Crafting Excellent Sentences and Paragraphs How to organize and make your writing “flow”

Why craft is important: “Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe.” ~Stephen King, On Writing p. 135

Sentence Basics Subject + Verb = Sentences It never fails. Examples: Rocks explode. Jane transmits. Kittens create. Mountains float. Sunlight sparkles. She succeeds.

Sentence Length and Vocabulary Varies. Some writers have enormous vocabularies: “The leathery, undeteriorative, and almost indestructible quality was an inherent attribute of the thing’s form of organization and pertained to some paleogean cycle of invertabrate evolution utterly beyond our powers of speculation.” - H.P.Lovecraft, “At the Mountains of Madness”

Sentence Length and Vocabulary Other writers use smaller, simpler vocabularies: “He came to the river. The river was there.” -Ernest Hemingway, “Big Two-Hearted River” “When I was ten, I feared my sister Megan.” -Stephen King, “On Writing”

Paragraphs Q: What is a paragraph? A: “In college writing, paragraphs should address a specific topic or idea and develop that idea with examples and evidence.” --Andrea A. Lunsford, The Everyday Writer, 4th edition

Describing an Idea Describing an idea is a key aspect of crafting each of your paragraphs. Explain the “self-explanatory” Supporting Claims with evidence BE SPECIFIC!!! It is much better to write about specific details than to use general, cliché words…there is no clarity in generalizations.

Describing an Idea Thinking Involved in Descriptive Writing Knowing what you are describing Giving details and thorough explanations What is observable? Order and sequence (must be logical) Concrete details Painting a picture for someone who doesn’t know you or your practice What’s the best way to describe it? Don’t assume that people will understand!!

Making Paragraphs “Flow” “A paragraph has coherence--or flows--if its details fit together clearly in a way that readers can easily follow.” --Andrea A. Lunsford, The Everyday Writer, 4th edition

Making Paragraphs “Flow” Organization without = your entire piece of writing Organization within = using tools in the paragraph itself to achieve coherence Transitions between paragraphs Transitions within paragraphs, between sentences

Organizing Without Chronology General to specific Complexity: less to more Cause and effect Problem, needs, solution Process Comparison and contrast

Organizing Within Focus on one main idea (“topic sentence”) Completely develop the idea Definition Example Description Comparison and contrast Analogy, etc.

Genre Theory Basics What is a “Genre”??? Immersion in text Noticing Protocol Conventions = the ingredients, characteristics, qualities of a genre that make it what it is What moves do you see the writer making? Content, Form and Style

Practice! Break into 3-4 Groups Look at the sample text, and as a group, make a list of all the things you notice (conventions, writer-moves, etc.) Once you have compiled your list, be ready to share your group’s findings with the rest of the class.

Reflection Based on what we’ve learned and discussed in the workshop today, what strategies do you believe will be most helpful to you in crafting and organizing sentences and paragraphs?