Writers, journalists and copywriters are often not focused on their paragraphs at first. When I myself had the dream of becoming a writer in high school, I mainly practiced composing beautiful, poetic sentences. In a way that is strange, because paragraphs do more for your text.
Good paragraphs unify your sentences, anecdotes and insights. If you build them smartly, they become like magical building blocks that bring your story to life and ‘drain’ your reader through your text.
But how do you compose a clever and compelling paragraph? Below I share a step-by-step guide and paraphrasingtool.site.
1 – Writing a paragraph – Know the topic of your paragraph
Before you start writing a paragraph, you need to know what you are going to tell the reader. How do you determine that?
With the paragraphs in your story, you basically chop up the topic of your article. In each paragraph you cover a sub-theme of your story.
By making a topic overview for each paragraph, you know exactly which point you want to make when writing each paragraph. This will help you write powerful paragraphs that take the reader by the hand and guide you through your story.
2 – Write a paragraph – Start with a core sentence
A compelling paragraph starts with a sentence that makes your readers curious, but also announces what to expect in the following sentences. That is a so-called core sentence, or topic sentence.
3 – Write a paragraph – Make mini stories from your paragraphs
The best paragraphs are tiny stories in their own right. You achieve this through visual writing. It also helps to introduce main characters who take an action. Even paragraphs that really only contain factual information become lively and appealing that way.
4 –Paragraph, a mini-argument
Signal words are the road signs within your paragraph. They are words such as ‘but’, ‘if’, ‘then’, ‘also’, ‘therefore’ and ‘therefore’. You indicate how sentences relate to each other, so that the reader can follow step by step which point you want to make.
Writers use a signal words to turn the paragraph into a kind of mini-argument, in which each sentence builds on the previous one. If you read the sentences one after the other, you will understand exactly why the international slave trade had such a major impact on the region.
5 – Writing a Short paragraphs
Give your reader some air. An article with short paragraphs and lots of white space simply looks more appealing than one solid block of text. I myself try to keep my paragraphs shorter than five or six lines. But it is difficult to indicate a maximum length.
Can a paragraph be too short? In the legendary style guide for writers it is written that:
There is one rule: a single sentence is not written or printed as a paragraph. An exception to this are sentences with which you describe a transition.’
In short, take these tips on how to write good paragraphs, but also dare to go your own way, because only then will you come up with original texts.
