Paragraphing Your Thoughts

“Just because no one understands you, it doesn’t mean you’re an artist.”
--Bumper Sticker

We were on our way to see Nana and Papa in Brewster and Margaret finally seemed to get it. She finally grasped that our ride to Cape Cod is broken up into a series of highways: Route 117 takes us to 128; 128 takes us to route 24; 124 leads right into 495, which brings us to 25, and 25 takes us to route 6, which leads us into the heart of Cape Cod. It is the same with our writing: paragraphs are like highways—they “lead us and guide us on our literary journeys. Paragraphs are the routes you choose that take us where you want us (your readers) to go. All that is truly essential is that you—as the writer—understand what you want your readers to experience. Your journey might be a series of meandering country roads, or it might be a straight shot down the Mass Pike. If you were riding in an ambulance with a broken leg, it would be disconcerting to hear the driver say he is going to take you on the “scenic route to the hospital.  By the same token, three thousand miles on I-70 hardly qualifies as a driving tour of the United States! My golden rule for a paragraph is, “As short as they can be, and as long as they have to be.”

Unless you are a completely random conversationalist, you naturally speak in paragraphs. You say something; you elaborate upon it, (or you don’t, if elaborating is not necessary) and you move on.  You think on the fly and engage your listener in the flowing stream of your perspicuity, wit and wisdom. A good series of paragraphs captures the rhythm and subtle majesty of our best conversations, and this is precisely why I am convinced that personal narrative writing is the best way to practice and develop the art of the crafted word. The personal narrative allows us to write from our mind and heart and soul and being as the primary source.  Our individual experiences are the supporting facts around which we weave our tales—small and large, and paragraphs are the stitch that hold together and define this mosaic of our thoughts.

Building a paragraph is not a complex set of rules; it is an attentive and disciplined understanding of what you are trying to convey to your readers in your writing. In the same way, a good writer senses when his or her focus is moving on, and they “break” or “transition” to a new paragraph—but they don’t jump to a new stream—unless the writing style is intentionally at odds with conventional usage. For example, right now, I am reading Cormac McCarthy’s newest novel, The Road. In a post apocalyptic world, he combines the starkness of life and the struggle for survival with an equally stark writing style.  He uses few commas and no apostrophes or quotation marks—even though much of the book is the dialogue between a father and son. He triples spaces between paragraphs so that each paragraph exists almost as a poem and/or story in itself.  The world he describes has been shorn of its beauty, and his style of writing breaks the rules and presents words and phrases and sentences in an equally stark manner.  And, at least for me, it makes for a powerful reading experience. Cormac, as a masterful storyteller, embodies one of my favorite phrases: “If you know the rule, you can break it!”

As you write your next few entries, think about what each paragraph is doing for you. Make your paragraphs work for you, not against you. This is the craft of writing.  As a writer you manipulate the way we think and feel.  You choose the routes, and you direct us to your goal. The blogs are a wonderful place for us to explore new ways of expressing ourselves, and new ways of writing, but we would be wise to always keep the tried and true wisdom of good paragraphing clearly in our vision.

“Just because no one understands you, it doesn’t mean you’re an artist.”
--Bumper Sticker

We were on our way to see Nana and Papa in Brewster and Margaret finally seemed to get it. She finally grasped that our ride to Cape Cod is broken up into a series of highways: Route 117 takes us to 128; 128 takes us to route 24; 124 leads right into 495, which brings us to 25, and 25 takes us to route 6, which leads us into the heart of Cape Cod. It is the same with our writing: paragraphs are like highways—they “lead us and guide us on our literary journeys. Paragraphs are the routes you choose that take us where you want us (your readers) to go. All that is truly essential is that you—as the writer—understand what you want your readers to experience. Your journey might be a series of meandering country roads, or it might be a straight shot down the Mass Pike. If you were riding in an ambulance with a broken leg, it would be disconcerting to hear the driver say he is going to take you on the “scenic route to the hospital.  By the same token, three thousand miles on I-70 hardly qualifies as a driving tour of the United States! My golden rule for a paragraph is, “As short as they can be, and as long as they have to be.”

Unless you are a completely random conversationalist, you naturally speak in paragraphs. You say something; you elaborate upon it, (or you don’t, if elaborating is not necessary) and you move on.  You think on the fly and engage your listener in the flowing stream of your perspicuity, wit and wisdom. A good series of paragraphs captures the rhythm and subtle majesty of our best conversations, and this is precisely why I am convinced that personal narrative writing is the best way to practice and develop the art of the crafted word. The personal narrative allows us to write from our mind and heart and soul and being as the primary source.  Our individual experiences are the supporting facts around which we weave our tales—small and large, and paragraphs are the stitch that hold together and define this mosaic of our thoughts.

Building a paragraph is not a complex set of rules; it is an attentive and disciplined understanding of what you are trying to convey to your readers in your writing. In the same way, a good writer senses when his or her focus is moving on, and they “break” or “transition” to a new paragraph—but they don’t jump to a new stream—unless the writing style is intentionally at odds with conventional usage. For example, right now, I am reading Cormac McCarthy’s newest novel, The Road. In a post apocalyptic world, he combines the starkness of life and the struggle for survival with an equally stark writing style.  He uses few commas and no apostrophes or quotation marks—even though much of the book is the dialogue between a father and son. He triples spaces between paragraphs so that each paragraph exists almost as a poem and/or story in itself.  The world he describes has been shorn of its beauty, and his style of writing breaks the rules and presents words and phrases and sentences in an equally stark manner.  And, at least for me, it makes for a powerful reading experience. Cormac, as a masterful storyteller, embodies one of my favorite phrases: “If you know the rule, you can break it!”

As you write your next few entries, think about what each paragraph is doing for you. Make your paragraphs work for you, not against you. This is the craft of writing.  As a writer you manipulate the way we think and feel.  You choose the routes, and you direct us to your goal. The blogs are a wonderful place for us to explore new ways of expressing ourselves, and new ways of writing, but we would be wise to always keep the tried and true wisdom of good paragraphing clearly in our vision.