A “trick” for making a long introduction seem short is by repeating the first 1/3/1 structure over again, connecting them with a subhead. Here’s how it works: This first sentence is your opener. This second sentence clarifies your opener. This third sentence reinforces the point you’re making with some sort of credibility or amplified description. And this fourth sentence rounds out your argument. This fifth sentence is your conclusion. Now, here’s a new first sentence as a second opener. And this second sentence clarifies your second opener. This third sentence reinforces the new point you’re making — with some sort of credibility or amplified description. And this fourth sentence rounds out the second point of your argument. This fifth sentence is the big conclusion of your introduction. Now, unless you knew what to look for here, you might read a piece structured this way and think, “Well that’s just a long introduction.” But there’s a lot happening beneath the surface that makes an introduction like this work — specifically how it moves the reader quickly down the page. The other reason why repeating the 1/3/1 structure works so well is because it forces you, the writer, to be conscious and clear about what you’re trying to accomplish in each section. Within the first five sentences of the piece, what are you trying to say? What’s the one singular point you’re trying to drive home? What’s this story really about? And then, again in the second 1/3/1 section, what’s the new point you’re looking to drive home? Why is this also important to the reader? Does it really warrant having its own section? Thinking in “chunks” like this is how you make your writing more potent.
1/3/1 The 1/3/1 structure is the best place to start. In 1/3/1, you have one strong opening sentence, three description sentences, and then one conclusion sentence. Visually, this is a powerful way to tell the reader you aren’t going to make them suffer through big blocks of text, and that you have their best interests in mind. Here’s how it works: This first sentence is your opener. This second sentence clarifies your opener. This third sentence reinforces the point you’re making with some sort of credibility or amplified description. And this fourth sentence rounds out your argument, guiding the reader toward your conclusion. This fifth sentence is your strong conclusion. Now, just so you can understand why this technique is so powerful, not just from a written perspective but from a visual perspective, look at those same five sentences all clumped together. This first sentence is your opener. This second sentence clarifies your opener. This third sentence reinforces the point you’re making with some sort of credibility or amplified description. And this fourth sentence rounds out your argument, guiding the reader toward your conclusion. This fifth sentence is your strong conclusion. If you clicked on an article and were immediately confronted with a five-sentence paragraph, you would feel (viscerally in your body) the weight of what you were about to read.
Lazy writers do this by saying things like, “Which is why, if you want to know more, you should check out my website, and if you want to hear what I really think about this topic, you should check out my YouTube,” blah blah blah. Readers hate that shit. Instead, just say what you want to say in this one individual piece, and be done. Let there be some dissonance in the air. Let readers feel like you could have said more, but didn’t. This is what gets them to come back again and again.
What hooks us is their consistency, their improvement over time, and most importantly, their ability to create something that resonates with us in that particular category. By “following” them, what we’re really saying is we believe what they create tomorrow will be “As Great” or “Better” than what they created today — and we want to be there to experience it.
Here’s an example of the 1/3/1 + Bullets structure from my article, “5 Serious Things You Should Know About Money Before You Turn 30.” Money, and “financial freedom,” is a skill. No one ever tells you what you should know about money when you’re young. There isn’t a class in high school, or even college, where a professor sits you down and says, “Now listen up: mastering money is no different than learning how to shoot a basketball or paint a picture. It just takes practice.” Instead, money remains (for many people) this massive unknown in their daily lives. They don’t know how to make more of it. They don’t know how to spend less of it. They don’t know how (they’ll ever) save it. And they don’t know what to do with it once they have it. And that’s a big problem.
For example, here’s an excerpt from my article, “How Do Some People Succeed So Quickly? They Approach Life Like This.” Every single moment, of every single day, you are “practicing” something. If you don’t floss in the morning, you’re practicing not-flossing. If you choose to eat quinoa and veggies instead of Frosted Flakes, you’re practicing eating for fuel instead of eating for enjoyment. If you yell at your significant other, you’re practicing a lack of self-control. If you watch TV instead of working on your book, you’re practicing postponing your dream of becoming a novelist. The moment you start to see the world this way, you start to realize that every single moment, of every single day, you are practicing something. And how aware you are of whatever it is you’re practicing dictates how consciously (or unconsciously) you move toward or away from where it is you actually want to be: whether that’s a destination, a physical place, or an emotional state. Here, I am combining the 1/1/1/1 structure with repetition to give a reader plenty of actionable examples without forcing them to read through paragraphs of prose. I’m only giving them what they absolutely need — and then once I’ve given them a handful of examples, I follow up with a longer, more descriptive paragraph (alternating rhythms).
The entire — and I mean this quite literally, the ENTIRE — art and business and “game” of online writing is rooted in understanding what category you’re actually competing within. Unless you can consciously name the category, you will never have a firm grasp as to whether your work is “Better” or “Worse” than the competition. It isn’t until you understand the category, and see “The Ladder” that exists within your category, that you can begin climbing your way to the top.
The real strategy here is to make the reader feel like they’ve stepped into the middle of a piece by the time they’ve finished reading the very first sentence. There’s something jarring (in a good way) about seeing the second sentence of an article bolded as a subhead. It tells the reader, “We’re already getting to the good part,” encouraging them to keep reading.
1 + Subhead And finally, if you want to just get straight to the point, why waste any time? One sentence is all you need in order to frame the piece — before immediately hitting the reader with the first milestone and subhead. Here’s how it works: This first sentence is what the whole piece is about. And this first subhead is what we’re going to dig into right here, right now. I don’t recommend this technique for everything you write, but as a way to change things up, it can be a powerful mechanism for turning your Rate of Revelation knob to level 10. Here’s an example of the 1 + Subhead structure from my article, “I Used To Have Social Anxiety. These 4 Mental Shifts Made Me Confident.” Most people see confidence as something you’re born with — you either have it or you don’t. But the truth is, confidence is just like any other personality trait. If you want to be more patient, you have to practice patience. If you want to be more compassionate, you have to practice compassion. If you want to be more thoughtful, you have to practice doing things intentionally. And if you want to be confident, well then, you simply have to practice being confident.