perfect paragraph lecture

1. Building a Perfect Paragraph
or as close as we can come…

2. Sentence Construction
• The only purpose for creating a sentence is to house an idea
• The language we choose determines how clearly this idea is expressed
• The structure of the sentence determines how an idea is understood by
the reader.

3. For example:
“The main struggle, especially when you are young, is avoid four things: desire,
greed, pride, and attachment.”
What is the tone here?
What kind of person might be writing here?
What is the writer’s purpose here?

4. For example:
“ In youth, pride, greed, desire, and attachment must all be avoided, even if you
struggle.”
Is the tone different here?
Here, the concept of struggle at the beginning of the last sentence has been
moved to the end of this sentence:
How does that change the tenor of the sentence?

5. Answer the following question 2x:
• What is the main struggle in youth?
• Reply once with the most powerful idea at the end of the sentence, with a specific
tone
(ex. “The main struggle, especially when you are young, is avoid four things: desire, greed, pride, and
attachment.”)
• Reply a second time with the structure reversed, and dramatically modify the tone
(ex. “ In youth, pride, greed, desire, and attachment must all be avoided, even if you struggle.”)

6. Idea Creation and Sentences
• Importantly and critically, if we have no idea – the sentence has no
reason to exist.
• The structure and language of the sentence does not only depend on
the idea we are trying to express, it depends on what tone and
attitude we’d like to impose on the reader.
• It also, however, depends on one more thing…

7. Sentences and More Sentences
• Each sentence must be necessary to the expression of a larger
controlling idea, often contained in a paragraph.
• The sentence before will usually determine how our sentence will
begin
• The idea and sentence after will usually determine how we how we
want our sentence to end
• But sometimes this can be manipulated, too.

8. Paragraph
• In essence, a paragraph is simply a logical series of ideas, each building
to create a larger, more complicated or complex idea in the reader’s
mind
• A finished text is just that – a nested collection of ideas
• The idea you choose to express as is as (if not more) important than
how you choose to express it

9. A Perfect Paragraph
• What is a perfect paragraph?
1. It contains one specific idea. The paragraph is controlled by this
idea; the idea is interesting and complex, original or necessary to the
reader in some way.
2. Each sentence in the paragraph does work. The sentences break
down the larger idea into many smaller, more clear and concise ideas.

10. Sentences in Perfect Paragraphs
1. These sentences are structured and written in order to
help the reader understand the meaning and tone of the
idea.
2. Each sentence is consciously structured and crafted.
3. Each sentence leads logically to the one after it, expanding
on, explaining, or contributing to the idea.
4. Each sentence picks up deftly from the sentence before it,
and moves the reader seamlessly on to the next idea.

11. Why Perfect Paragraphs?
• Often, many pages of writing can be honed and manipulated so that the
entire idea can be beautifully managed in the space of one paragraph.
• This allows our writing to have density and immediacy. If the sentences are
structured well and consciously, the reader will have easier experience.
• We want our ideas to be understood as we understand them: perfect
paragraphs mean that we are in control. They assert and maintain authority.

12. Perfect Paragraphs
• Sentence creation: idea placement, language, and syntax
• Sentence linkage: relationships between sentences, logical
progression through many sentences
• Paragraph idea: introduction, development, and expansion
** This may occur over the course of multiple drafts**

13. Writing “Process”
• Idea Creation: brainstorming, freewriting, sitting there and thinking,
reading and taking notes, discussion
• Paragraph Creation:
• First Draft: Try to name and explain the idea; describe and develop it as your
mind naturally suggests. Slop it on the plate.
• First Draft: Review your draft and reverse-outline the path of the concepts.
Revise, add, or re-order the sequence of ideas.
• Second Draft: Rewrite the paragraph in a seamless and logical progression.
• Third Draft: Rewrite and restructure each sentence for a logical and powerful
reading experience.

14. Topic/Stress Positions in Sentences
• Information is interpreted more easily and more uniformly if it is placed
where most readers expect find it.
• Readers have relatively fixed expectations about where in the
structure of prose they will encounter particular items of its
substance.

15. Topic/Stress Positions
• If writers can become consciously aware of these locations, they can
better control the degrees of recognition and emphasis a reader will
give to the information presented.
• Good writers are intuitively aware of these expectations; that is why
their prose has what we call "shape."

16. The Stress Position
• The stress position is at the end of a sentence. The new or exciting
information is placed in the stress position.
• The stress position can change in size from sentence to sentence.
Sometimes it consists of a single word; sometimes it extends to several
lines. The definitive factor is this: The stress position coincides with
the moment of syntactic closure.

17. The Stress Position
• A reader has reached the beginning of the stress position
when she knows there is nothing left in the clause or
sentence but the material presently being read.
• When the writer puts the emphatic material of a sentence in
any place other than the stress position, one of two things
can happen; both are bad.

18. The First Bad Thing…
• First, the reader might find the stress position occupied by
material that clearly is not worthy of emphasis. In this case,
the reader must discern, without any additional structural
clue, what else in the sentence may be the most likely
candidate for emphasis.
• In sentences that are long, dense or sophisticated, chances
soar that the reader will not interpret the prose precisely as
the writer intended.

19. The Second Bad Thing…
• The reader may find the stress position occupied by
something that does appear capable of receiving emphasis,
even though the writer did not intend to give it any stress.
• In that case, the reader is highly likely to emphasize this
imposter material, and the writer will have lost an important
opportunity to influence the reader’s interpretive process.

20. So . . .
To summarize the principles connected with the stress
position, we have the proverbial wisdom, "Save the best for last." In
the stress position the reader needs and expects closure and
fulfillment.
In the topic position the reader needs and expects perspective
and context. To summarize the principles connected with the
other end of the sentence, which we will call the topic position,
we have its proverbial contradiction, "First things first."

21. The Topic Position
• The topic position is the very first bit of the sentence.
• With so much of reading comprehension affected by what
shows up in the topic position, it behooves a writer to
control what appears at the beginning of sentences with
great care.

22. The Topic Position
• Readers also expect the material occupying the topic
position to provide them with linkage (looking
backward) and context (looking forward).
• The information in the topic position prepares the
reader for upcoming material by connecting it backward
to the previous discussion.

23. Topic/Stress
• Usually, the topic of every sentence in a paragraph is the
same, similar, or closely linked words, phrases, or ideas. The
topic position is always at the beginning of the sentence.
• The stress position is always at or near the end of the
sentence, and always contains, important, emphatic, or new
material.

24. Example
• Here’s an example of a paragraph, written by David Brooks
of the New York Times, titled “What Suffering Does,” in
April 2014.
• Notice how he keeps his topic positions consistent, while
continually propelling his emphatic stressed ideas at the
end of his sentences

25. The Topic Position
“But the big thing that suffering does is it takes you outside of precisely that logic
that the happiness mentality encourages. Happiness wants you to think about
maximizing your benefits. Difficulty and suffering sends you on a different course.
First, suffering drags you deeper into yourself. The people who endure suffering,
according to theologian Paul Tillich, are taken beneath the routines of life and find
they are not who they believed themselves to be. The agony involved in, say,
composing a great piece of music or the grief of having lost a loved one smashes
through what they thought was the bottom floor of their personality, revealing an
area below, and then it smashes through that floor revealing another area. Then,
suffering gives people a more accurate sense of their own limitations, what they can
control and cannot control. When people are thrust down into these deeper zones,
they are forced to confront the fact they can’t determine what goes on there.

26. The Stress Position
“But the big thing that suffering does is it takes you outside of precisely that
logic that the happiness mentality encourages. Happiness wants you to think about
maximizing your benefits. Difficulty and suffering sends you on a different course.
First, suffering drags you deeper into yourself. The people who endure suffering,
according to theologian Paul Tillich, are taken beneath the routines of life and find
they are not who they believed themselves to be. The agony involved in, say,
composing a great piece of music or the grief of having lost a loved one smashes
through what they thought was the bottom floor of their personality, revealing an
area below, and then it smashes through that floor revealing another area. Then,
suffering gives people a more accurate sense of their own limitations, what they can
control and cannot control. When people are thrust down into these deeper zones,
they are forced to confront the fact they can’t determine what goes on there.

27. Progression of Stresses
• The progression of stressed information acts as a logical map
through the paragraph, culminating in the larger argument or
idea.
• Mapping out each of the ideas about the topic you want to
emphasize can help organize your paragraph, and make it
logically-bulletproof. For example:

28. Progression of Stressed Information
1. takes you outside of precisely that logic that the happiness mentality encourages.
2. does not maximize your benefits.
3. sends you on a different course.
4. drags you deeper into yourself.
5. not who they believed themselves to be.
6. revealing an area below,
7. revealing another area.
8. accurate sense of their own limitations, what they can control and cannot control.
9. forced to confront the fact they can’t determine what goes on there.

29. Progression of Stressed Information
• Notice how all of these stresses apply to the central topic (suffering)
and how each leads logically into the next idea.
• After one stress is introduced, the logical reader’s question ABOUT that
stressed material is answered by the next stress.
• You can outline your entire essay by mapping out each of your
stresses!

30. Process Assignment: Synthesis Paragraph
Now that you know the basics of what goes into building a perfect
paragraph, let’s practice this skill and the skill of incorporating and
synthesizing outside source material!
1. Read “Online Connections Can be Superficial, but the Examples of That
Are Outliers” and watch Sherry Turkle’s “Connected, but Alone?” in the
“Readings” folder
2. Follow the instructions under “Process Assignment: Synthesis
Paragraph” drop-box to practice writing your perfect paragraph