Letters Craft / Craft

Openings: anything but hoping this finds you well

The first line is where most letters quietly give up.

The pleasantry opening is not rude. It is worse than rude: it is empty, and it announces in eight words that nothing personal is coming. It exists because starting is hard and a formula lets you skip the hard part. But the reader has already opened the envelope. They are with you. Spending the first line on nothing is spending your best moment on nothing.

Better openings tend to do one of three things. They begin in the middle, at the thought that made you pick up the pen, so the reader arrives with you rather than behind you. They begin with a small concrete image (something you saw this morning, a thing on your desk, weather that reminded you of them) and let it carry into the reason for writing. Or they simply state the purpose without ceremony, which is the right choice for hard letters and better than people expect for ordinary ones.

A useful discipline: write the letter, then delete the first paragraph and see whether anything was lost. Very often the second paragraph was the real beginning, and the first was you clearing your throat. Nobody needs to hear you clear your throat. Cut it, and start where you actually started.