College Admission Essays: Constructing Good Paragraphs

Punctuating Your Points with Paragraphs

In the introduction to this chapter, I hint at the two most important reasons to create a paragraph break: logic and drama. (I explain the other reason — quotations — in Chapter 14.) Time for more detail on the Big Two.

Logic

Move this book out, slightly beyond the focus range of your eyes. What do you see? Clumps of gray print, also known as paragraphs. Even before you read a word, you have an idea how many ideas are contained in this article, just by estimating the number of paragraphs. In general, one important idea equals one paragraph.

Move the book back in and start to read. You see immediately that a paragraph break stops the flow of words, not greatly, as a new heading or a new chapter does, but briefly. If you’re reading aloud or speaking, a paragraph break comes across as a short pause, longer than a quick breath at the end of a sentence or the even quicker breath of a comma.

The paragraph break shows you that it’s time for something new — another example, a change of story line, a shift in location or person, or a further link in a chain of thought. If you’re writing the essay based on an outline, each new letter or number in the outline turns into a paragraph in your text.

Suppose this is a section of your outline for an essay about your desire to have dinner with George Washington, the first president:

III. Really cool dining room

                A. Kelly green walls

                B. Nice wood table

                C. Fireplace right next to the table

                D. Seven dishes for each person

                E. Five forks each!

IV. Nice view

                A. Potomac River is visible from the porch

                B. Front windows face massive lawn

                                1. Sheep on lawn

                                2. Drive up to house on carriage path through lawn

                                3. Occasional horse or pony on lawn

                C. House on a hill

Your essay will have one paragraph on the dining room description (the walls and woodwork truly are bright green, fashionable in Washington’s day but a real eyeball assault now). The next paragraph shifts location, describing the view from the dining room, not the room itself.

If you’re writing a long essay, each line of the outline might be a separate paragraph. In the Washington example, you might have a paragraph about the sheep, another paragraph about the driveway, and still another paragraph about horses and ponies. Just be sure that your breaks are logical and consistent. The main ideas of each paragraph should be of roughly the same importance.

Drama

When I watch mysteries on television, I always know when a commercial break looms because the story has built to a dramatic moment. The detective gathers the suspects and declares, “The murderer is in this room. . . .” Cut to a dancing tub of “new and improved” marshmallow gunk. (Just once I’d like to hear them say, “It tastes worse but has a longer shelf life!” Ah, honesty.) The break arrives at a dramatic moment because the pause heightens the tension. Same thing for essays.

Say you’re writing an essay about how you faced a major life crisis. You discuss your happy, pre-crisis life in the first three paragraphs. The third paragraph follows you into the principal’s office, where she states, “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, but. . . .” The reader is all but panting to read the next paragraph. Who can stop there? (I can, actually. I’ll let you decide which crisis is detailed in the fourth paragraph.)

Dramatic paragraph breaks work only if you insert them sparingly. If every paragraph ends on a high note, the effect is lost. With too frequent use, dramatic paragraph breaks turn ho hum. The reader gets to the big moment, sighs, and thinks, “Here we go again.” Not the reaction you’re hoping for! So think of this paragraphing technique as a chili pepper. For the Tex-Mex deprived, chili peppers are very spicy — good for an occasional intense sensation, but not acceptable in big bunches.

The most dramatic technique — and here we’re talking once per essay, tops, because this technique is definitely not for frequent use — is the one-sentence paragraph. The shortness of the paragraph grabs the reader by the throat and says, “Look at me!” Hence you should place this kind of paragraph break only at a truly crucial point in the essay.

I once read an essay in which a veteran soldier describes some of the terrible things he saw in battle. Near the end of his account he writes of his postwar years, during which he has turned to religious texts for help in understanding the meaning of his experience. One paragraph ends with his statement that the meaning must be in the holy book somewhere. The next paragraph, in its entirety, is “I can’t find it.” The essay goes on in subsequent paragraphs to describe his work with various veterans’ groups. Wow! That one-sentence paragraph blew me away. My eye went back to it over and over again. Also, that tiny paragraph summed up the theme of the essay — the search for meaning in the context of war.  

I describe logic and drama as two separate categories of paragraph breaks, but in practice they overlap. Dramatic paragraph breaks must occur at logical spots in your essay — moments when emphasis changes, the speaker or topic shifts, or a new stage in the story arrives.

Creating a Strong Topic Sentence

One way to check the logic of your paragraph breaks is to identify the main idea of each paragraph. The main idea is generally expressed in a single sentence, which we English teachers call the topic sentence. The topic sentence is the umbrella that covers all the ideas in the paragraph; just as you want a strong umbrella to protect you from the weather, you want a strong topic sentence in each paragraph of your essay.

The word topic also applies to the main idea of the entire essay — what you’re writing about. In this section I talk only about the main idea and topic sentence of each paragraph, not about the essay as a whole.

You should be able to underline the topic sentence of each of your paragraphs — mentally not physically. (Don’t underline any sentences on the final draft.) If you have two candidates for topic sentence and can’t decide between them, you may have two paragraphs mistakenly glued together. Consider breaking them apart, with one topic sentence left in each. If you can’t find any topic sentence at all, you probably have a disorganized paragraph. Identify the main idea and add a good topic sentence to the paragraph.

But what is a good topic sentence? What’s the difference between an “I lift weights” topic sentence and one that needs to eat more spinach? A tight fit. A good topic sentence covers all the material in the paragraph, but it doesn’t flap around loosely, spreading itself over tons of ideas that aren’t in the paragraph. For example, suppose you have a paragraph describing an antique rolling pin that once belonged to your grandmother. (Don’t laugh. The rolling pin was the subject of one of the best admission essays I ever read. The author related that rolling pin to the Italian heritage she received from her maternal relatives. I think she became an English major at Harvard. Good for her.) Examine these two paragraphs, neither of which is from her essay. (I made them up.)

The slender wooden tool resembles a clean, perfectly smooth log. It has no handles. Perhaps Grandma didn’t want anything extra separating her from the feel of the dough, or perhaps Grandpa, who fashioned the rolling pin, didn’t know how to make a handle. Either way, the pin represents function at its purest — all you need, and nothing more, to stretch the delicate dough.

The slender wooden tool resembles a clean, perfectly smooth log. It has no handles. Perhaps Grandma didn’t want anything extra separating her from the feel of the dough, or perhaps Grandpa, who fashioned the rolling pin, didn’t know how to make a handle. All tools should be simple.

In each paragraph the topic sentence comes last.  In the first sample paragraph, the last sentence stays focused on the rolling pin. It sums up the idea in the paragraph: that the rolling pin is simple, but it does the job well. A fine topic sentence! In the second sample paragraph, the topic sentence is far too broad. The writer hasn’t been discussing all tools — just the rolling pin. Not a good fit! Granted, later in the essay the writer may go on to make broader, more general points . . . perhaps that the best things in life are simple. But this paragraph isn’t about the best things in life; it’s about a rolling pin. So the topic sentence should also be about a rolling pin.

Take care not to make a topic sentence that is too narrow. In the sample paragraph about the rolling pin, a too-narrow topic sentence might refer only to Grandpa. Grandpa is in the paragraph, but he’s only one half of one sentence. A topic sentence about him would leave out the pin description and the musing about Grandma’s preferences in dough-stretching equipment.

Bottom line: Write a topic sentence that fits everything in the paragraph and nothing outside the paragraph. Like Grandma’s rolling pin, the topic sentence should be all you need to do the job of summing up the paragraph and nothing more.

When you’ve finished your essay, place it slightly beyond the focal length of your vision and check the paragraphs. Are they all more or less the same length? If so, you may want to consider altering them a bit, for the sake of variety. A longer or shorter paragraph here and there breaks the monotony.