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.

Short Term Productivity and Long Term Success

Rather than dust off last year’s unfulfilled goals and reattempt them, dust off a post from a year ago and read it and this one together.

First and foremost, I'm still not keen on year-long goals. Life just gets in the way too easily: adjustments and changes will always need to be made, and I want to use my blogs as an example. Last year, as I was starting this blog, I would have set a goal to get a post up every week, a goal which, in retrospect, would have just caused more problems.

Last month I was beset with the end of the semester which meant a combination of ending one semester and designing another. One moment I'd be grading essays and wrapping up one semester, reflecting on everything I'd taught my students, and the next moment I was busy preparing curriculum for the coming semester. And then it was the holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas. In light of this busy time of year, I concluded that producing blog posts on composition and literature were just taking up time I needed for grading, planning, designing, and other end of year obligations.

But time isn't even all of it. Last year, after only seven or eight posts, I had a lot of what I wanted to say, but halfway through the year I had gone from a long list of things I wanted or needed to address, to giving more specific information on topics I had already addressed and addressing issues as they arose. At the start of the year, I wasn't teaching any classes that required Toulmin or Literature Reviews; I was designing lessons and assignments on the Six Journalistic questions. When courses for Fall were scheduled, I had to write some posts that would deal with subjects I would address in my new courses. But I still didn't feel like I had enough to say, or even the need, to fill a post every week on composition alone. So after July, I cut back from every week to every other week, and started updating Narrative Nuance on the off-weeks.

This is why I don't like year-long goals, especially as I look back at a year and a half's worth of 3x5 cards, each detailing the activities of a given day or week. I'd hate to look back at last year's goals and think I hadn't met them – that I had somehow failed – when my needs and circumstances had changed. I'll take the flexibility planning out a day, a week, or a month in advance gives me over the limited perspective of what I'm doing now and what I could be doing in a year. I don't know what I'll be eating for dinner in a week, so why should I declare the accomplishments I'll have achieved in twelve month's time? I'll be productive now rather than planning out next December.

And productivity is what it is all about. I don't give myself goals and to-do lists because I want to accomplish something months in the future, but because I have work to do now. I may have a greater goal in mind – regular and consistent blog posts, a research project, ending the semester – but it's the smaller, day to day tasks that actually get it done.

Goal setting isn't about accomplishments. It's about being productive and getting work done and making sure you do it every day. That's why I like my stack of index cards. They're a reminder of how productive I can be, and it isn't because of the year long dreams. It's about the little things I have do every single day.

And here's looking forward to another great year!