Cut the First Paragraph: Why Farsi Intros Slow Your Text

That is, you open the draft and read from the beginning. The first paragraph of every section is polite, orderly, and does no useful work. It announces what you are going to discuss, and then the second paragraph says exactly that. You tell yourself, “If I remove this, nothing is lost.” You are almost always right. Deleting the first paragraph is one of the lowest-cost, highest-yield things you can do when editing Persian prose; not because first paragraphs are bad, but because they were usually written for the writer, not the reader.

Why Does the First Paragraph of Every Section Turn into Introductory Filler?

Writing, like running, requires a warm-up; but unlike running, the warm-up remains in the text. When you write the first sentence, you do not yet know what you will have discovered by the end of the section. So you start with something safe: defining the topic, a reminder, or an always-true general statement. That paragraph is the paragraph before understanding; that is why its tone is cautious and its content empty.

The second factor is linguistic habit. In the Persian essay-writing tradition, plunging abruptly into the discussion was for a time considered a sign of rudeness or haste, and a “brief introduction” was part of a text’s distinctiveness. This legacy is still alive in administrative and academic prose; even when the subject is technical and dry, the writer feels obliged to spend a few sentences clearing their throat. William Zinsser, in “On Writing Well,” calls this very move “clearing the throat” and says the editor’s first job is to clear it out.

In contemporary Persian fiction, this habit has become less common; Hedayat begins “The Blind Owl” with a specific night, not with an introduction to the narrator, and this pattern is more common in the work of writers after him. But in nonfiction, the essay, the web article, and instructional text, the introductory filler paragraph still has a firm place.

Signs of an Introductory Filler Paragraph

You cannot identify a bad paragraph by feel alone; it has signs. If two of the following appear in a single paragraph, there is a high chance it can be deleted:

• It begins with phrases such as “in this section,” “before anything else,” “as you know,” or “it should be noted.”
• Its verbs are generic: we examine, we will see, it was mentioned; rather than came, broke, measured.
• In place of a proper name, number, or scene, an abstract noun sits: “the importance of this issue,” “attention to this point.”
• If you swap it with the third paragraph, nothing in the text falls apart; a sign that it is not connected to any specific place.
• After reading it, the reader still cannot say what they learned.

Six Recurring Patterns in Persian Prose

1. The map paragraph: it lists what you will say next; the very thing headings do better.
2. The self-evident definition: “Editing means reviewing a text to improve it.” The sentence is neither wrong nor useful.
3. The caution paragraph: a preemptive move to dismiss imaginary objections: “Of course, this rule has exceptions too.”
4. The compressed historical overview: “Writers have long paid attention to this issue”; a sentence that traverses three hundred years without saying anything.
5. Repeating the heading: you have turned the heading into prose and delivered the same meaning twice.
6. The warm-up: a paragraph in which the writer is still thinking, not the reader.

Deletion in Practice: A Sample Rewrite

Look at this paragraph; it is an example whose counterpart can be found in almost any text:

Before: Editing a text is one of the important stages in the writing process. Many writers believe that editing can improve the quality of a text. In this section, we will examine deleting the first paragraph.

Three sentences, zero information. Now read the same section after deleting the first paragraph and making one small adjustment:

Next: Choose the first paragraph of the section and read it once without that paragraph. If the meaning is the same, delete it. If not, you have found the boundary where the text actually begins—and that itself is an achievement.

The second version is shorter, but it has lost nothing; it has gained something. When the first paragraph goes, the new first sentence bears the burden of beginning, and the writer is forced to make it real. Stephen King has a simple rule in “On Writing”: the second draft is the first draft minus ten percent. In most nonfiction, that ten percent comes from precisely these places.

Deletion Is Surgery, Not Demolition

Not every first paragraph is a warm-up. Never delete three things: a paragraph that introduces the definition of a technical term to which you later refer; a paragraph that establishes a scene or data on which the section depends; and a paragraph that frames the section’s main question. Before deleting, make a separate copy of the text and keep the cut material in a file; much of it will later be useful elsewhere in the article.

The Difference from “Deleting the First Sentence”

These two rules are not similar. Deleting the first sentence concerns the whole text and the impact of the opening: does the opening sentence bear the burden of entering the work, or is it just warm-up noise? Deleting the first paragraph, however, concerns each section and relates to structure: every heading is a new door, and every door has its own threshold. A text can have a brilliant first sentence and still have all six of its sections begin with a warm-up. The former is a matter of tone; the latter is a matter of architecture.

Conclusion

Think of the first paragraph of each section as a carriage placed before the horse: a tool that exists only to get things moving and, once movement begins, is extra weight. The test is simple: read once without it. If the text becomes sharper, delete it; if a gap is felt, that paragraph was doing real work and should stay. The difference between a novice writer and an experienced editor often lies in this small thing: the latter knows the reader starts from the second sentence, and writes the text for that sentence.