When you start a chapter, especially early chapters in your book, you’ll often face a very specific writing challenge: Fitting everything in the first paragraph. The problem, you’ll find, is that you have too many things to say, and you can’t cram them all in at once.

Say you’re writing a book titled How to Succeed with Body Language. To start chapter 1, you will probably want to convey the core issue your book addresses. But if you’re like most writers, you’ll find that your chosen problem statement requires a lot of background that you feel must go with it—not just an explanation but an example, definition, context, caveats, ramifications, a touch of color.

How do you convey not only your main point accurately but do so while getting the background and backstory wedged in. You somehow have to orient your reader.

To illustrate how you might include all this information without overloading paragraph one, let’s assume chapter 1 has the following message: Ignorance of your own body language can make you an easy victim for other people. Let’s also assume you feel it is imperative to include a definition of body language, the situations in which body language matters, suggestions on how much a person has at risk, and an example to make your point concrete.

Scale, scope, description, importance—you want all that right up front. If you try to put all of those things in one paragraph, your foreground will get buried by your background—and certainly confuse readers.

There are three ways to tackle this challenge. All three require deferring some content to highlight other content. I call this the art (and craft) of deferral. Before you start drafting your lead, sort through all the apparently essential material and ask:

1. Can I oversimplify my point and introduce caveats later? That is, start with a sweeping generalization and, only in later paragraphs do you hedge the distortions with qualifications to hone your message.

Say you begin: “People who don’t pay attention to their body language get taken advantage of by others. Take the example of Betty Brown, a widow, who goes on a Monday morning to Joe Green’s used car lot. Her agreeable smile signals to Joe that he can quote her a premium price, and that she will give into his price readily....”

The lead overstates. Agreeable smiles don’t always signal acquiescence during negotiation. But the oversimplification has the virtue of capturing the reader’s attention with its clarity. In a later paragraph, you can hedge: “To be sure, smiles don’t always convey meaning quite so clearly....” And then you explain the limitations of your assertion. (Journalists use this technique so often that they call it the “to be sure” paragraph.)

2. Can you choose just a piece of the message to start? After you’ve made your partial point, you can later explain that the subpoint is actually part of a larger message.

So you could begin another chapter. “Just by folding his arms as the neighborhood toughs approached, Jason Murdoch gave the wrong signal...”

The lead uses a specific instance of risky behavior in the face of aggressive adolescent men. After a couple of paragraphs of detailing the woe Jason brings on himself—which could make a riveting opening—you have given yourself breathing room to make your main point. “Jason’s use of his arms is just one example of how body language can put you at risk.”

3. Can you tell readers upfront you have a complicated or multi-part message? Then you can state one piece of the message at a time. Fill in the puzzle step by step.

“The ignorance of body language can, in four different ways, put you at a disadvantage to other people...”

The lead is not very enticing. It sounds like you’re going to take a dry approach to the topic. But its clarity and directness have a lot of appeal. And readers love clarity.

The overarching question, before you begin writing, is to ask how you can break your package of must-have material into smaller, bite-size pieces. How do you guide your reader at a measured and enjoyable pace through your writing. You don’t have to cram all the background into a first paragraph. Defer some of the meal until later. The more you can defer, the sharper you can make your initial point.

[Revised January 2020. Originally published September 27, 2011]