How To Write a Paragraph That Doesn't Suck

Happy Saturday! Today, we'll revisit one of my favourite posts from 2024 that turned out to be a great add-on for last week's post: How to write a clean sentence.

If you're new to the newsletter, let's catch you up to speed: for the next 3-4 weeks, we'll cover the basic principles of writing & composition. My goal is to strip away all the jargon from a standard semester of university-level composition class and show you what works.

In week 1, we covered how to turn words into a coherent paragraph, and if you want to stay up to date and access part 2 (how to find your writing style) on Monday, upgrade to a Double-Shot subscription, and I'll send it over to you then.

In today's post, however, we'll build on week 1 and give you a tip for crafting paragraphs that are captivating to read.

A wise man named Cliff Sargent (from Better Than Food book reviews) once said:

“if you don’t have the urge to strangle yourself when you review your work from four years ago, you’re doing something wrong”.

This hit a little too hard when I re-read a Hamlet essay I wrote when I was a freshman. What I thought was a work of academic genius was, in fact, terrible writing. The prose was confused, and instead of making interesting arguments, the essay made an IRS tax form read like a gripping thriller.

The main problem was that there was no continuity in the paragraphs because I didn’t bother to learn an important lesson in structuring arguments: the Uneven U principle. Eric Hayot introduced the principle in his book, The Elements of Academic Style. And yes, the book is, without surprise, dry and instructional. So today, let's cover the principle without putting you to sleep.

1: Paragraph as a unit of idea

All bad writing has one thing in common: there is no flow between paragraphs. And if we ever want to keep our readers engaged from one scene to the next, we'll have to control how ideas move around on the page.

This brings me to the first insight: paragraphs are not arbitrary breaks in the text, but individual units of ideas. Tedious writing usually has confused paragraphs. Sometimes one will say absolutely nothing while another overflows with jumbled thoughts.

So, for the sake of our readers’ sanity, a writer has to create a pleasant flow by confining one idea to one paragraph. It doesn’t mean that now all of the paragraphs will be short; it just means that the paragraph will be just long (or short) enough to flesh out one coherent idea.

For example, our Saturday letters have shorter paragraphs because they’re more action-driven. You can take the idea and run with it. But the Monday deep dives tend to linger a bit because every idea demands longer explanations.

In short, a paragraph break is a tool to keep your ideas contained. However, breaks alone aren’t enough to sustain a pleasant flow in writing.

2: Flowing from one Idea to the Next: The Uneven U

The next step is to ensure that the ideas flow into one another, and this is where the Uneven U comes in. The idea is pretty simple: instead of following a set structure for a paragraph (like the TEEL structure), move your sentences along different degrees of generality. Let me explain.

Notice that when we write, we’re constantly making statements. Some are more general (e.g., all zebras have black stripes), and some are more specific (Ulysses was published on the 2^nd of February, 1922, on Joyce’s 40^th Birthday). Some writing suffers from being lost in generalities, so everything reads like airy platitudes with no ground. And some writing is too lost in the specificities, resulting in choppy writing that should’ve been a long list rather than an article.

So, if we want to structure a paragraph that creates a pleasant flow, we need to create a seamless movement from generality to specificity, and then from specificity back to generality.

Let’s use some numbers for the sake of simplicity. If we assign a number to every level of generality (1 being very specific and 5 being very general), then a paragraph should follow the general progression of:

4 -> 3-> 2-> 1-> 2-> 3 -> 4 -> 5.

If we plot the progression, the paragraph will look like an Uneven U (hence the name). Stephen Clarke executed this beautifully in his book The French Revolution and What Went Wrong:

"In feudal language, the états are known in English as ‘estates’ (4). In early medieval England, this signified the division of society into three main functions: working, praying and fighting (3). In other words the three classes consisted of those who had to toil for a living; the clergy; and knights, including the King (2). But by the early 1400s in England, the divisions had become very blurred. The success of common archers at battles like Crécy (1346) and Agincourt (1415) (1) had devalued the status of knights in armour (3), while some rich merchants were the social equals of almost anyone in the country (5).

He started the paragraphs with something quite broad (4), then zoomed in on a very specific example of common archers in battles (1), and eventually zoomed out to a more general point about the blurred lines of social classes in England(5).

And this is how he started the next paragraph:

"In eighteenth-century France, on the other hand, the weight of the medieval estates could still be felt, and they were enshrined in law (4)."

See, the ending of the first paragraph about English estates continues into the second one on the French estate. A broad level (5) statement flows into a more specific level (4) statement, and another uneven U-curve is introduced. If we map it out, a page of writing with multiple paragraphs will look like this:

P1: 4 -> 3-> 2-> 1-> 2-> 3 -> 4 -> 5

P2: (5->4) -> 3-> 2-> 1-> 2-> 3 -> 4 -> 5

P3: (5->4) -> 3-> 2-> 1-> 2-> 3 -> 4 -> 5

If the number schema isn’t helping, think of each of the level (5) statements as a cliffhanger that becomes the topic of the next paragraph.

In other words, a paragraph should never end dead in its tracks. It should always leave something open for the next paragraph to explain. This will eliminate the choppiness we get from listicles or one of those ‘best places to eat’ blogs.

3: It’s not a prescription

Even though the guidelines may sound technical, this Uneven U structure is more like a way of thinking about writing rather than a prescription. For me, it’s a handy rule of thumb when I’m in the editing stage, but there are times when I have to ditch the rule.

So, bend the structure to your needs, and happy writing.

Until next week

Robin