Reading time: About 3 minutes
Instead of throat-clearing in writing, just encourage yourself to get to the point more expeditiously….
Someone sent me an email last week. The first paragraph was warm and friendly and ran to six sentences. Not one of them said anything.
The writer was trying to be courteous. She wanted to “ease me in,” before getting down to business, the way you might offer a guest a drink and chat about their drive before you sit down to discuss why you actually invited them over. I understood the impulse. I’ve felt it myself more times than I can count.
But here’s the trouble. Her real first sentence, the one with an idea in it, didn’t appear until paragraph three.
This is throat-clearing, and almost every writer I’ve coached does it.
What throat-clearing actually is
Throat-clearing is the writing you do to warm yourself up. You’re not saying anything yet. You’re making noise to get ready.
It looks like this: “In this piece, I want to explore some thoughts about…” Or the windup that circles the topic for a whole paragraph before it dares to settle on a point.
Writers do this because starting is hard, and the blank page is frightening. So, we type a few easy sentences to feel like we’ve begun. We just haven’t begun the part the reader came for.
The good news is that it’s easy to cut. It almost always sits at the top of a draft, and you can lop it off without losing a thing. Your second or third paragraph is usually your real opening.
So, what’s courtesy, then?
Not every bit of framing is throat-clearing. Some of it is real courtesy to the reader, and you should keep it.
Courtesy is the work you do to help the reader follow you. It’s a signpost that tells them where you’re headed. A line that acknowledges the question forming in their mind, then promises to answer it. These exist for the reader’s sake, not yours.
The test is simple: Ask one question of every sentence near the top of your draft: who is this for? If it exists to make you feel ready to write, cut it. If it exists to help the reader, keep it.
An example…
Say you’re writing about sleep. Here’s a throat-clearing opener:
“Sleep is something we all do every night, and it has fascinated people for centuries. There are many things to say about it. In this article, I’d like to share a few of them.”
Three sentences. Zero ideas. The reader knows nothing they didn’t know before.
Now the courteous version:
“Most of us sleep badly and blame the wrong thing. We blame the mattress or the stress. The real culprit is usually the hour we go to bed.”
See the difference? The second one hands the reader something on the very first line, then shows them where the piece is going. That’s courtesy. The rest is substance.
Why this matters
Readers decide whether to keep going within a sentence or two. If your opening is throat-clearing, you’ve spent your most valuable real estate on nothing, and many readers won’t bother to stay.
Most writers, when I point this out, feel a flash of recognition followed by relief. They thought their slow openings were a kindness to the reader. They were really a security blanket. And a security blanket is much easier to throw away than a virtue.
The habit that fixes the problem
When you finish a draft, find the first sentence that carries an actual idea. Then ask whether everything above it has earned its place. Often, it hasn’t.
Drag that meaningful sentence up to the front, and delete the framing that served only your nerves. Your reader will never miss it.
What they wanted was for you to begin, and now you have.
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Something I’m loving right now…
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My video podcast last week described how to better plan your writing time. You can watch the video or read the transcript, and you can also subscribe to my YouTube channel.
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Do you indulge in throat-clearing in writing? How do you break the habit? We can all learn from each other, so please, share your thoughts with my readers and me in the comments section, below. And congratulations to R. Kent Barnard, the winner of this month’s book prize, for a comment on my June 30/26 blog post about recommended books for 2026. (Please send me your email address, Kent.) If you comment on today’s post (or any others) by July 31/26, I’ll put you in a draw for a digital copy of my first book, 8 1/2 Steps to Writing Faster, Better. To enter, please scroll down to the comments, directly underneath the related posts links, below. You don’t have to join Disqus to post! Read my tutorial to learn how to post as a guest. (It’s easy!)
