All writing requires both creative thinking and technical proficiency. On the far technical side, you have the mechanics of writing, such as knowing how to apply punctuation and grammar rules. On the far creative side, you have the development of ideas and new story lines. Combining these two into a written form that deeply engages your reader and effectively communicates your thoughts requires both sides. This synergy between creativity and technicality is most apparent in the paragraph. Regardless of the type of writing you produce, you have to pay attention to your paragraphs.
1. Basic Paragraph Components
Let’s think about the two basic components of all paragraphs and then examine how we may use them for effective writing.
a. The idea: One paragraph = one central idea. Has someone ever said to you, “Hey, you’ve got a good point there”? Well, that’s what your paragraph does. It makes a point, one point, which is the central idea of the paragraph. You might think of it as the purpose for the paragraph. That one point of a paragraph may be supported by several other ideas, and the paragraph, itself, may be written to support a broader idea, but its purpose remains the same. It stands alone as the vehicle to express one complete idea to the reader.
b. The support: Paragraphs must have both external and internal support for the central idea. External support means the way the central idea of the paragraph connects to the ideas prior to and following the paragraph. (This is called external support because it provides a reason for the central idea to be expressed.) Another way to describe what we mean by “external support” is the way you link the paragraph to its context. Internal support is how the content within a paragraph connects to its central idea. As an analogy, think about branches on a tree. The central idea is the branch. The external support is the main trunk, and the internal support is the leaves that grow from the branch.
If you extend this analogy a bit, you see how branches (i.e., ideas) are connected to each other. Some paragraphs are quite long because, for the purpose of this analogy, the author chose a big branch that has smaller branches growing from it. Some are quite short because the author chose the smallest identifiable branch. In both cases, however, the paragraph has internal and external support.
Since this article is about what happens inside paragraphs, we’ll make the assumption that the idea is clear and focus on the support–what happens inside a paragraph. How do you make those internal and external supports work to express the idea? (more…)
