can't explain it well). I think this
negative attitude is especially bad because it can disproportionately affect
women in early CS because they are probably already worried about fitting in
there anyway.

Second negative thing is that asking questions when you _do_ know the answer
to show how smart you are is not the same thing as admitting ignorance and
asking questions to learn - it comes across as obvious and is annoying.

Long answer, but generally agree that growth mindset and treating negative
experiences as 'learning experiences' is the way to go.

------
henrik_w
Something similar works when coding too: begin with ugly code that only solves
a simple case. Then keep iterating and refactoring until it is good. Trying to
get it right from the beginning just means you don't get started.

~~~
0898
Business documents often begin with what I call 'corporate throat clearing'.
Same principle.

------
gk1
It's like making pancakes. The first pancake is always going to suck. Just
accept it and get through it so you can make a great batch of pancakes, or
blog posts, or products, or...

~~~
iainmerrick
I've heard lots of people say that, but it almost always just means the pan
isn't hot enough! Wait an extra minute and the first one will usually be fine.

I'm not sure how that translates back to writing, though...

~~~
losteverything
Hand under running kitchen sink.

Shake on frying pan

If droplets wiggle and bounce -> pan hot enough.

~~~
hanoz
(The Leidenfrost effect
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect\)))

~~~
reitanqild
Direct, working link, parent includes one of the parenthesis it seems:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect)

~~~
ramshorns
Non-mobile link:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect)

------
Animats
Summary: _" just start typing. ... delete until the first sentence is suitable
to begin the text."_

That's a useful training aid, but shouldn't be necessary every time. After a
few tries, starting an essay or post should be automatic. Writing a coherent
essay is usually taught in high school. Strunk's classic "The Elements of
Style" remains useful.

This problem afflicts some how-to videos. Starting with "Hi, how are you" in a
one-way medium is pointless. How-to material should start with what you're
going to do, go on to how to do it, and end with a recap of what you did.

 _Always engage brain before putting mouth in gear._

~~~
klodolph
> After a few tries, starting an essay or post should be automatic.

That's my experience for the kind of essays they expect in college, but I when
I want to write something for public consumption it's going to take more
effort. The coherent essay that you learned to write and high school and
served well in college may be informative, but it's still going to be boring.
Capturing interest is still hard even once you have the mechanics of essay
structure down.

Or at least it is for me. I'm less than fond of Strunk & White. These days I'd
recommend _Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace_ over _Elements of Style._

As for the "hi", that actually does serve a purpose in one-way mediums. It
takes time for our brains to adapt to the speech of a new speaker, so it's
common to miss the first thing that someone says. But if everyone says "hi"
first, then your brain has a split-second to adapt to new voices before
hearing something new and interesting.

------
itsmemattchung
I agree, somewhat.

It's also a question of how one approaches writing: pansing vs plotting. Some
authors, like Stephen King, swear by pansing and begin by forcing themselves
to produce a certain number or words; whether it starts with character
development or the plot, they exercise their powers of putting words on paper.
Some authors, like J.K. Rowling, take a different approach and begin with
sketching, diagraming, etc. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive,
though.

Sometimes, even in the same piece of writing, I bounce back and forth between
the two strategies.

~~~
pimlottc
I'm sorry, "pansing"? Is that a typo?

~~~
tomcam
"Pantsing" is the correct verb. It means writing by the seat of one's pants,
i.e. just making it up as you go along. It is recently coined jargon by the
online writing community.

------
awinter-py
'Start in the middle' is only half the answer. An introduction has to teach
the reader enough about the topic to care about the main idea (i.e. exposition
in fiction). You can start in medias res (a la the iliad) but you may end up
circling back in a flashback (a la the odyssey, odysseus telling his journey
to menelaos' court).

Starting in the middle is great if your reader already knows the backstory,
but you alienate everyone but your core audience. That's expensive whether
you're writing a blog post or a hollywood blockbuster.

It's a fair assumption that your reader came to you on the promise of the
title of your piece. You have to fulfill the promise of that topic or at least
give a tidbit soon enough that your audience doesn't give up and leave. You
_can_ tell a book by its cover because books with misleading covers don't
sell.

Balancing exposition against delivering on your genre promise is a 'theory of
mind' skill that the best writers have in spades. Think of the first 10
minutes of star wars: scary villain darth vader (check) strolling through a
sci-fi spaceship (check). Gun-toting strong princess (check) needing a rescue
(check) sends her sci-fi robots (check) to get help. Next scene: crappy
teenager main character (that's your audience, check) buys same robots.

The order of the villain / princess / hero scenes are optimized to serve the
'message for help / hero to the rescue' exchange. If this were a blog post
you'd still have that 'problem / solution' structure but in both cases you
need to be checking all your genre points and delivering breadcrumbs of the
genre or topic that the reader is here to consume as you inform the reader
enough to care about your argument.

------
idlewords
I like the term "throat-clearing" for the preliminary bits of writing, or the
first parts of a talk. Nothing feels better than to just cut it.

------
amelius
The worst way to begin a text: In capter 1, we will describe ..., then in
chapter 2 we will take a look at ..., and then in chapter 3, we ...

~~~
pathsjs
The worst way to end a chapter is "in this chapter we have seen...".
Unfortunately that seems to common in programming texts, for whatever reason

~~~
Kluny
It's because some teacher somewhere along the way came up with this writing
advice, which we all received in high school:

"First, tell them what you're going to tell them. Then, tell them. Then, tell
them what you told them."

Following that structure leads to terrible, boring writing. The only useful
part is the second sentence.

------
lucaslazaro
Your good start sentence will come after "about 2-3 sentences in" it seems too
optimistic, maybe for experienced writers that may be truth. I more pruned to
believe the "Accept you will get it wrong the first nine times and only by the
tenth time you'll succeed" \- Edward B. Burger

------
Semiapies
Really: just write, then revise. Nothing special about the beginning. What
hung me up as a writer for much of my life was not realizing I should get a
rough draft down instead of editing as I wrote.

------
clydethefrog
For me it really helped to use a simple editor. Focuswriter [1], Sublime with
a simple theme for Markdown files [2] or just good old notepad (the digital or
analog one). Or use WordStar, like Sawyer and George R. R. Martin.

[1] [https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/](https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/) [2]
[https://github.com/revolunet/sublimetext-markdown-
preview](https://github.com/revolunet/sublimetext-markdown-preview)

------
panglott
Don't start at the beginning. Start with what you really want to write, then
go back and see what the beginning should be.

------
genghisjahn
I've also heard this as, "Cut the first chapter from your novel, that's where
all the boring stuff is."

~~~
logfromblammo
If you start _in medias res_ to begin with, you can just skip writing the
boring part.

~~~
bahjoite
I'm procrastinating instead of beginning the documentation for some code. I've
decided to start (this minute) _in medias res_. Thanks for the tip.

------
combatentropy
From the article:

    
    
      > You delete until you reach the first sentence
      > that feels elegant and suitable to begin the text.
      > Usually you will find it about 2-3 sentences in.
    

Judging by most articles I read, I would say it's more like the first 2-3
paragraphs in.

------
munificent
This tangles up a few seemingly related questions:

1\. "How to begin _writing_ a text." How do you get yourself going so you
aren't stuck on a blank page?

2\. "How to _write the beginning_ of a text." What is the process you take to
determine the first sentence of a piece of writing?

3\. "How to begin a text." After you've gone through that process, what kind
of opening sentence should you end up with?

The suggestion to just delete the first couple of sentences is an OK one. I
think the important part is that it helps solve the first problem—how to get
moving at all so you are past the blank page. And the key insight is to
realize that _everything is still mutable_. Writing is not committing. Editing
isn't either, for that matter. Only publishing is. Until then, it's all
unfired clay and you can play with it to your heart's content.

I think deleting the first couple of sentences is a moderately OK suggestion
for the second one. Deleting _any_ sentences that don't carry weight is always
a good thing, and the first few are likely to be unuseful. But there's a good
change that the next few sentences need work too. In a first draft, every line
is suspect.

I don't think the article tells you much about what a good first sentence
looks like. I don't necessarily think it needs to have "useful content". When
I write, especially for the web where attention spans are measured in
nanoseconds, the _entire_ goal of my first sentence is to get you to read the
first paragraph. The goal of the first paragraph is to get you to read the
first section. Then I start getting to the meat of the piece.

Often that means the first sentence is a hook. It may be deliberately
emotional to get you excited about continuing to read. Or it may raise a
question you want answered or claim to teach you something you want to know.
Sometimes I just try to use interesting enough language or imagery to get you
excited about the pure joy of reading.

Once I've done that, I've got a little more slack, a little more of your good
faith, that I can then use to draw you through the rest of the work. If I'm
trying to do something like explain how a garbage collector works, or describe
a feature of a programming language you've never heard of, I need that initial
burst of interest to get you to keep moving.

Then it's up to me to make the rest of the piece satisfying enough to be glad
that I sucked you in.

------
projektir
And, yet, so many times I just started writing and what came out was garbage.

I'm rather perplexed by how useful the advice to start appears to be
perceived.

------
ZoFreX
I love this advice. I think it would apply to talks and presentations too,
there's often an awkward and unnecessary pre-amble.

------
paulmooreparks
I had a rather long comment, but when I started deleting the fluff at the
beginning I realised I had nothing to say.

------
chumich1
I just started my first blog and was struggling to get started writing. Thanks
for the advice!

------
asimuvPR
Applies to code as well.

