Don Murray Masterclass #3: Simple Transitions

Don't overthink paragraph transitions

Paragraph transitions don’t have to be hard. Many writers needlessly overcomplicate them—usually by tacking an awkward transition sentence onto the end of an otherwise well-organized paragraph. For example:

Things are improving at Fort Victory. New training facilities allow units to train more often, increasing their readiness. Remodeled barracks have boosted soldier morale. Engaged leaders have built a positive command climate and reduced soldier misconduct. Fort Victory’s turnaround is rapidly becoming a model for other installations. However, the on-post dining options still need work.

Everything is fine until the last sentence, which jars the reader by introducing a new idea that would work better in a new paragraph.

How can we avoid such awkwardness? By remembering that paragraph transitions have just one job: pulling the reader from one paragraph to another by connecting the two. A skilled writer can often get the job done with a simple keyword or phrase.

Here’s an example of keyword transitions. Murray begins by introducing the writing process and signaling its three parts.

The writing process itself can be divided into three stages: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. The amount of time a writer spends in each stage depends on his personality, his work habits, his maturity as a craftsman, and the challenge of what he is trying to say. It is not a rigid lock-step process, but most writers most of the time pass through these three stages.

He then transitions by repeating the keywords at the start of each paragraph.

Prewriting is everything that takes place before the first draft. Prewriting usually takes about 85% of the writer’s time. It includes the awareness of his world from which his subject is born. In prewriting, the writer focuses on that subject, spots an audience, chooses a form which may carry his subject to his audience. Prewriting may include research and daydreaming, notemaking and outlining, title-writing and lead-writing.

Writing is the act of producing a first draft. It is the fastest part of the process, and the most frightening, for it is a commitment. When you complete a draft you know how much, and how little, you know. And the writing of this first draft—rough, searching, unfinished—may take as little as one percent of the writer’s time.

Rewriting is reconsideration of subject, form, and audience. It is researching, rethinking, redesigning, rewriting—and finally, line-by-line editing, the demanding, satisfying process of making each word right. It may take many times the hours required for a first draft, perhaps the remaining fourteen percent of the time the writer spends on the project.

Here’s another example. Here, Murray signals a continuation of the first paragraph’s idea by repeating the key phrase have to.

To be a teacher of a process such as this takes qualities too few of us have, but which most of us can develop. We have to be quiet, to listen, to respond. We are not the initiator or the motivator; we are the reader, the recipient.

We have to be patient and wait, and wait, and wait. The suspense in the beginning of a writing course is agonizing for the teacher, but if we break first, if we do the prewriting for our students they will not learn the largest part of the writing process.

We have to respect the student, not for his product, not for the paper we call literature by giving it a grade, but for the search for truth in which he is engaged. We must listen carefully for those words that may reveal a truth, that may reveal a voice. We must respect our student for his potential truth and for his potential voice. We are coaches, encouragers, developers, creators of environments in which our students can experience the writing process for themselves.

Another way to transition is by using a backward-looking word or phrase connecting the new paragraph to the last one. Here, Murray asks a backward-looking question (and repeats the keyword process).

And once you can look at your composition program with the realization you are teaching a process, you may be able to design a curriculum which works. Not overnight, for writing is a demanding, intellectual process; but sooner than you think, for the process can be put to work to produce a product which may be worth your reading:

What is the process we should teach? It is the process of discovery through language. It is the process of exploration of what we know and what we feel about what we know through language. It is the process of using language to learn about our world, to evaluate what we learn about our world, to communicate what we learn about our world.

In this last example, Murray uses more overt transitions—a numbered list. Although this approach and similar ones (like first, second, third) work well enough, they can be annoying or confusing if overused (be careful about lists within lists).

Let us see what some of the implications of teaching process, not product, are for the composition curriculum.

Implication No. 1. The text of the writing course is the student’s own writing. Students examine their own evolving writing and that of their classmates, so that they study writing while it is still a matter of choice, word by word.

Implication No. 2. The student finds his own subject. It is not the job of the teacher to legislate the student’s truth. It is the responsibility of the student to explore his own world with his own language, to discover his own meaning. The teacher supports but does not direct this expedition to the student’s own truth.

Implication No. 3. The student….

Don’t overthink transitions. They don’t need to be long or fancy. A simple word or phrase that helps the reader get from one paragraph to the next is usually enough.