Week 38 Conclude your Paragraphs with a Click

All About the Rhythm!
by Valerie Ipson

"Take special care with the last sentence of each paragraph," William Zinser advises in On Writing Well. "It is the crucial springboard to the next paragraph ... Make the reader smile and you've got him for at least one paragraph more"...as quoted in Wilbers Mastering the Craft.

So just as we've practiced ending a sentence with a bit of a punch, we can, and should, do the same with our paragraphs.

Wilbers teaches that this technique is more than paragraph structure, more than figuring out beats, and more than putting your best line at the end. It involves RHYTHM. 

Your homework, should you choose to accept it, is to check out chapter 38 and read the examples included. Read the concluding sentences of each paragraph by Eudora Welty, Kevin Kling, and Stephen King out loud and listen to the rhythm of the lines leading up to the pause. See how the concluding sentences create an impact.

Week 33 End With the Thought You Intend to Develop Next

End With the Thought You Intend to Develop Next

by Tamara Passey

Week 33: Wherein I call Stephen Wilbers the sentence whisperer. 

In this chapter he details yet another technique of using closing emphasis for effect. A way to connect your sentences to increase the coherence and flow of your information. And why would we want to do that? The more coherent our writing, the easier it is for our reader to follow our thought and (here is the biggee) "the more our reader will want to keep reading." [Readers who will want to keep reading = goal of every writer, right?]

To improve the coherence of your information, check for topics that are mentioned in a sentence and then elaborated upon in following sentences. The placement and order of information seems like such common sense, but as we know, common sense can be bypassed when the pen hits the page (or keys strike the keyboard...doesn't have the same ring.) The topic that will be continued needs to be near the end of the sentence. 

Here is the example Wilbers uses and I'm sure I cannot do the transformation justice in my recap, but hopefully you will get the idea of how to end with the thought you intend develop next:

"There are two natural stress points in every sentence you write. There is one stress point at the beginning and one stress point at the end."

Not bad. But look at how changing the word order improves the flow:

"In every sentence you write, there are two natural stress points. There is one stress point at the beginning and one stress point a the end."

See how the sentences are better connected by ending the first sentence with the topic that is explained in the second sentence?

He doesn't stop there. Remember eliminating needless words and compressing the rhythm?

"In every sentence you write, there are two natural stress points: one at the beginning and one at the end."

Now there is a better sounding and more efficient sentence!

Have fun and rewrite this sentence to get the hang of it:

"We can see that the problem with a long sentence may involve more than just garrulousness, given what we've learned about problems of topic and stress."