Paragraphs

Drafting Paragraphs

Grouping Sentences Together to Describe a Single Point

The steps for writing a report are:

• Decide what your audience needs to hear.
• Set your objective for what you will deliver.
• Choose several topics.
• Gather information about those topics.
• Compose your message using one or more paragraphs for each topic.
• Organize those topics, for example, in order of importance.
• Write an introduction telling your audience what you are about to say to them.
• Finish the report by summarizing what you told them, what you have concluded, and what actions they should take.

Stories work similarly. You present your audience with a character who has a problem; some things happen that make the situation worse or better; eventually, the character learns enough to solve this problem, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Planning everything out in advance is crucial. When you do this, the information (or story) usually flows nicely from topic to topic, especially when you compose your paragraphs to address one single idea at a time and conclude the paragraph in a way that leads to the next idea.

However, this is different from how I composed this story. Instead of gathering a number of related ideas leading to a logical ending, I thought up ideas that would allow me to squeeze in many drill words. When you examine the story paragraph by paragraph, you see that the story does not flow well from one idea to the next. Let's take a look.

REVISION #1	ANALYSIS
The alarm rings! Sam springs from his bed and hits the ground running. He grabs the hair gel off the dresser and races out the door. Sam has an important job to do downstairs.	"The alarm rings." Potentially, the story is a wake-up call for a family whose morning routine is off the rails, but the theme is not well developed. Sam's morning routine is the paragraph topic. Sam begins the day racing. He must feel a sense of urgency. What is the emergency? Sam believes he has an important job to do.
Sam arrives just in time. Dad is standing in front of the hall mirror, straightening his tie. He checks his image. A tuft of hair sticks up at the back of Dad's head. (It sticks up every morning.) Dad sighs, and his breath fogs the glass. Sam to the rescue.	The topic of the second paragraph is Dad's morning routine. Dad is not showing a sense of urgency; he is fussing and sighing. Why is Dad calm when Sam is not? We don't know. (Mood changes are not advised.) Now we know Sam's job—rescuing Dad.
Sam stands on a chair beside Dad. He squeezes gel onto his hand and, stretching, smooths down Dad's hair. Dad thanks Sam. Sam applies gel to his own hair. Now both Dad and Sam have well-behaved hair.	Sam helps Dad tidy his hair. But why the initial urgency? Why does Sam think he is rescuing Dad? (We never do get answers because the story lacks a conclusion.)
The morning train departs for the city at 8:00 a.m. sharp. Time to leave for work! Dad kisses Mom goodbye and grabs his cell phone, nearly tripping over the dog as he rushes for the door.	Dad is finally feeling some urgency: he is grabbing, rushing, and tripping. Well, so much for being rescued.
Sam waves goodbye to Dad as he leaves. The dog squeezes by and runs off. Sam shouts, but Chase keeps running. Sam chases after him—in his pajamas! When the dog tires, Sam can catch him. Until then, what chaos! What fun! Chasing Chase!	The story ends where it began: with urgency and a crisis, but no conclusion. Chasing Chase? How did the story get to be about the dog? How did fun enter the story?!? (Fun is a drill word.)

The paragraphs, in isolation, are not too badly written. Each paragraph contains one idea, but some lack a closing. The greatest flaw is that the information does not flow well from one paragraph to another. No overall theme guides the points in the paragraphs to a conclusion. The piece lacks cohesion.

See the story get a complete rewrite—with some planning: A Pup Named Chaos - Planning.

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Sources