Thinking Thematically: A Method of Organization

When I addressed the different methods of organization, I defined “Thematic” as “organized by distinct topics or ideas” and I said little else on the matter.

At first, this makes it seem an easily manageable approach: an assortment of different topics and ideas, brought together in an essay. It seems easy, and this ease makes it appealing. However, it isn’t this simple. Every method of organization relies on having distinct topics or ideas because every paragraph and even groups of paragraphs should be distinct: a paragraph is a shift in topic or idea. Methods of Organization give us ways to structure and order the topics.

What, then, is Thematic organization?

Every other method organization gives you a way to distinguish each section or paragraph of an essay and a logical way to move from paragraph to paragraph. Graduated methods create hierarchies based on specificity, familiarity, or importance, while Sequential methods establish chronologies and trace ideas and concepts through time, and Comparative methods set the different topics in contrast to one another.

Thematic, however, gives a way to distinguish, but doesn’t give that logical progression.

Organizing Thematically involves using a theme appropriate for the essay as the governing mechanic to determine how everything is structured. The theme becomes the principle that logically brings the distinct topics together. This will then impact the topics themselves, with the theme running through the entire piece, impacting every decision you make. In other words, you need to find your own logic because the method itself doesn't supply it: it just reminds you that you need something to hang everything on, unlike the other methods of organization which give you the logic themselves.

It is possible for an essay to have multiple themes, just as fiction does, but to equate a theme with a paragraph is where the danger comes in. Too often disjointed, tangential essays are excused as being “thematic”, making Thematic Organization the refuge of the poorly organized: clusters of paragraphs placed together because they have to go somewhere, but without much attention given to why they are there. Most times a student proposes a Thematically organized essay or outline, they present either a disorganized mess or they haven't looked close enough to find a better way. Instead, themes should run across paragraphs, the length of broader sections and the essay as a whole, whether there’s only one theme or several. If you have a new organizational theme for every paragraph, then you don’t have an organized essay.

How then do we organize Thematically? Where are the examples? Because every use of Thematic organization will have a different theme, each will require a different approach and execution. The closest thing to such a general prescription for Thematic is to say every one will be different. Every combination of essay topic and organizational theme will yield a new situation, requiring its own organization.

Balanced Essays: Quantity, Quality, and Attention to Detail, Part 2

In my last post, I addressed the issue of Balance, how it is difficult to teach, but it is important to know because it promotes looking for the purpose. How then should you keep an eye out for it?

It’s ultimately a matter of purpose. Don’t ask yourself how long a paragraph needs to be and gauge that by an arbitrary standard; rather ask yourself how long the paragraph should be based on the kind of information it’s addressing and its purpose in the rest of the essay. For the Annotated Bibliography, the paragraphs summarize (or evaluate or assess). For the Five Paragraph Essay, each paragraph represents a different topic that needs just as much attention as the other ones. So it isn’t just balance in terms of words, but in terms of content and purpose.

There are no hard and fast rules for the purposes paragraphs have, so rather than providing guidelines, here are a few questions to ask yourself if you’re worried about balance:

What is this paragraph’s purpose in the essay? Take some time to understand the purpose the paragraph has in the essay as a whole, what information is says, and why it is important. If you can’t explain to yourself why you have a paragraph in your essay, then you need to do something about it. 

How much detail do I need here? The simple answer is however much you need to prove your point (the one in the topic sentence). However, because each paragraph will have a different purpose, the amount of detail and words can vary. There may be brief paragraphs amid longer ones so the author has time to stop and collect their ideas, summarize those complex ideas, or signal a shift in the essay.

Do I have other paragraphs with similar purposes? This is where the problem in Part 1 really comes up. You should be able to look at your essay and recognize when the different paragraphs have similar purposes (even if the material is different). If two paragraphs both address related and equally important topics, it doesn’t make sense for one to be significantly longer than others.

How do I approach each paragraph? This deals with style more than information. We adapt our writing styles to different purposes, so when reading for purpose, make sure you’re consistent in the style you use. There may be times to change styles in a piece of writing, but it, like the information it conveys, should reflect the purpose of the essay.

Balance is a matter of detail, information, style, and reading purposefully. Not length. And I’ll be honest: I like it that way. It may make it more difficult to teach it, but it requires closer attention to detail and critical thinking on the part of students.

Balanced Essays: Quantity, Quality, and Attention to Detail, Part 1

I want to start this post by saying that balance is an important thing, and yet I never see it addressed. Not in a composition classroom, textbook, conference, or meeting, and if I have, it's been ensconced with other topics as something incidental rather than essential. It's a concept I've stumbled across and, the more I think about it, the more I realize it's an important part of learning how to write.

So what is balance?

Simply, it's the attention a writer gives their material. And yes, I'm being intentionally vague when I say “their material”.

Let's consider it in the context of a 5 Paragraph Essay, about 1000 words long, no tangents, and each paragraph addresses its own specific, related topic. The expectation is each paragraph averages about 200 words. But let's say this essay's paragraphs are, respectively, 200, 400, 150, 100, and 150 words. The enormity of the second paragraph in comparison to those that follow makes it stand out. If it's a decent paragraph, it will identify its topic and then explore it in detail. This is all good, but the other paragraphs being a about a third or fourth in length will pale in comparison. They may be well written paragraphs, but their brevity suggests a few things. The author cared much more about one topic than the others, and these other topics were not addressed to the same extent. This can weaken the overall essay, no matter how good the longer paragraph was.

The solution may or may not be to simply make the other paragraphs three or four times as long: the issue would be if the author can or needs to make these paragraphs as detailed as the first one. If they find the first topic much more interesting than the rest, and the others are there to fill space, then they may be able to produce more words, but the writing won't be as strong. The solution may be scrap the other paragraphs and break the long one into more specific topics.

A great example of this is on annotated bibliographies. I will see a long, almost lyrical summary of a source followed by a few haphazard sentences of evaluation. This is not a reflection on the source but on the author's attention to the sources: the better summary shows the author paid careful attention to one source, but not to the rest of their research. 

Issues of Balance are more prevalent in heavily structured forms, like annotated bibliographies and rogerian arguments (for example: a few sentences are spent on the opposition and a few paragraphs on the author's stance), so I try to emphasize it more when teaching these forms. It's easier to point to the length or number of paragraphs and show how and why the longer and shorter ones, generally, have more detail and show the author was more careful and attentive to one more than another.

However, length is only a superficial indication. Some paragraphs need more detail and attention and will therefore be longer. Others may just need a few sentences to get their job done. The real issue is how the paragraph is written, which is why I used the 5 paragraph essay in my earlier example: each body paragraph has basically the same purpose, so each should have about the same amount of detail and attention, which will likely reflect in their all being close enough in length that none appears significantly longer or shorter than another. You need to read your own writing purposefully: what purpose does each section and paragraph have does it have the detail needed to meet that purpose?

Looking beyond the word count and thinking about purpose and function is important, and I think that focusing on Balance is a good way to teach and emphasize this kind of reading. It may be hard to quantify, require a fair amount of specification, and vary from situation to situation, making it hard to teach, but that’s no reason not to. The overall lesson is to ask yourself what the purpose of the paragraph is and if it is getting the attention and detail it deserves.

Why in that order? Methods of Organization

Let’s say you have bad news to pass on to someone. What approach do you take? Do you blurt out the bad news and then run? Do you give a letter and then run? Or do you scuttle up whatever good news you have in order to cushion the blow? Do you consider your timing, delivery, and what other information you have to mitigate the damage?

Welcome to Organization, the simple art of determining what information goes where.

Unfortunately, it sometimes seems like organizing an essay is little more than Paragraphs go here! In all honesty, I blame the 5 Paragraph Essay and the teaching of Transitions. The 5 paragraph essay because it can promote the idea that order doesn't matter: so long as there are three paragraphs addressing the overall topic of the essay, all is well. And Transitions because it takes organization from a significant part of essay writing and turns it into sentences that begin and end paragraphs forced to resemble one another.

Reducing organization to having transitions is kind of like saying there's no difference between a Main Coon, a Sphynx cat, and a Chartreux cat because each one was put in the same funny hat (thank you internet). Each has distinct traits and for accuracy should be recognized individually, as opposed to being just cats in funny hats.

Organization is quite complex. It can be as instrumental in conveying information than any other aspect in a piece of writing because it determines the order the information is presented. It is not enough for information to be there, but knowing where and how to present information influences how later information will be received. Once information is presented, it influences the way other information will be received: how a piece is organized sends messages.

The next step is to make sure your organization sends the right message. For this, I turn to a number of different Methods of Organization. Each method has its own purpose and in turn, conveys a specific message about the information. Not only is it helpful in using these to figure out the order of the paragraphs, but it helps make those pesky transitions easier to write and more fluid because it gives the order purpose.

The methods themselves can be divided into three groups: Sequential, Graduated, and Comparative.

The first, Sequential, deals with the relationship of topics in time:

• Chronological: Organizing events in the order they occurred without considering connections between them.
• Cause and effect: Identifies how one event or situation leads to another.
• Procedural: Identifies specific action to be taken in a specific order.
• Problem to Solution: Explores an issue in detail before exploring ways to resolve it.

The next group is Graduated and deals with information presented in scales from more important to less important, more detailed to less detailed, etc:

• General to Specific: Begins with basic ideas and then explores them in greater detail.
• Familiar to Unfamiliar: Introduces basic, acceptable information before introducing new or controversial topics.
• Climactic: Starts out with simple topics and leads to the most important or exciting detail or information.

Each form of Graduated organization can be reversed. For example, a piece can start out specific and then become more general, etc.

The last group is Comparative and deals with identifying similarities and differences across and between topics:

• Thematic: Organized by distinct topics or ideas.
• Classification: Groups related topics based on similarities.
• Spatial: Identifies the relationship between physical properties.
• Block Compare & Contrast: Explain all of the aspects of one topic before another.
• Point by Point Compare & Contrast: Alternate between specific aspects of two or more topics.

Picking a method of organization can depend on the form and genre of the essay, and its audience, usually dictates what methods are appropriate. There are even situations where an essay will need multiple forms of organization at different times. When considering what methods to use, think of the kind of information you're dealing with. From there, it becomes easier to structure an essay and move from paragraph to paragraph because the form of the essay has a purpose, and transitions become easier to write. 

I like to say that every paragraph has two purposes. The first is to prepare the reader for the next paragraph. The second is to prepare the reader for the rest of the essay. Determining and using methods of organization just helps you figure where and why each paragraph goes where it does.

For clarity's sake: Topic Sentences

Imagine going to a different city for the first time. You could be moving, meeting friends, starting a new job, whatever. You have a goal in mind, but when you get to the city, you're confronted by a lack of street signs. No matter how neat and orderly the streets are, there's little more than the unique features along the streets to help you find your way. Stuff like, brick houses with blue roofs, or black wrought iron fences, or the house with a stone lion occupying the porch. You have a vague idea where you want to go, but even if you stop and ask directions, they're vague and indirect, relying on specific landmarks you've seen a dozen times.

The thesis is the destination. It gives you an idea of where you're going and how to get there when reading or writing an essay. But topic sentences are the distinct, more specific directions letting you know the precise path to take. The thesis may be the address, but the topic sentences are the finer indicators of when to turn and which way to go. Just as the thesis tells you what the essay is about, topic sentences tell you what the paragraph is about.

This means an essay can be subdivided from the thesis into more specific subtopics, each one explained in its own paragraph. The same principle even applies to sentence structures: a sentence has a single, specific idea it’s trying to convey. Any less and it’s an incomplete sentence; more than one and it’s a run on sentence. The same applies to paragraphs and essays; an essay with a split thesis is basically a run on sentence.

Topic sentences generally appear at the beginning of a paragraph. Not necessarily the first sentence, but odds are it will be close. By placing a distinct topic sentence at the start of a paragraph, it gives readers a lens through which to interpret the paragraph. Like I said above: it gives direction and creates expectations. When those expectations aren’t met, we run into breakdowns in organization, essays and paragraphs that say more than they should, and that means tangents. Topic sentences that do not directly support the thesis are defined as tangents. Keeping track of one's thesis and topic sentences is a good way to make sure an essay is not diverting and the sentences stay on topic.

Lining up theses, topic sentences, and paragraphs makes composing an essay manageable because, with them, you can worry about an essay in sections and paragraphs rather than as a whole. Once you can identify the purpose of a paragraph in the bigger scheme of the essay (with, of course, a topic sentence), it makes it easier to focus on the individual sentences. Each sentence plays an integral role in developing the thesis of the essay, but tying one sentence to dozens or hundreds to the thesis is intimidating, especially when they need to fit in the flow of the rest of the essay. Instead, line up the topic sentences with the thesis, and the individual sentences with the topic sentences of their respective paragraphs.

Clear topic sentences are an important way to make the otherwise daunting task of writing an essay manageable: it makes it easier to keep track of what goes where, which helps with organization and revision. With topic sentences, you can create better outlines, manage organization, and eliminate tangents. Most of all, though, it helps you go from writing long essays to writing manageable paragraphs, each with a distinct topic.