ClearTips: Powerful paragraphs
Start with a question and answer it at the end
When you want to explore several possibilities or give reasons
before answering a question, try putting the answer at the end of the
paragraph. The effect is to make you seem thoughtful, thorough, cautious.
This kind of paragraph is similar to one that concludes
with the point after introducing the subject (page 47). And here, too,
be sure you don't lose your reader before arriving at your point—in
this case, the answer to the opening question.
How many ideas—and how much fact—can a novel
contain before it begins to turn into something else altogether-a work
of non-fiction, for instance? Some famous examples spring to mind. The
Napoleonic armies marched right the way through Tolstoy's epic "War
and Peace" without protest from the author. One of the 18th century's
best works of fiction, Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy,"
was also one of the oddest novels ever written-part eccentric autobiography
and part an examination of the nature of time. Closer to our own day,
Norman Mailer fashioned his greatest novel, "The Executioner's
Song," from the gruesome lineaments of a mass-murderer called Gary
Gilmore. So how much can a novelist get away with? It entirely depends
upon whether or not he can sustain our interest by sheer force of persuasive
imaginative skill.
Why did the highly paid economists in the investment banks
and the international financial institutions fail to predict the crisis?
The IMF did issue several warnings to Thailand during the year before
the collapse, but the government ignored it. The handful of economists
who rang alarm bells, such as Jim Walker at Crédit Lyonnais
and Mark McFarland at Peregrine Securities, were generally thought
to be too gloomy.
In the first paragraph, the writer sets out three
examples, restates the question, and then gives the answer to make the
paragraph's point. In the second paragraph, the writer gives one answer
immediately, undermines it, and concludes with the point, nicely sandwiching
the supportive details.
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