How to Package Big Ideas into Small Packages

What's the most important writing skill? Perhaps you might say being "concise" or writing "clearly." Yawn. Of course those are fine, but generic goals like "write concisely" won't make much real difference in your everyday writing habits. So, let us offer another top writing skill (one you can start practicing today): distilling complex points into sentence-length packages.

Distilling complex ideas down into small packages may be the most powerful, effective arrow in your quiver. If you want to hone a skill that will produce big results—this is it. Indeed, you briefly learned how to distill ideas into short sentences in college. You included that magical thesis sentence—the main point of your paper—every time you wrote about the history of Prussia.

But a thesis sentence can be so much more, especially for us legal writers. You can use a thesis sentence to distill arguments or ideas into a small package that can be swallowed in a single gulp. Ernest Hemingway knew how to do it: 

A lot of ideas are packed into those six words. History. Dread. Regret.

And look at how much Judge Carnes packs into a short line, albeit broken up with some periods: 

We know the entire story (or at least what matters). Justice Gorsuch knows how to pack a lot into one sentence, too: 

This inauspicious sentence actually divulges a lot, including the obscurity of the provisions and that two separate provisions matter. 

Distilling down big ideas into short sentences is a powerful move anywhere in your document—like the first and last line of a section. But to get the most out of this move, try applying it to perhaps the most pivotal part of your writing—the paragraph. The best writers swear by the power of the paragraph. As Paul Auster said: "a paragraph ... is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity." So what sentence could be more important to nail than the first sentence of your paragraphs? 

First, try to encapsulate the real point of your paragraph—its thesis—in the first sentence. This has tons of benefits for you: it ensures that even a skimming reader will take away your main points, and it will frame the key ideas for your reader as they read the rest of each paragraph.

Look at how this Justice gets to the heart of her paragraph with the first sentence. You don't even need to keep going to get the point: 

You could imagine a blander topic sentence: 

Or even worse, a first sentence that dives right into the details: 

Second, style is paramount in your thesis sentences. Your reader may not make it past the first sentence, and their impression of your credibility, paragraph to paragraph, is set by the first sentence. So, spend extra time getting that first sentence just right.

The best thesis sentences contain words or phrases that will stick with your reader like a slogan. This means picking particular words or phrases that will be hard to forget.

Often you need to use the first sentence of your paragraph to help make a smooth transition from the prior paragraph. Try to incorporate the transition into your thesis sentence and still include the key content; if that is impossible, do a quick transition sentence followed by your real thesis sentence: 

This thesis sentence transitions and sums up the key point, all in one.

Don't get caught up on the thesis sentence being a single sentence. If you need a couple short sentences to sum up your paragraph before diving in, so be it. Here is a three-sentence thesis to a long paragraph by Justice Gorsuch: 

Try to construct thesis sentences that will frame how your reader sees the rest of the paragraph's content. Be subtle, but the more you can prime your reader the deeper your points will penetrate. Take this example, where a judge creates the lens he hopes the reader will use when reading the rest of the paragraph:

And you can use your thesis sentence to roadmap points if you have more than one in a paragraph: 

You can also use the concept of a thesis to write entire thesis paragraphs. Look how Justice Kagan sums up the following section in a short, idea-packed paragraph:

Practice taking big ideas and wrapping them in neat little packages—the first sentences of your paragraphs. You can start practicing this skill today. Simply take a piece you're working on and go through, paragraph by paragraph, converting the first sentence of each into an idea-packed thesis. Your readers will thank you.