The Story Behind the Story: Paying Attention to Structure

On Tuesday Books Are Our Superpower published my essay A DEI Story Time Violation: What can we talk about and where can we talk about it? This is a revision of my blog post The Reading History Project: "Pedal Pusher" by Mary Boone. Watch Out for Women on Bikes!

When writing here about revising blog posts for essays to submit elsewhere, I've often said my second drafts end up having a somewhat different focus than the original blog post did. That is definitely the case here. The second draft focuses much more strongly on the DEI violation aspect of this story than on the book Pedal Pusher, itself.

The way the essays were structured had a big impact on the change in focus.

Structure Makes a Difference in Focus

Original Content Essay. The original post was laid out with a first paragraph stating that Pedal Pusher was a good subject for a Women's History Month for a couple of reasons. "...a couple of reasons" suggested that there was going to be two things discussed. 

Then I discussed the book, itself, which deals with a woman from the past and why she is significant. A subheading leads into the second reason the book was a good subject, the fact that a story time related to it had been canceled because of a claim that it violated an executive order dealing with DEI. 

The essay then ends with what might be called a "call to action," the suggestion that we can all speak out in support of books and bring attention to them.

This first essay was a gathering of my material--what the book is about, the DEI issue, the call to action.

Books Are Our Superpower Essay. This essay is significantly different. I dropped the call-to-action section at the end altogether. Instead, I "bookended" the Pedal Pusher book material with the story of what happened with the story time being cancelled because of the DEI violation complaint and included a couple more details about it.

Because the essay began and ended with the DEI complaint, it became particularly important. We remember what we read in the beginning of a section of writing and at the end. The ending of the BAOS essay, therefore, connecting back to the beginning, made the DEI complaint memorable.

Learn to Take Advantage of Structure

Structure helps readers comprehend and remember what they read, so it's valuable for us as readers. That makes it valuable for us as writers, as well. It's worthwhile to spend some time studying structure and paying attention to the structure of essays and blog posts you read.

For instance, paragraphs, which might be described as the building blocks of essays, are sections of writing, just as essays are. They're just shorter. That makes the beginning and endings of paragraphs important. The first sentence is usually a topic sentence, and the last sentence is usually a conclusion of some sort. Every paragraph thus gives readers two points--a beginning and an ending--with material they are likely to recall. 

On more than one occasion, I've noticed writing on the Medium platform that doesn't use paragraphs at all. The pieces are lists of sentences. They're not a true listicle, which is an actual format. They're just a list of sentences that appear to be either undeveloped thoughts or connected thoughts that weren't placed in paragraph form.

A list of sentences is difficult for readers to follow, because:

• It's choppy.
• Unless the first sentence in the list is an obvious topic sentence, it's hard for readers to identify one. They have to work out what all these sentences are supposed to be about themselves. 
• Again, readers remember the beginning and ending of a section of writing, including paragraphs. When your format uses multiple paragraphs, your readers have multiple opportunities to recall the important material you have put at the beginning and ending of those multiple paragraphs. In a piece of writing that is just a list of sentences, only the first and last sentence in the list act as that important spot that readers are likely to remember. 

Notice how I used the beginning and ending of this essay. In the first section I introduced the idea that structure can make an impact on the focus of an essay. In the second section, I showed how structure changed the focus of the second essay I wrote about Pedal Pusher. In the third section, I reinforced the importance of paying attention to the beginning and ending sections of writing while structuring essays. I gave readers multiple opportunities to absorb the points I wanted to make.

My hope is that I've structured this essay in such a way as to make readers appreciate the importance of understanding structure and paying attention to it when writing.