Paragraphs
At a writer's group Saturday night, a nameless member said that the model paragraph structure works for non-fiction, but not for fiction. This discussion of a quote from Hemingway refutes that contention in the strongest possible terms. This is a fragment from a longer essay, but I hope you will be entertained and enlightened by it.
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929
In this example, Hemingway uses a compound sentence, followed by a complex sentence, a simple sentence with a compound object, ending with a compound – complex sentence. Hemingway is supposedly famous for the simplicity of his prose, but as this example demonstrates, he actually used complex paragraph structure to make his writing interesting for the reader.
Hemingway does not use commas in places that modern usage would place them, i.e. after "everyone," "not break," "these," "you," and "too." This may be troubling to some people. Newspapers tried to eliminate as much punctuation as possible to save type, and Hemingway took much of his style from newspapers.
Notice that the shortest sentence is the complex sentence. The simple sentence is longer. It is tempting to consider short sentences simple. They aren't always the shortest, nor should they be.
Notice, too, the strong sentence: "But those that will not break it kills." The natural order of this sentence is "It kills those that will not break." Hemingway's sentence is much stronger than the natural one. By inverting the order of the sentence, Hemingway makes it strong. Usually when we talk about weak sentences we are referring to those that trail off into a mass of subordinate clauses. This one has only one subordinate clause. The brevity of the main clause placed at the end rather than the beginning brings the reader up short and forces him or her to pay attention.
Finally notice that the paragraph, short as it is, includes a topic sentence, "The world breaks everyone..." and a concluding sentence, "... you can be sure it will kill you too...." This is the model paragraph structure that generations of English teachers have tried to pound into the heads of adolescents. Or tell the reader what the writer is going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what they were told.
Why Did You Write That?
2 weeks ago
7 comments:
Note also that the Hemingway paragraph is an "author's aside", telling not showing, and not actually dramatizing the story that it is a part of. It contains no character, no action, no description. It is merely part of the author's "frame" of the work-- how the author prepares the reader to achieve understanding of the story which will be dramatized.
Paragraphs like these have their place as elements in the thematic framework of a piece, but in modern fiction those framework elements needs to be held to a minimum. The vast majority of any modern fictional work will consist of paragraphs which have no such topic sentences. It is these other paragraphs which I am most interested in understanding.
--the Nameless author
PS Hopefully the above paragraphs meet with your approval.
Nevertheless, Dal, the paragraph perfectly illustrates and validates Tricia's assertion. It's an integral part of the book, which by the way is famous in many languages. There's no "merely" about it.
I have to disagree with your second graf, too. It is only from "the vast majority of any modern fictional works" that do not sell and are not published that great paragraphs like this are missing.
All good nonfiction does is make its facts as interesting as fiction. It can only do that by telling a story -- which, as I'm sure you'll agree, has a beginning, a middle and an end. But a story also has twists, turns, asides, little side ponderings like the one Hemingway includes; all of them plus the plot, action, narrative, description together make its beginning and middle engaging and its ending inevitable (which blog entry you should see).
-- Angie Richardson
Azle, Texas
Angie,
What I love about this kind of discussion is that it both opens my eyes and clarifies my thinking. Yes, Dal is right the paragraph is an “aside,” but it is an aside that develops the author’s theme and thus contributes to the inevitability of Hemingway’s work. Thank you for making that connection for me!
Tricia
You're very welcome, Tricia. If you ever want to see some great examples of exactly this kind of paragraph as this kind of aside, making everything that follows quite inevitable — plentifully leavened with humor, albeit rather earthy — look up some of Dan Jenkins' early works, e.g., Semi-Tough, Dead Solid Perfect, and Baja, Oklahoma.
Jenkins was a sportswriter, first, and evidently a rigorously trained journalist and writer: His paragraphs frequently boast a topic sentence. It's generally followed by a raucous good time, framed in a worldview that is peculiarly Texan.
AHR
I agree with you Tricia. A good paragraph has a beginning, middle, and end even if it's one sentence and may be an implied concept. A lot of writing is what is not said, and so we must imply, by proper use of words, all those functions that make a good paragraph, just like we must have the elements to make a good scene.
Dal,
I think that the model of the paragraph here works for any paragraph. I choose the one from Hemingway because he did so much in four sentences, but consider this lovely descriptive paragraph from "The Curse of Chalion" by Lois McMaster Bujold:
“Cazaril heard the mounted horsemen on the road before he saw them. He glanced over his shoulder. The well-worn track behind him curled around a rolling rise, what passed for a hill on these high windy plains, before dipping into the late-winter muck of Baocia’s boney soil. At his feet a little rill, too small to rate a culvert or a bridge, trickled greenly across the track from the sheep-cropped pastures above. The thump of hooves, jangle of harness, clink of bells, creak of gear and careless echo of voices came on at too quick a rhythm to be some careful farmer with a team, or parsimonious pack-men driving their mules.”
The first sentence tells us what we are concerned with – what Carazil heard. The second describes the character’s action. The third and fourth show us what he could see. The fifth sums up what he heard.
This author is one of the most skillful storytellers in fantasy -- or any other genre. The paragraph mixes sentence types and lengths, begins with a definable topic sentence, and ends with a conclusion. In every way, exemplary. Just like the model.
The paragraph, the first in the book, accomplishes many things for the author. It names the main character, Carazil. It gives us a time and a place to begin, late-winter on the high, windy plains of Boacia. We don’t know where that is, but we are already forming a picture because of the multiple sensory images the author has given us. The names themselves sound vaguely like those of a Romance Language, and the description makes me think of the Eastern Mediterranean. We know that horseback, or wagon, or mule caravan are common means of transportation. That establishes the technological level of the setting of the story. We learn that Carazil is wary; he makes a rapid assessment of what is approaching him from the rear, and from that, we learn how he thinks. All this context in one short paragraph.
And the paragraph follows the model.
And none of it is “told.”
It is easy to see that descriptive paragraphs follow the model, but what about narrative paragraphs or action sequences? While the topic sentence-body-concluding sentence model is not as clear in the action sequence, each well-written paragraph has a definite beginning, middle and end and each describes one complete action.
Consider this paragraph, also from The Curse of Chalion:
“The two men holding Carazil jerked a little apart, their eyes widening, as dy Jironal began to stride forward, twisting for a mighty two-handed swing. “My lord, it’s murder,” faltered the man holding Carazil’s left arm. The beheading arc was blocked by Carazil’s captors, and dy Jironal changed in mid-career to a violent low thrust, lunging forward with all the weight of his fury behind his arm.”
Here the action all takes place as dy Jironal attacks Carazil. From the beginning, “…began to stride forward,…” to “…lunging forward with all the weight of his fury behind his arm.” Action begins, action continues, action concludes.
Conventional wisdom is that action sequences require shorter, simpler sentences. Bujold breaks that rule time and time again in this book. I couldn’t find any place she followed that advice. Yet her action sequences can be heart-pounding.
Even in this paragraph, Bujold varies her sentence structure. The first sentence is complex, the second, simple, the third, compound. She varies her language throughout her books.
An important lesson here is that the topic sentence is not necessarily the first thing that is read. In the above example, the topic sentence is the subordinate clause. The main clause is a bridge from a preceding paragraph, a command to Carazil’s captors from dy Jironal, “…Hold him up.”
The next paragraphs describe the results of this action, but now we focus on the result, not dy Jironal’s action. The paragraph itself sticks admirably to one topic, one sequence of events from one perspective..
As these samples show, writing good paragraphs is based on universal principles that can be applied throughout both fiction and non-fiction.
I can recommend the book I am quoting from, "The Curse of Chalion," as a model of story structure and excellent writing. Another book that taught me about paragraphing is "Travels with Charlie" by John Steinbeck. I choose the Hemingway paragraph merely because it is shorter, but I learned the technique from Steinbeck.
If you are sincerely interesting in writing good paragraphs, I can also recommend these websites:
http://www.tameri.com/write/paragraphs.html
http://www.longleaf.net/ggrow/modes.html
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/paragraphs.html
http://groups.apu.edu/practicaltheo/LECTURE%20NOTES/Shrier/8%20paragraph%20types.pdf
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