2.9 Step 4: Develop Your Paragraph Topics
Can a single paragraph communicate a subtopic?
| Table 2-2D. The scaffolding steps covered so far in Chapter 2. | |
|---|---|
| Step 1 | Generate broad topics: Write each topic on the blank side of an index card |
| Step 2 | Organize and evaluate topics: Manipulate index cards into a plausible order |
| Step 3 | Enhance existing topic cards: Convert broad topics into finer detailed subtopics and write each subtopic on its own index card |
| Step 4 | Convert subtopic cards into paragraph topic cards: Each index card represents a paragraph?s topic |
Step 3 can produce many subtopic cards as you enhance your broad topics. When do you stop generating subtopics? To answer, remember a paragraph serves as your manuscript’s basic element because a paragraph expresses a single topic.
Figure 2-1 in Section 2.2 illustrated a good paragraph. I can modify Figure 2-1 to define a bad paragraph (Figure 2-7): a bad paragraph attempts to communicate more than one topic.
In Step 4, you work to convert each subtopic into a paragraph topic. In Step 4, you aim to express each subtopic using a good paragraph – a paragraph which communicates one, and only one, topic. You stop enhancing topics (Step 3) when you can express each subtopic with a single paragraph.
You conduct Step 4 as follows. For each subtopic card in your display, you ask whether you can communicate the subtopic with one good paragraph. If you answer ‘Yes’, then you use the subtopic card as a paragraph topic. If you answer ‘No’, then then you return to Step 3 to break the subtopic down into sub-subtopics, intending to express each sub-subtopic using a single paragraph (Figure 2-8).
To succeed, Step 4 requires you to have aimed with Step 3 to make each index card’s topic strongly related to a paragraph. If Step 3 succeeded, you usually find you expressed each subtopic with one paragraph. However, if in Step 4 you find one card requiring two or more paragraphs to express its topic, then you have started Step 4 prematurely. You should return to Step 3 and spend more time enhancing your topic cards.
Thus, a strong relationship exists between Steps 3 and 4 – you could consider Step 4 as Step 3’s final stage. You could combine the two steps by stating “In Step 3, recursively enhance each topic card until each subtopic card can be expressed by one paragraph which communicates a single topic.”
Step 4 generates index cards which provide the paragraph topics ‘spine’ on the left of Figure 2-5. At the end of Step 4, you possess a complete topics chain for your manuscript, paragraph by paragraph. Each index card in your display holds one paragraph’s topic. However, you still have work to do. You need to confirm you organized your paragraph topics properly. To do so, you proceed to Step 5.
