How to Write a Perfect Paragraph for Your Essay
We’ve all been there. You have an essay due in the next couple of days, but you don’t know how to get started. You might even feel a severe case of writer’s block coming on. There’s no need to panic, however, as long as you follow our 10-step process for acing the building block of your essay—the paragraph.
1) Brainstorm and freewrite. Before you can begin to create
a paragraph, you need to have a very strong sense of what you will write about
as a whole. Brainstorm all ideas, facts, concepts, myths, quotes, and any other
associations that pop into your head when you think of your topic. Your
freewriting could be structured into complete sentences or could simply be a
bulleted list or a string of words or phrases. The most important thing is to
get it all down!
2) Create a topic sentence. Now that you’ve jotted down all
your initial thoughts and observations, try to find a main, general point that
governs most of what you have written. This point should be formulated into a
topic sentence, a general sentence that provides a very broad, sneak peek into
the specifics of your paragraph. Remember, your sentence must allude to the
details that will follow but must not give them away.
3) Organize your supporting details. Now that you have a topic
sentence, look over your freewriting again and decide which details best
support your topic sentence. You want to pick your strongest points and be sure
not to stray from the general idea. A good rule of thumb is to have three to
five specific points. Start with a strong point, sandwich in your adequate
points, and end with another memorable detail.
4) Develop effective and varied transitions. You have all the
major building blocks for your paragraph; now you have to get from one point to
another artfully and effectively. Try to vary how you move from one idea to
another. Sometimes sequential ordering (first, next) works best, while
other times you may want to find relationships (similarly, together
with) or consequences (as a result, consequently) between your
ideas.
5) Consider your audience. Who will be reading your paragraph?
It might just be your teacher who is already quite versed in the topic.
However, it may be a peer with no previous background but who really wants new
information. Depending on who reads your paragraph, you will need to adapt its
style to educate and reach your audience.
6) Strive for sentence variety. Your points will hold more
interest and pack punch if you vary your sentences. Go beyond length and
consider mixing simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences.
Start a sentence with a prepositional phrase or a dependent clause. Why not
begin with a description and inspire your audience to read on to discover who
or what it is?
7) Formulate a clincher or concluding sentence. Leave your
reader with a lasting impression and some additional insight into your topic by
putting a great deal of thought into your last sentence. Don’t make your final
impression a bland summary. Instead, accentuate your strongest point.
8) Double-check for extraneous details. Now that your
paragraph is organized, look over all your supporting details and be sure that
you are not off-topic with any of your points. If you absolutely cannot live
without a certain detail, revise your topic sentence so that it fits.
Otherwise, you will distract the reader from the purpose established in your
topic sentence if you include irrelevant information.
9) Create a rough draft. The time has come to write your
paragraph. You have thought of everything, so just get it down without worrying
too much about revising and editing. Writer’s block often occurs because you
are hung up on punctuation and finding the perfect word.
10) Revise and edit. Now that you have a solid framework, you
can tweak and perfect the paragraph to your heart’s content. Start with
checking your word choice and sentence structure and end with correcting
mechanical errors. Finally, rewrite your paragraph. Now all you need to do to
write that dreaded essay is to repeat these steps for each paragraph you need.
Your essay will materialize before you know it!
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