Use the Strategy Implied in your Topic Sentence to Develop your Paragraph
Narration
To narrate is to tell what happened. Because narration is storytelling, it usually follows a chronological pattern, as in the following example. However, the sequence of events can be rearranged for special effect (see PARA 3a).
One thing that I remember clearly about my early youth was the day that my family got its first dial telephone. We lived in the country, in a small southwestern Ontario village named Mitchell’s Bay, and whenever we wanted to call someone in those days, we picked up the telephone and waited for the operator to answer.
“Number, please,” the operator would say.
“754-W1,” I’d answer. That was the number of my friend Brian, who lived about a mile away.
We were on a party line, which we shared with four other families, each with its own ring. When the phone rang twice, it was for us: “ring-ring, ring-ring, ring-ring.” One, three or four rings signaled a call for one of our neighbors. But even when the phone rang twice, you could be sure that other people would listen in. I guess that there wasn’t much else to do back then on a winter’s day in the country.
But the dial phone changed all that. One ring, one family on the line.
The day of the party line was finished. I was so excited about this new dial phone the first day that it went into service that I called my friend at six in the morning. His father answered.
“Just trying it out,” I said.
Like I mentioned, there wasn’t much else to do in the country back then, especially at six in the morning.
Description
To describe is to create a verbal picture of a person, place, thing, or even a mood or idea. Description relies on specific and concrete details to create sensory impressions for the reader (see WORD Ic and PARA 3a, Spatial Order). In the following paragraph, Harry Bruce describes the ferry Trillium:
As she edged away from her slip and picked up speed in the shiny green waters of Lake Ontario, you heard the plash, plash, plash of her paddle wheels. In the railings, in the slats of her wooden benches burnished over the years by a million rumps, you felt the steady, comforting shudder of her engines. The Trillium’s sides were white as a swan, and she was a vision of beauty and business. - Harry Bruce, “Floating Around Canada”
Examples and Illustration
One of the best ways to convince a reader of the validity of a generalization in the topic sentence is to provide examples-specific instances of what you are talking about. In the following paragraph, Teale enumerates eleven superstitions to support the generalization in his topic sentence-that country people have many superstitious ways of predicting what kind of winter it will be.
In the folklore of the country, numerous superstitions relate to winter weather. Back-country farmers examine their husks-the thicker the husk, the colder the winter. They watch the acorn crop-the more acorns, the more severe the season. They observe where white-faced hornets place their paper nests-the higher they are, the deeper will be the snow. They examine the size and shape and colour of the spleens of butchered hogs for clues to the severity of the season. They keep track of the blooming of the dogwood in the spring-the more abundant the blooms, the more bitter the cold in January. When chipmunks carry their tails high and squirrels have heavier fur, the superstitious gird themselves for a long, hard winter. Without any scientific basis, a wider-than-usual black band on a woolly-bear caterpillar is accepted as a sign that winter will arrive early and stay late. - Edwin Way Teale, “Wandering through Winter”
Sometimes a single, extended example - called an illustration-is more effective.
I have always wondered why my best friends were so important to me; but it wasn’t until recently that something happened to make me really understand my relationship with my best friends. My father died, and this was a crisis for me. Most of my friends gave me their condolences. But my best friends did more than that: they actually supported me. They called long distance to see how I was and what I needed, to try to help me work out my problems or simply to talk. Two of my best friends even took time from their spring break and, along with two other best friends, attended my father’s memorial service; none of my other friends came. Since then, these are the only people who have continued to worry about me and talk about my father. I know that whenever I need someone, they will be there and willing to help me. I know also that whenever they need help, I will be ready to do the same for them. - Howard Solomon, Jr., student
