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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: we're back with part two of our series on the paragraph. Yes,

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Speaker 1: the writing convention the paragraph as used in prose. In

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Speaker 1: the last episode, of course, if you haven't heard that yet,

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Speaker 1: you should go check that out first. But in the

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Speaker 1: last episode we especially focused on the history of the paragraph,

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Speaker 1: talking about the old Greek and Latin manuscript style of

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Speaker 1: script EO continue ah, which is just a big old

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Speaker 1: mess of letters with no case differences, no punctuation between sentences,

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Speaker 1: and no spaces between words. It sounds like an absolute nightmare.

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Speaker 1: And how over time that morphed into a tradition that

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Speaker 1: put a greater emphasis on legibility, introducing things like spaces

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Speaker 1: between war words and punctuation case differences and so forth, um,

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Speaker 1: but eventually also having this tradition of transition markers such

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Speaker 1: as the pill crow, which are you know that that's

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Speaker 1: the paragraph symbol. You've probably seen it before, especially in

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Speaker 1: medieval manuscripts, often being a little red symbol. But then

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Speaker 1: of course that over time just giving way to blank space,

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Speaker 1: giving rise to the paragraph breaks that we know today

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Speaker 1: now concerning the era of medieval manuscripts, where you had

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Speaker 1: these red pill crows and they would be filled in

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Speaker 1: by special manuscript artists known as rubric caters. Again that's

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Speaker 1: uh actually from the Latin word meaning red. So these

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Speaker 1: are the red text people, uh that they um there.

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Speaker 1: There was a quote from a Middle English poem that

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Speaker 1: I wanted to share because it struck me as so weird.

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Speaker 1: This poem was cited in an essay that I'm going

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Speaker 1: to refer to in this episode, and I did in

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Speaker 1: the last called Past Lives of the Paragraph by Richard

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Speaker 1: Hughes Gibson published in The Hedgehog Review. But the poem

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Speaker 1: goes like this, Okay, so it's in Middle English, I'll

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Speaker 1: try it. It's like route is on the book without

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Speaker 1: v pariff's great and stout bullet in rose red. And

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Speaker 1: what's going on here is that the poet is using

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Speaker 1: pair off symbols as a metaphor for the five wounds

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Speaker 1: on the body of Christ. And in modern English this

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Speaker 1: would these lines would say something like wrought on the

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Speaker 1: book without five paraffs, great and stout standing out in

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Speaker 1: rose red so there you go. That's your typography and

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Speaker 1: crucifixion narrative coming together in in one great glorious stew this.

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Speaker 1: This is fascinating when it comes to red text. I

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Speaker 1: guess the main place one sees it now is that

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Speaker 1: many bibles, uh, Christian Bibles will contain um passages that

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Speaker 1: are the attributed words of Christ in red and uh

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Speaker 1: and that's a hold over from these days. Another case

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Speaker 1: that stands out in my memory is the book The

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Speaker 1: House of Leaves, in which I believe the word minotaur

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Speaker 1: is is featured in red. And that book as a whole,

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Speaker 1: I think is interesting to think of in terms of

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Speaker 1: something that I keep thinking of discussing the paragraph, and

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Speaker 1: that is the format being part of the message, part

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Speaker 1: of the communication. Um that if you if you strip

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Speaker 1: away paragraph breaks yet disrupts the communication that is that

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Speaker 1: is taking place between between author and reader. And and

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Speaker 1: if you strip away other aspects of formatting, if you

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Speaker 1: tinker with things like fonts in a in a negative fashion, uh,

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Speaker 1: it can also have such an effect. And that is

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Speaker 1: a book for example, that if you were to alter

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Speaker 1: too much about the format at all, you end up

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Speaker 1: decaying the message and the intended communication of the piece.

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Speaker 1: This ties into something we talked about in the last episode,

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Speaker 1: which is the somewhat arbitrary designations of like which formatting

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Speaker 1: decisions are considered integral to the text and which you're not. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And the the big example would be e books in

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Speaker 1: the way that they break text across different pages. So

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Speaker 1: you change the font size on your e book that

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Speaker 1: you know different text will appear together with different page groupings. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And of course this was true before the books. I mean,

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Speaker 1: different printings of the same text in book form would

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Speaker 1: usually not have the exact same words each page, so

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Speaker 1: page layout is not considered integral usually in a printed book,

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Speaker 1: though of course it would be in a book like

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Speaker 1: House of Leaves, where it's very much a work of

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Speaker 1: art as well as a book. Uh. And yet paragraph

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Speaker 1: breaks are considered an integral part of the text, and

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Speaker 1: if you change those around, people I think would mostly

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Speaker 1: have the sense that you are really altering the author's

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Speaker 1: work there, even though some teachers do it and uh

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Speaker 1: apparently it has good effects, especially when teaching a piece

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Speaker 1: of writing that has really long paragraphs. I totally forgot

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Speaker 1: to mention a book that I'm I'm currently reading that.

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Speaker 1: I'm that I have that our head that has errors

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Speaker 1: in it. I'm reading an old e book that I

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Speaker 1: have of Rank Herbert's Heretics of Dune, and I hadn't

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Speaker 1: I hadn't picked up this e book in a very

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Speaker 1: long time, and the formatting was weird in it, uh,

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Speaker 1: not consistently, not enough to where I was like, should

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Speaker 1: I just buy a new e book of this? Or

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Speaker 1: should I press on? But occasionally, uh, paragraph breaks would

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Speaker 1: be missing, and it would often occur with dialogue. So um,

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Speaker 1: if I'm just reading along, I might miss that one

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Speaker 1: character has stopped talking and another character has started talking,

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Speaker 1: or that there's been some shift in a thought and

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Speaker 1: it is it was disruptive to reach those points, and

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Speaker 1: I would have to stop and go back and sort

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Speaker 1: of pick apart with my my eyes where the actual

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Speaker 1: paragraph breaks should have occurred. And then I would momentarily

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Speaker 1: think about buying a new e book, and then I

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Speaker 1: would keep going instead. Wait, I'm perplexed by the idea

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Speaker 1: of an e book with fixed errors in it. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so you buy a video game and it's gotten bugs.

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Speaker 1: The developers should eventually release a patch like an update

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Speaker 1: that will download. It'll it'll fix your game, and now

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Speaker 1: it won't have the bugs anymore. But you download an

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Speaker 1: e book and it's got bugs in it, and what

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Speaker 1: they don't do that? No, Well nowadays they can. Nowadays

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Speaker 1: the books can you can essentially have a patch that

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Speaker 1: goes out through like Amazon and whatnot. So I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I guess this is just a super old e book

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Speaker 1: that I have of this particular UH text. So, um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I I should have. I should have broken and bought

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Speaker 1: a new e book of it. I actually have a

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Speaker 1: physical copy of it as well, and I toyed with

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Speaker 1: just switching over to the physical copy, but I can't

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Speaker 1: control the size of the text on that, so I

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Speaker 1: kind of kind of spoiled by my kindle. So this

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Speaker 1: old one, You're like, it would be like waiting on

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Speaker 1: the developers to release a patch for the et game

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Speaker 1: for the Atari. Yeah, well, like this is clearly not

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Speaker 1: the supported copy anymore, so, or maybe I have something

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Speaker 1: wrong in my settings. I'm not sure. Okay. Well, one

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Speaker 1: thing that I guess ties more into the history that

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Speaker 1: we were talking about in the last episode, UH is

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Speaker 1: the question of when did the idea of a paraph

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Speaker 1: for a paragraph come to symbolize more the chunk of

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Speaker 1: text itself between the breaks rather than the breaks, because

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Speaker 1: you know the the Originally, the idea is that the

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Speaker 1: marker known as the paragraph as in Greek manuscripts, was

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Speaker 1: like a marginal notation that signaled some kind of transition

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Speaker 1: within the text. It was it was written out beside uh.

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Speaker 1: And then over time this morphs through many stages to

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Speaker 1: become line breaks and indentation. Uh So when did we

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Speaker 1: start talking about paragraphs as the text between those breaks?

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Speaker 1: Well in that article I mentioned by Richard Teughs Gibson,

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Speaker 1: Gibson points to examples in texts in UH in French

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Speaker 1: and English around the thirteenth through fourteenth century that seemed

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Speaker 1: to start making reference to paragraphs as subsections of text,

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Speaker 1: saying things like you know, you can skip this paragraph,

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Speaker 1: or talking about a text and saying, you know, refer

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Speaker 1: to this paragraph. But it seems to be roughly around

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Speaker 1: the late seventeen early eighteenth century that the more modern

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Speaker 1: definition of a paragraph as the passage of text between

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Speaker 1: the line breaks and indentation emerges as dominant. UH. And

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Speaker 1: Gibson points to a seventeen oh six new edition of

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Speaker 1: the New World of English words, which defines a paragraph

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Speaker 1: as quote a portion of matter of discourse or treatise

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Speaker 1: contained between two breaks, i e. Which begins with a

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Speaker 1: new line and ends where the line breaks off. So

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Speaker 1: by around that time you've got people talking about paragraphs,

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Speaker 1: and they are the paragraphs that we have today. It's

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Speaker 1: a chunk of text between line breaks. But this leads

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Speaker 1: to another question, which is the question of paragraph theory.

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Speaker 1: What actually makes a paragraph? Surely people who study language

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Speaker 1: and writing must have come up with ideas of Okay,

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Speaker 1: you know, you go out and look at paragraphs and books.

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Speaker 1: What are the things that paragraphs have in common? How

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Speaker 1: do authors decide where to break the line? And this

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Speaker 1: question is not nearly as easy to answer as you

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Speaker 1: might assume, especially because, uh, you know, this is not

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Speaker 1: the only thing like this in the world. But it's

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Speaker 1: one case where there's sort of a formal definition that

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Speaker 1: you will find taught in school and that you will

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Speaker 1: find in a lot of textbooks that does not at

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Speaker 1: all seem to describe what happens just out in the world. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And and the difference here is that you've got all

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Speaker 1: kinds of prescriptive definitions of the paragraph, often saying that

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Speaker 1: a paragraph sort of explores a central idea or a topic.

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Speaker 1: And we'll get to one major proponent of this idea

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Speaker 1: in just a bit. But one person that Gibson points

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Speaker 1: to in his essay is a poet and art critic

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Speaker 1: named Herbert Reid, who wrote a nineteen book on English

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Speaker 1: prose style, and Gibson writes about read quote taking up

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Speaker 1: his nearly century old book one recognizes a peculiar tradition

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Speaker 1: in which one textbook after another, one generation after another,

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Speaker 1: has promoted a blueprint for paragraph construction conspicuously at odds

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Speaker 1: with the prose of the most highly acclaimed stylists of

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Speaker 1: the English language. So, in other words, there's a conflict

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Speaker 1: between how paragraphs are theorized in textbooks and taught in

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Speaker 1: schools and how they're actually used by writers, especially the

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Speaker 1: most popular writers in a culture. Good writers do not

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Speaker 1: usually write comp one oh one style essays with clear

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Speaker 1: topic sentences and one central idea per paragraph. How often

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Speaker 1: do you come across that in a book you actually

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Speaker 1: like to read? Yeah? Not often, you know. In fact,

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Speaker 1: I was for the last episode, and for this episode,

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Speaker 1: I did a lot of looking around, thinking, well that

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Speaker 1: I should be able to find some perfect paragraphs out

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Speaker 1: there in books that I that I love and books

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Speaker 1: that I admire, and it's it's it's really hard because

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Speaker 1: if you go into it thinking about paragraphs and perhaps

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Speaker 1: having at least this shadow of the of this school book,

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Speaker 1: this textbook paragraph in your mind, you find all sorts

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Speaker 1: of things that don't really fit that form. Absolutely. So

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Speaker 1: you look at your favorite books, you are probably just

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Speaker 1: not going to find too many paragraphs that have a

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Speaker 1: topic sentence and then supporting sentences developing that topic idea,

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Speaker 1: and then a line break when you're done with that topic,

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Speaker 1: moving on to the next thing. There are some reasons

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Speaker 1: we can talk about where I think it might make

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Speaker 1: sense for composition classes to teach it that way, But yeah,

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Speaker 1: this is just not usually what you're gonna find out

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Speaker 1: in the wild and in the books you like. And

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Speaker 1: so we're back to the question again, like what actually

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Speaker 1: causes those paragraph breaks to happen where they do. They're

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Speaker 1: not random. If you were to just rearrange them at random,

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Speaker 1: it would probably produce a less good and less cohesive text.

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Speaker 1: And yet it's very hard to actually come up with

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Speaker 1: rules to explain why they come in the places they do.

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Speaker 1: I'll also say that I think that a very effective

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Speaker 1: but standard, you know, sort of textbook paragraph is kind

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Speaker 1: of like a brick and a cathedral. Um. The bricks

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Speaker 1: are important, and there may be a lot of bricks,

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Speaker 1: and they're holding things together, but they're not the part

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Speaker 1: you remember. You remember the flying buttresses, you remember the gargoyles,

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Speaker 1: and the and the stained glass windows and the uh

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Speaker 1: and and things of that nature. And so the parts

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Speaker 1: of a text, and in fact, the paragraphs of a text,

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Speaker 1: they probably stand out the most to us are the

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Speaker 1: ones that are weird, that are you know, big run

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Speaker 1: roll on sentences, are short, little fragments that have a

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Speaker 1: lot of weird things going on in them, Like those

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Speaker 1: are those are the things that catch our eye. Those

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Speaker 1: are the ones we remember. Yeah, I think that's right.

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Speaker 1: And uh. And I think even by looking at some

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Speaker 1: of the more prescriptive paragraph theorists, even if their prescriptive

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Speaker 1: definitions of paragraphs don't really describe what you see in

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Speaker 1: the world, um, they do make some observations that are useful.

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Speaker 1: And one thing that's stuck with me here is that

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Speaker 1: in Gibson's article, he cites an American lawyer and grammarian

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Speaker 1: named Lindley Murray, who in seventeen wrote a book on

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Speaker 1: English grammar called English Grammar, which makes some recommendations on

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Speaker 1: how a composition should be divided into paragraphs, and literally

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Speaker 1: writes that ideally a paragraph is about a single subject.

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Speaker 1: Each subject should get its own paragraph, unless subjects are

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Speaker 1: very short. Uh. Subjects that are very long should be

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Speaker 1: divided into multiple paragraphs or getting into some some vagueness

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Speaker 1: about exactly what is very short or very long here,

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Speaker 1: And who knows. People in seventeen might have had more

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Speaker 1: tolerance for very long paragraphs. I'm not not not sure

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Speaker 1: about that, but that seems possible based on the text

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Speaker 1: sive surveyed. But one thing Linley Murray says that I

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Speaker 1: do think is still true is that you should often

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Speaker 1: try to place the paragraph breaks quote at sentiments of

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Speaker 1: the most weight or that call for particular attention. So

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Speaker 1: when you have to divide subjects across multiple paragraphs, you

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Speaker 1: are looking for places to to place the paragraph breaks

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Speaker 1: that will call attention to the sentences directly before or after. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And so it's interesting that Murray senses what what Gibson

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Speaker 1: in his essay describes as these quote hot spots places

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Speaker 1: in the text, typically occurring near paragraph breaks, where the

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Speaker 1: power of the words increases or is emphasized. Paragraph breaks

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Speaker 1: tend to draw attention to the words right before and

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Speaker 1: after them. This is a great idea, of course, because

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Speaker 1: as a as a writer, you want the reader to

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Speaker 1: keep reading and and this this kind of works like

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Speaker 1: like an arrow pointing from one chunk of text to

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Speaker 1: the next, almost like uh, connecting one tile in a

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Speaker 1: board game to the following tile. You know where to go,

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Speaker 1: and you want to go there, yes, And I think

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Speaker 1: at this time it's also already recognized that paragraph length

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Speaker 1: plays an important role, not just in organizing the contents

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Speaker 1: of a piece of writing, but also in sort of

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Speaker 1: managing energy and attention of the reader. Because again, if

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Speaker 1: paragraphs are too short, the text starts to feel frivolous

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Speaker 1: or insubstantial, and if paragraphs are too long, the text

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Speaker 1: starts to feel tedious and over taxing, and so balancing

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Speaker 1: paragraph length serves the function of not losing the reader

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Speaker 1: than But okay, it's time to talk about Alexander Bain,

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Speaker 1: because when you get into paragraph theory, this is a

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Speaker 1: name that is cited and essentially every piece of writing

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Speaker 1: on this subject. Alexander Bain is the king of paragraph theory.

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Speaker 1: So he was. He was a professor in the nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century in Scotland. He was the He was the chair

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Speaker 1: of Logic and the chair of English Literature at the

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Speaker 1: University of Aberdeen. I think he was given those posts

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Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty one, and uh he was. He had

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Speaker 1: a He was one of those people at the time

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Speaker 1: who just had like a poker and a number of

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Speaker 1: different fire So I think he was also influential in

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Speaker 1: the early development of psychology. Uh yeah, but also logic

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Speaker 1: and also English literature. So um. He became a teacher

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Speaker 1: of composition at Aberdeen and ended up writing his own

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Speaker 1: text book for his classes that was called English Composition

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Speaker 1: and Rhetoric, a manual. This was published in the eighteen sixties.

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Speaker 1: It contained what a scholar called Paul Rogers called the

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Speaker 1: first systematic formulation of paragraph theory. And if you you

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Speaker 1: ever took a comp one oh one class, you will

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Speaker 1: probably recognize Bain's idea. Bain's primary concern with paragraphs was unity,

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Speaker 1: that each paragraph should have what's called unity of purpose.

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Speaker 1: It's doing one main thing. And he had like six

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Speaker 1: rules about paragraphs. They are things like first rule, the

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Speaker 1: bearing of each sentence upon what proceeds shall be explicit

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Speaker 1: and unmistakable. Too, when several consecutive sentences iterate or illustrate

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Speaker 1: the same idea, they go, so far as possible be

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Speaker 1: formed alike. And then three, here's the big one. The

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Speaker 1: opening sentence, unless so constructed as to be obviously preparatory,

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Speaker 1: is expected to indicate with prominence the subject of the paragraph.

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Speaker 1: And here it is, this is your topic sentence rule

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Speaker 1: number three. So, for Alexander Bain, each paragraph in a

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Speaker 1: composition should exhaust a single subject, and the paragraph should

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Speaker 1: begin with a succinct statement of that subject, which is

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Speaker 1: then to be developed in the following sentences. Don't you

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Speaker 1: just thrill with the love of the English language. But

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Speaker 1: Bain's ideas did prove very influential, and, according to Gibson,

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Speaker 1: at least one half of the modern discourse on paragraph

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Speaker 1: theory still basically derives from Bain. Gibson writes, citing another

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Speaker 1: rhetorician named Mike Duncan, that there are two major schools

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Speaker 1: of thought in paragraph theory. You've got prescriptivists and descriptivists.

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Speaker 1: Paragraph prescriptivists usually say something like, the paragraph is an

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Speaker 1: ideal structure with an ideal form. It's based on unity

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Speaker 1: of purpose. Like Bain said, it should be about one

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Speaker 1: thing and it should cover that one thing and then uh,

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Speaker 1: and that form, that ideal form can be emulated by

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Speaker 1: students to practice their writing. Meanwhile, paragraph descriptivists would have

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Speaker 1: what Gibson calls quote a looser inductive approach to instruction,

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Speaker 1: with Bain style rules limited to suggesting a structural ideal

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Speaker 1: that is only rarely seen and thinking about it. I

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Speaker 1: can see how there are advantages to teaching writing with

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Speaker 1: with each of these approaches. Uh. So the descriptive school,

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Speaker 1: to my mind, saying yeah, paragraphs don't usually work that

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Speaker 1: way is more honest. It is more honest about how

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Speaker 1: paragraphs are actually formed in popular writing, but it's also

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Speaker 1: a lot harder to teach. I mean, if the truth

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Speaker 1: is that a paragraph can be anything you want it

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Speaker 1: to be as long as it works, as long as

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Speaker 1: it makes sense and feels good to the reader, that

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Speaker 1: is a true statement. But a student probably doesn't know

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Speaker 1: how to create a paragraph that works unless they're just

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Speaker 1: naturally talented, So this is just not very helpful advice.

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Speaker 1: So incomes the prescriptive model. It doesn't usually describe most

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Speaker 1: of the paragraphs you'll find in books you like, and

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Speaker 1: and and articles you like, but it is actually something

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Speaker 1: that can be taught and has the utility in creating

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Speaker 1: a structure that students can use to organize their thoughts

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Speaker 1: and make them clear. So it is better than nothing.

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Speaker 1: It is better than not being able to write anything

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Speaker 1: coherent at all. But then again, if you learn composition

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Speaker 1: on the basis of the prescriptivist thought, and you're you're

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Speaker 1: writing Alexander Bain style paragraphs with topic sentences, the classic

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Speaker 1: five paragraph essay for for a school class, I wonder

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Speaker 1: does that constrict the development of your writing skill in

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Speaker 1: the domain of organic paragraphs. Yeah, I don't know, And

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Speaker 1: it certainly makes me think of of the old standard

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Speaker 1: that you need to learn the rules before you break

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Speaker 1: the rules that you need to It's better to start

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Speaker 1: with this rule based system and then move out from that.

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Speaker 1: Uh So you'll have, you know, somewhere to go and

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Speaker 1: somewhere to sort of look back to. Um. So I

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Speaker 1: can see the I certainly see the appeal of of

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Speaker 1: of valuing both approaches to the paragraph. Yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: I can agree with that, and I guess I was

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Speaker 1: sort of already getting at this, But to make it

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Speaker 1: more clear, I wonder if this is just one of

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Speaker 1: those things that is a product of necessity stemming from

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Speaker 1: the realities of teaching, Like there's no systematic way to

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Speaker 1: teach a student to be a great prose stylist, to just,

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Speaker 1: you know, to write great organic paragraphs that people love

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Speaker 1: to read. Like, what would you tell them to do

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Speaker 1: is like, no, use this word here, And you know,

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Speaker 1: like you probably just can't really teach that unless you're

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Speaker 1: gonna stick with them their entire life and just be

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Speaker 1: really intensive. But you probably can, in the course of

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Speaker 1: a semester help teach a student to better organize their

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Speaker 1: thoughts more clearly with a structure like the five paragraph

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Speaker 1: essay that has paragraphs with topic sentences that are each

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Speaker 1: about a single subject. So I think taking a student

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Speaker 1: from incoherent in writing to reasonably clear five paragraph essay

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Speaker 1: with Baines style conventions, that's doable. Teaching someone to write

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Speaker 1: wonderful organic paragraphs is much more challenging. Yeah, And this

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Speaker 1: is something that's gonna be a no brainer to any

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Speaker 1: teachers out there, and certainly to any parents of children

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Speaker 1: who are still learning how to write. I mean, I've

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Speaker 1: my sons are doing pretty well, but um but, I

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Speaker 1: mean I've seen some real dogs of paragraphs when it

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Speaker 1: comes to, uh, to putting things together, because you know,

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Speaker 1: he I have to remind myself. I've had to remind

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Speaker 1: myself in the in these times it's like, yeah, he

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Speaker 1: he may he he reads a lot and he's he

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Speaker 1: gets to see a lot of of well constructed paragraphs

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Speaker 1: and para apps that are definitely doing their job within

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Speaker 1: narrative works and so forth. But you've got to start somewhere.

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Speaker 1: You've got to have like some sort of basic form

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Speaker 1: in mind, especially when you're doing these very um, you know,

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Speaker 1: wrote sort of assignments where it's all about constructing, uh,

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Speaker 1: stracting the sentences, forming those sentences into paragraphs, and having

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Speaker 1: you know, X number of paragraphs to illustrate a basic concept. Yes,

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Speaker 1: and in the defense of the five paragraph essay and

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Speaker 1: and the Alexander Baines style paragraph, uh, I would say

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Speaker 1: that's useful for more than just producing a piece of

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Speaker 1: writing somebody would actually want to read. It is useful

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Speaker 1: for practicing organizing your own thoughts. I know, I've said

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Speaker 1: on the podcast before that I often feel like I

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Speaker 1: don't really understand what I think about an issue, often

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Speaker 1: until I try to write about it. Writing is the

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Speaker 1: process by which I realize which of my intuitions I

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Speaker 1: do think are true and make sense, and which ones

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Speaker 1: are not and I should just abandon It's a Writing

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Speaker 1: for me is very much a process of figuring out

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Speaker 1: what I really think and organizing those thoughts into a

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Speaker 1: structure that makes sense. Yeah. Absolutely, I I certainly agree

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Speaker 1: with that. Oftentimes, oftentimes find myself in a situation where

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Speaker 1: I have to write about a topic, my thoughts on

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Speaker 1: the topic or just the general knowledge about that topic.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of all over the place. But you've got

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Speaker 1: to start somewhere. And uh, and so that just that

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Speaker 1: first sentence, that first paragraph, that opening paragraph of of

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Speaker 1: a work, even if it's not the lead paragraph, you

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Speaker 1: end up sticking with Like that is often for me,

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Speaker 1: Like that's kind of like staking a place in the ground.

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Speaker 1: That's like where you begin to to actually trace out

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Speaker 1: where you're going to build the rest of the thing. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you remember, a long time ago, we did an episode

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Speaker 1: that I think back on fairly often about the illusion

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Speaker 1: of explanatory depth, the psychology concept where you can think

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Speaker 1: you understand how something works, but you actually don't until

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Speaker 1: you are forced to try to explain it. Uh. Easy

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Speaker 1: example for this is, uh, do you know how to

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Speaker 1: draw a bicycle with all the parts? And everybody thinks

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Speaker 1: they do, but you actually try to draw one, and like,

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Speaker 1: I don't know what the percentage of people has, but

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Speaker 1: a huge percentage of people actually they draw a bicycle

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Speaker 1: that could not work, like they don't actually know what

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Speaker 1: parts connect to what and and everything. Um. And the

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Speaker 1: same is true for like a toilet tank or other

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Speaker 1: things that we just think we understand how they work

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Speaker 1: until we have to get explicit and into the details

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Speaker 1: about it. And writing can be an exercise like that,

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Speaker 1: Like trying to draw the bicycle, It helps you realize

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Speaker 1: what you thought you understood or new, but you don't.

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Speaker 1: You don't actually, so now you've got to go back

433
00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:44,000
Speaker 1: and figure things out now. I was thinking about another

434
00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 1: difference between the you know, the lovely organic paragraph that

435
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:51,639
Speaker 1: sort of moves on its own terms and and you

436
00:24:51,680 --> 00:24:54,920
Speaker 1: can't really say what exactly the rules for its structure are,

437
00:24:55,119 --> 00:24:59,840
Speaker 1: versus the Alexander Bain style prescriptive topic, sentence, paragraph, and

438
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:03,080
Speaker 1: and I think one difference is simply that these are

439
00:25:03,520 --> 00:25:08,359
Speaker 1: achieving different goals. One is style and the other is clarity.

440
00:25:08,520 --> 00:25:11,760
Speaker 1: And if if like a fiction book, we're full of

441
00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:15,000
Speaker 1: Bain style paragraphs, I think that would obviously become very

442
00:25:15,040 --> 00:25:18,240
Speaker 1: tedious and unpleasant to read. So of course there's the

443
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:21,600
Speaker 1: idea that good prose stylists don't usually follow this format.

444
00:25:21,920 --> 00:25:24,359
Speaker 1: And yet I can think of documents where I would

445
00:25:24,480 --> 00:25:28,440
Speaker 1: much rather have the document read in and Alexander Bain

446
00:25:28,560 --> 00:25:31,920
Speaker 1: style instead of having you know, uh, sort of more

447
00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:35,959
Speaker 1: loosey goosey organic paragraphs. And examples would be things like

448
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:39,119
Speaker 1: an article in a science journal or a medical article,

449
00:25:39,359 --> 00:25:42,560
Speaker 1: or a legal document, or a list of instructions for

450
00:25:42,600 --> 00:25:47,480
Speaker 1: building something, basically anywhere that clarity and logical organization are

451
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:52,800
Speaker 1: more important than uh, style and energy and pleasure of reading.

452
00:25:53,320 --> 00:25:57,840
Speaker 1: I think that the Bain style structure is a good approach. Yeah, yeah,

453
00:25:57,880 --> 00:26:00,159
Speaker 1: this is an interesting point, and it made me think

454
00:26:00,200 --> 00:26:02,960
Speaker 1: of how I use a lot of texts for work

455
00:26:03,040 --> 00:26:06,399
Speaker 1: and for research, because I think an interesting aspect of

456
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:09,720
Speaker 1: the text to think about here is skimmability for texts

457
00:26:09,720 --> 00:26:12,800
Speaker 1: that are not expressly for pleasure. Uh, you know, certainly

458
00:26:12,840 --> 00:26:16,199
Speaker 1: if it's something I'm using for research purposes. Some In

459
00:26:16,240 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 1: some cases I read the entire book, uh, you know,

460
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 1: cover to cover. Other times I'm in there to get

461
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:25,880
Speaker 1: specific things from that author. I know they're specific topics

462
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:28,400
Speaker 1: or it's a specific part of a study that I'm

463
00:26:28,400 --> 00:26:32,840
Speaker 1: interested in. And for that, Yeah, paragraphs are breaks and

464
00:26:32,880 --> 00:26:35,960
Speaker 1: paragraph structure are pretty important because I need to be

465
00:26:36,000 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 1: able to move around in that text. I'm not I'm

466
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:40,480
Speaker 1: not gonna eat at all. I need to be able

467
00:26:40,520 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 1: to pick out the things I want, and so it

468
00:26:42,840 --> 00:26:46,439
Speaker 1: helps if those morsels are separated from each other on

469
00:26:46,440 --> 00:26:48,880
Speaker 1: the platter. I think they're Also these are the kind

470
00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:52,480
Speaker 1: of documents that in many cases would benefit from being

471
00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:56,639
Speaker 1: removed from the flowing prose style altogether and just become

472
00:26:56,720 --> 00:27:00,000
Speaker 1: lists of bullet points. Yeah, yeah, I mean you see

473
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:04,240
Speaker 1: this and instructions right, Uh, Similarly, guidelines and whatnot. They're

474
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:08,439
Speaker 1: generally not going to be arranged in um in multi

475
00:27:08,480 --> 00:27:11,480
Speaker 1: paragraph form. It's going to be bullet points and numbers

476
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:13,960
Speaker 1: and also illustrations and so forth. But you do find

477
00:27:13,960 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 1: this with recipes, I guess. But even then you'll have

478
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:18,280
Speaker 1: numbers or bullet points in there as well. So you

479
00:27:18,320 --> 00:27:21,040
Speaker 1: can easily skip from this paragraph to this paragraph. So

480
00:27:21,119 --> 00:27:24,520
Speaker 1: it's you're very clear on which step am I on totally.

481
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:27,080
Speaker 1: I mean, I love organic flowing pros, but I don't

482
00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:29,399
Speaker 1: want it in a recipe. But you will get it

483
00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:32,960
Speaker 1: in your recipe on every recipe blog out there. And

484
00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:35,240
Speaker 1: I think you often hear people gribe about this, and

485
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:38,119
Speaker 1: I think it's because of that, that collision of two things.

486
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:43,720
Speaker 1: You'll often have a an organic organic paragraphs forming this um,

487
00:27:43,760 --> 00:27:47,480
Speaker 1: this conversational blog post about a particular recipe about a

488
00:27:47,520 --> 00:27:51,200
Speaker 1: particular drink or or food culture, whatever it happens to be.

489
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:55,360
Speaker 1: But then this article also contains the recipe a thing

490
00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 1: that that is very much uh, you know, a situation

491
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:01,320
Speaker 1: where you want to go in what you need, jump

492
00:28:01,359 --> 00:28:04,080
Speaker 1: in at the right step, and get out again. And

493
00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:06,199
Speaker 1: if you're hit with both styles, I mean that can

494
00:28:06,240 --> 00:28:08,600
Speaker 1: be a little bit jarring, Yeah, especially if it's not

495
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:12,480
Speaker 1: so I was gonna qualify what I said with like, Okay,

496
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:15,200
Speaker 1: I can understand, you know, sort of a thing that's

497
00:28:15,240 --> 00:28:17,720
Speaker 1: two parts. It's like the recipe as a list of

498
00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:20,919
Speaker 1: instruct clear instructions with bullet points, and then above that,

499
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:24,520
Speaker 1: like an article that explains in more detail, but uh,

500
00:28:25,000 --> 00:28:27,679
Speaker 1: it does get frustrating, like if it's not clear at

501
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:30,399
Speaker 1: first glance whether you need to read the article or

502
00:28:30,440 --> 00:28:32,400
Speaker 1: not in order to make the recipe, you're like, am

503
00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:34,399
Speaker 1: I gonna be missing something if I don't read all

504
00:28:34,440 --> 00:28:37,119
Speaker 1: this text right? And And one of the problems I

505
00:28:37,119 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 1: think with with blog posts is it comes down to formatting.

506
00:28:40,560 --> 00:28:42,760
Speaker 1: Because if you have a really good book, like I

507
00:28:42,800 --> 00:28:46,960
Speaker 1: have a few different books on on cocktails and and

508
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:49,760
Speaker 1: those are often nice because they're very well formatted and

509
00:28:49,800 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 1: you can easily see where is the cocktail recipe and

510
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:55,520
Speaker 1: where where is the you know, the article, where's the

511
00:28:55,560 --> 00:28:58,800
Speaker 1: pros about this cocktail or the history of the cocktail, etcetera.

512
00:28:59,400 --> 00:29:02,440
Speaker 1: But if you're dealing with a blog format, I mean,

513
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:05,720
Speaker 1: there's some great blog templates out there, but you don't

514
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:08,920
Speaker 1: always have that much freedom, and you're often left doing

515
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:11,360
Speaker 1: something that is a little more alike blog post at

516
00:29:11,400 --> 00:29:14,880
Speaker 1: the top, recipe at the bottom, or worse, I guess,

517
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:19,520
Speaker 1: is something where there is no distinction, where the recipe

518
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:30,960
Speaker 1: is just immersed within the more pros based blog post. So,

519
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:35,640
Speaker 1: in thinking about paragraphs and and organization of pieces of writing,

520
00:29:35,680 --> 00:29:40,720
Speaker 1: I was looking at an interesting article called The Music

521
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:45,400
Speaker 1: of Form, Rethinking, Organization and Writing by Peter Elbow, which

522
00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:48,840
Speaker 1: was published in College Composition and Communication in two thousand

523
00:29:48,800 --> 00:29:51,640
Speaker 1: and six, and um, the main thing I wanted to

524
00:29:51,680 --> 00:29:55,720
Speaker 1: mention from this Most of this essay is about Elbow

525
00:29:55,760 --> 00:30:00,640
Speaker 1: talking about possibly thinking of writing as an alogous to

526
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:06,360
Speaker 1: music and having music style organizational techniques. But but I

527
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:09,800
Speaker 1: want to start with this metaphor. So Elbow describes a painting.

528
00:30:10,200 --> 00:30:14,040
Speaker 1: He uses the example of Edward Hopper's Night Hawks and says,

529
00:30:14,080 --> 00:30:16,480
Speaker 1: you know, okay, we're we're humans were able to stand

530
00:30:16,520 --> 00:30:19,520
Speaker 1: several feet back from this painting and see it as

531
00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:21,560
Speaker 1: a whole right, you can just look at it. You

532
00:30:21,560 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 1: can see the whole thing, and you can understand it

533
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 1: as a composition of different parts that it that emerges

534
00:30:28,080 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 1: from how they all come together at once. But then

535
00:30:31,960 --> 00:30:35,200
Speaker 1: he says, okay, now take the same painting and imagine

536
00:30:35,240 --> 00:30:38,240
Speaker 1: instead that you are an aunt and you can only

537
00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 1: look at the painting a little bit at a time

538
00:30:40,800 --> 00:30:44,400
Speaker 1: by crawling over the surface of it, and thus your

539
00:30:44,440 --> 00:30:47,680
Speaker 1: idea of the whole painting has to come together a

540
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:51,600
Speaker 1: little bit at a time and involves your use of

541
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:55,280
Speaker 1: memory of what parts you previously looked at, and probably

542
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:58,840
Speaker 1: also some imagination of what parts you haven't looked at yet,

543
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:02,280
Speaker 1: and then elbow writes quote. When we read a text,

544
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: we are like the ant. The text is laid out

545
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:09,280
Speaker 1: in space across multiple pages, but we can only read

546
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:12,760
Speaker 1: one small part at a time. We may jump around

547
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:16,280
Speaker 1: the text grasshopper like, especially with long texts, looking at

548
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:20,040
Speaker 1: chapter titles and other headings, browsing the openings and closings

549
00:31:20,040 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 1: of chapters, looking for quote perspective. Some texts to lead

550
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:28,240
Speaker 1: off with an abstract, as this journal now asks. Books

551
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:30,840
Speaker 1: have tables of contents, but still we can take in

552
00:31:30,960 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 1: relatively few words at a time. So here's my question.

553
00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 1: If texts are spatial phenomena, and yet our experience of

554
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:43,240
Speaker 1: them is necessarily tim poral, how can we best organized

555
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 1: texts for readers? How could we organize paintings for ants?

556
00:31:48,360 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 1: This is this is great. I love this way of

557
00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:52,760
Speaker 1: thinking about it, the ant crawling over the painting, trying

558
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:55,080
Speaker 1: to form this idea of what the painting looks like.

559
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 1: And I think that gets down to one of the

560
00:31:56,840 --> 00:31:59,240
Speaker 1: problems of thinking, Oh, I'm going to find that great

561
00:31:59,240 --> 00:32:03,080
Speaker 1: paragraph in that book. I love, because no paragraph, for

562
00:32:03,080 --> 00:32:05,400
Speaker 1: the most part there may be some exceptions, and and

563
00:32:05,440 --> 00:32:07,080
Speaker 1: maybe I can think of one or two, but they're

564
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:10,520
Speaker 1: so rare. For the most part, the paragraph, any given

565
00:32:10,520 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: paragraph is not a miniaturization of the larger work and

566
00:32:15,120 --> 00:32:19,320
Speaker 1: cannot properly convey the idea of the larger work. Right.

567
00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:21,920
Speaker 1: I thought this metaphor was so interesting because it's true,

568
00:32:22,000 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 1: and that, like a lot of the stuff people do,

569
00:32:26,240 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 1: like conventions of writing, like the Alexander Bain style paragraph

570
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:33,880
Speaker 1: or the five paragraph essay and a composition class are

571
00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:38,240
Speaker 1: designed to give you a structure that would help an

572
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:41,520
Speaker 1: ant understand what the whole painting is even after they're

573
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 1: even while they're only you know, crawling over a bit

574
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 1: of it at a time, because it's so familiar. You

575
00:32:46,280 --> 00:32:48,320
Speaker 1: know what the structure is, you know where you are

576
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:51,239
Speaker 1: within it at any given time, you know roughly what

577
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:53,320
Speaker 1: the whole thing is going to look like, and that

578
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:57,960
Speaker 1: that type of mapping or sign posting does provide some

579
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 1: some perspective to you know, the aunt crawling over the painting,

580
00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 1: or the human being reading a text. And yet they

581
00:33:04,080 --> 00:33:07,160
Speaker 1: come with disadvantages, and and Elbow identifies a number of them.

582
00:33:07,160 --> 00:33:09,760
Speaker 1: But when he talks about is um, the idea of

583
00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:14,200
Speaker 1: energy like that. Uh. Text with good organic paragraphs that

584
00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:16,960
Speaker 1: are not organized in such a you know, mapped out

585
00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: in signposted way, they tend to have more more power

586
00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:23,200
Speaker 1: to pull you along and make you want to keep

587
00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:26,880
Speaker 1: reading and feel more like music, have those kind of

588
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:31,200
Speaker 1: interesting little melodies and themes that recur. Uh. He calls

589
00:33:31,280 --> 00:33:36,040
Speaker 1: this other style, you know, the non signposted style, dynamic organization.

590
00:33:37,080 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 1: And one interesting comparison that he makes is that he

591
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:44,920
Speaker 1: has dynamic organization can have not just style advantages. It's

592
00:33:44,960 --> 00:33:47,360
Speaker 1: not just you know, more interesting and pleasant to read

593
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:50,959
Speaker 1: kind of organic paragraphs that uh that that are not

594
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:55,360
Speaker 1: so signposted. It can have a revelatory power of its own.

595
00:33:55,400 --> 00:33:58,560
Speaker 1: It can actually show you things that a well mapped

596
00:33:58,600 --> 00:34:03,360
Speaker 1: signposted paragraph for essay cannot. And the example he uses

597
00:34:04,040 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 1: is um is a comparison to Platonic dialogues that This

598
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:11,560
Speaker 1: comes from an author named Burke writing about Plato's dialogue

599
00:34:11,640 --> 00:34:15,759
Speaker 1: The Padress, and Burke writes the following quote for a

600
00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:19,240
Speaker 1: Platonic dialogue is not formed simply by breaking an idea

601
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:22,279
Speaker 1: into its component parts and taking them up in a

602
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: one two three order. The purely scholastic aspect in Aristotle's

603
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 1: method of exposition. A platonic dialogue is rather a process

604
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:36,279
Speaker 1: of transformation, whereby the position at the end transcends the

605
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:38,960
Speaker 1: position at the start, so that the position at the

606
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:41,799
Speaker 1: start can eventually be seen in terms of the new

607
00:34:41,880 --> 00:34:45,480
Speaker 1: motivation encountered en route. And I think that that's a

608
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 1: great point of comparison, because a lot of good writing

609
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:55,680
Speaker 1: has the quality of following the author's thoughts. So we're

610
00:34:55,719 --> 00:35:01,840
Speaker 1: not just seeing like a presentation of of pre approved

611
00:35:01,880 --> 00:35:06,600
Speaker 1: informational tidbits, you know, arranged into paragraph form, but we

612
00:35:06,640 --> 00:35:10,160
Speaker 1: are actually discovered the the author is showing us something

613
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:14,240
Speaker 1: about how they come to an idea, they get from

614
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:17,719
Speaker 1: here to there, They're taking us along the way with them,

615
00:35:18,160 --> 00:35:21,720
Speaker 1: and that can be just as enlightening as a clearly

616
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:25,520
Speaker 1: organized list of conclusions. Yeah, and and of course the

617
00:35:26,239 --> 00:35:28,160
Speaker 1: style is going to inform so much of how you

618
00:35:28,239 --> 00:35:31,080
Speaker 1: understand the the the inner workings of an author's mind

619
00:35:31,200 --> 00:35:33,840
Speaker 1: and how you connect with it. Like you know, for instance,

620
00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:37,240
Speaker 1: uh Borhes is going to have a totally different feel

621
00:35:37,880 --> 00:35:41,239
Speaker 1: for his paragraphs compared to Hunter S. Thompson One. With

622
00:35:41,320 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 1: Thompson's paragraphs, there's more this sort of crackling live wire

623
00:35:44,600 --> 00:35:48,160
Speaker 1: intensity to them. Directing one thought to the next, whereas

624
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:50,680
Speaker 1: Borhes is gonna he's gonna take his time, and he's

625
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:54,040
Speaker 1: it's more like a like like a like a vapor

626
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:58,200
Speaker 1: drifting through a wing of a library. Uh and uh

627
00:35:58,239 --> 00:36:00,439
Speaker 1: and and so they're they're totally different experiences, and they're

628
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:04,000
Speaker 1: giving you a snapshot into the way connections are forming

629
00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:06,360
Speaker 1: in the author's minds. Oh yeah, sure, I mean, I

630
00:36:06,360 --> 00:36:09,480
Speaker 1: guess I've mainly now been thinking about nonfiction writing. But

631
00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:12,000
Speaker 1: when you get into fiction, yeah, that's a totally different

632
00:36:12,000 --> 00:36:15,160
Speaker 1: ball game also. But anyway, a lot of this essay

633
00:36:15,640 --> 00:36:17,920
Speaker 1: seems to play on this metaphor of music and how

634
00:36:17,960 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: you could think about uh writing as as analogous to

635
00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:23,840
Speaker 1: music in various ways, and how that also helps you

636
00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:29,280
Speaker 1: think about compromises between the the highly organized, signposted structure

637
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:32,839
Speaker 1: of like the five paragraph essay versus the dynamic organization

638
00:36:32,920 --> 00:36:35,759
Speaker 1: of the organic paragraph uh, and how you can you

639
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:39,560
Speaker 1: can blend them together to to to have maximum effect. Yeah,

640
00:36:39,640 --> 00:36:42,640
Speaker 1: there's this great that from from elbow and a read

641
00:36:42,680 --> 00:36:46,120
Speaker 1: here quote. Whole text need larger global pieces of energy.

642
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:48,960
Speaker 1: It's not enough if paragraphs are sections hold together and

643
00:36:49,000 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: pull us through from one to another. We also need

644
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:54,000
Speaker 1: a sense of the whole as whole, a matter that

645
00:36:54,040 --> 00:36:57,160
Speaker 1: Williams treats, but very briefly. This energy comes from the

646
00:36:57,200 --> 00:37:01,320
Speaker 1: same forces that hold music together, sequences of expectation and

647
00:37:01,360 --> 00:37:06,839
Speaker 1: eventual satisfaction, larger melodic or harmonic rhythms, or examples of

648
00:37:06,880 --> 00:37:09,719
Speaker 1: what I am calling the music of form. So yeah,

649
00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 1: this this interests me because the author here mentions the

650
00:37:12,600 --> 00:37:15,440
Speaker 1: use of story thinking at times, and this brought to

651
00:37:15,520 --> 00:37:20,320
Speaker 1: mind the formulaic nature of most storytelling and fiction weaving endeavors.

652
00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:22,920
Speaker 1: You know certain structures are going to be followed, certain

653
00:37:22,960 --> 00:37:25,560
Speaker 1: tropes you're going to be invoked, and this does present

654
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 1: a kind of form that pulls us along. For instance,

655
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:31,600
Speaker 1: many of the movies we discussed on Weird How Cinema

656
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:36,080
Speaker 1: follow very expected structures and invoke expected elements. And while

657
00:37:36,080 --> 00:37:40,360
Speaker 1: this certainly can make a movie viewing experience feel to formulaic,

658
00:37:40,440 --> 00:37:43,400
Speaker 1: in some cases, it can also provide the necessary pull.

659
00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:46,440
Speaker 1: The genre trappings can often serve as a kind of

660
00:37:47,040 --> 00:37:50,160
Speaker 1: airport conveyor belt that makes it easier to move through

661
00:37:50,200 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: the work. You put up with the humdrum human interactions

662
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:57,200
Speaker 1: because you know that genre it demands that some of

663
00:37:57,200 --> 00:37:59,120
Speaker 1: these humans are about to be eaten by a monster

664
00:37:59,360 --> 00:38:01,640
Speaker 1: or knife in the back, by slash or whatever the

665
00:38:01,680 --> 00:38:04,360
Speaker 1: case may be. Uh, And and that may be the

666
00:38:04,400 --> 00:38:08,920
Speaker 1: aspect you're far more interested in. Also playing into the

667
00:38:08,920 --> 00:38:11,000
Speaker 1: the the idea of expectation in music. I mean this

668
00:38:11,040 --> 00:38:13,640
Speaker 1: brings me back to some of our past discussions of music,

669
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:18,600
Speaker 1: that it's not only about expectations being met, but expectations

670
00:38:18,680 --> 00:38:21,759
Speaker 1: being subverted. So you think that the next note is

671
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:23,319
Speaker 1: going to do this, but then it does that, and

672
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:25,680
Speaker 1: that's what makes it fabulous. And that too is one

673
00:38:25,719 --> 00:38:28,720
Speaker 1: of the great things in in film, but also in writing,

674
00:38:28,840 --> 00:38:31,759
Speaker 1: like it's the beat that you think is coming, the

675
00:38:31,840 --> 00:38:33,839
Speaker 1: rhyme that you think is coming, or whatever the case

676
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:37,040
Speaker 1: may be, it ends up being something else instead. And

677
00:38:37,160 --> 00:38:39,320
Speaker 1: if you if you tease it apart and tear it apart,

678
00:38:39,400 --> 00:38:42,640
Speaker 1: that that may seem more mundane, but in the actual

679
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:45,440
Speaker 1: experience of the thing it can be it can just

680
00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:48,840
Speaker 1: give you chills. Yeah, And I think, uh that that

681
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:52,000
Speaker 1: is one way in which reading and music are very similar.

682
00:38:52,040 --> 00:38:54,160
Speaker 1: I mean elbows correct that you know, you can only

683
00:38:54,200 --> 00:38:56,640
Speaker 1: sort of experience them in a linear way, like one

684
00:38:56,680 --> 00:38:59,080
Speaker 1: moment at a time. You can't hear a whole piece

685
00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:00,960
Speaker 1: of music at once, or read a whole piece of

686
00:39:00,960 --> 00:39:04,799
Speaker 1: writing at once. And so it's that process of having

687
00:39:04,800 --> 00:39:07,000
Speaker 1: to go through one bit at a time in a

688
00:39:07,080 --> 00:39:11,760
Speaker 1: linear way that makes these prediction subversion patterns so important.

689
00:39:11,840 --> 00:39:15,560
Speaker 1: It's something about creating a great piece of music or

690
00:39:15,600 --> 00:39:18,880
Speaker 1: a great piece of writing has to do with finding

691
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:24,200
Speaker 1: the right balance of meeting expectations and then subverting expectations,

692
00:39:24,560 --> 00:39:27,080
Speaker 1: like just to just to come back to to to

693
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:29,880
Speaker 1: to to be movies for a second, like, sometimes the

694
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 1: subversion that works is accidental, Like sometimes it's the fact

695
00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:37,560
Speaker 1: that the monster jumps out and doesn't look right, and

696
00:39:37,840 --> 00:39:40,799
Speaker 1: that looks like the effect doesn't work like that is

697
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:45,160
Speaker 1: not the subversion that the filmmakers were going for. Uh,

698
00:39:45,880 --> 00:39:47,719
Speaker 1: if the left of their own devices and being if

699
00:39:47,719 --> 00:39:49,640
Speaker 1: they were able to achieve everything I wanted to achieve,

700
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:52,239
Speaker 1: it may have not. The finished work may not have

701
00:39:52,280 --> 00:39:54,759
Speaker 1: been that different from the works that inspired it. But

702
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:59,520
Speaker 1: sometimes just um an error in style or or a

703
00:39:59,560 --> 00:40:03,080
Speaker 1: weirdness of effect can subvert expectations in a way that

704
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:07,160
Speaker 1: makes it memorable, Like Jason takes Manhattan when when the

705
00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:10,240
Speaker 1: mask finally comes off and he looks a little little

706
00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:14,400
Speaker 1: weird a little cutely. Yeah, like that. That's memorable, because

707
00:40:14,400 --> 00:40:17,200
Speaker 1: that's not really what you were expecting based on previous

708
00:40:17,239 --> 00:40:21,280
Speaker 1: experiences with the form, with the with the Jason movie

709
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 1: and what an unmasking has previously been. I don't think

710
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:26,759
Speaker 1: they made him cute on purpose. I think that was

711
00:40:26,840 --> 00:40:30,640
Speaker 1: a that was a felicitous accident. Yeah, the rob did

712
00:40:30,680 --> 00:40:32,960
Speaker 1: you tell me before we started recording that you found

713
00:40:32,960 --> 00:40:35,919
Speaker 1: a book with no paragraph breaks in it? Yes? Yes,

714
00:40:36,360 --> 00:40:39,160
Speaker 1: this morning, in fact, I was, I was looking around

715
00:40:39,160 --> 00:40:41,640
Speaker 1: on my bookshelf and I was I was asking myself, Okay,

716
00:40:41,840 --> 00:40:43,959
Speaker 1: which of these has some great paragraphs? And there's gotta

717
00:40:43,960 --> 00:40:47,120
Speaker 1: be another great paragraph, another great intro paragraph. And I

718
00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:51,000
Speaker 1: did find a nice intro paragraph in another um Alan

719
00:40:51,080 --> 00:40:53,799
Speaker 1: Roque rule a book. But I also realized, oh, I

720
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:57,200
Speaker 1: do own a book that has I think no paragraph

721
00:40:57,320 --> 00:41:02,040
Speaker 1: breaks in the text itself, and it achieves this, uh

722
00:41:02,800 --> 00:41:05,160
Speaker 1: through It's kind of cheating, I guess. But it is

723
00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:07,680
Speaker 1: a book you might be familiar with, Joe. It's titled

724
00:41:08,719 --> 00:41:14,839
Speaker 1: four Stories by Thomas Bernard. Uh the voice Imitator. So

725
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:19,279
Speaker 1: Thomas Bernard in this book is writing short shorts. These

726
00:41:19,280 --> 00:41:23,319
Speaker 1: are very short stories. Uh. They are all as far

727
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:26,920
Speaker 1: as I can tell and remember, one paragraph long. The

728
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:31,120
Speaker 1: paragraphs range and size. Some of them are rather lengthy paragraphs,

729
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:33,479
Speaker 1: some of them are very short. But in every case

730
00:41:33,520 --> 00:41:37,759
Speaker 1: I believe the paragraph is the complete story. Therefore, there

731
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:42,799
Speaker 1: are not really paragraph breaks within each work. Now they're

732
00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:48,839
Speaker 1: certainly paragraph breaks between works, but each story itself has

733
00:41:48,880 --> 00:41:51,440
Speaker 1: no paragraph breaks. Okay, so you can look at this

734
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:55,239
Speaker 1: as a work uh with with no paragraph breaks, or

735
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:58,120
Speaker 1: work with extreme paragraph breaks where every break is the

736
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:01,719
Speaker 1: end of the text. I guess. Yeah, Like, just given

737
00:42:01,719 --> 00:42:04,040
Speaker 1: exact this is certainly a book worth picking up if

738
00:42:04,040 --> 00:42:06,480
Speaker 1: anyone out there is interested in short shorts as a form,

739
00:42:07,120 --> 00:42:10,000
Speaker 1: which I do find quite fascinating because at times, I,

740
00:42:10,080 --> 00:42:12,719
Speaker 1: especially when I'm getting into bores, I keep thinking, well,

741
00:42:12,920 --> 00:42:14,719
Speaker 1: it's the shorter works that are really the ones that

742
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:16,719
Speaker 1: resonate with me the most. You know, some sort of

743
00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:19,200
Speaker 1: like Philip K. Dick's story that just is about a

744
00:42:19,200 --> 00:42:22,440
Speaker 1: little idea, and so this is kind of the extreme

745
00:42:22,480 --> 00:42:24,680
Speaker 1: form of it. But for example, there's a there is

746
00:42:24,719 --> 00:42:29,160
Speaker 1: a story in here titled Hotel vald House, and this

747
00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:32,879
Speaker 1: is the complete story one paragraph. We had no luck

748
00:42:32,880 --> 00:42:35,200
Speaker 1: with the weather, and the guests at our table were

749
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:38,880
Speaker 1: repellent in every respect. They even spoiled Nietzsche for us.

750
00:42:39,360 --> 00:42:41,759
Speaker 1: Even after they had had a fatal car accident and

751
00:42:41,800 --> 00:42:44,640
Speaker 1: had been laid out in the church in Sills, we

752
00:42:44,760 --> 00:42:50,439
Speaker 1: still hated them. Complete story. So there's another author I've

753
00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:52,880
Speaker 1: been reading recently who I love, who also has some

754
00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:55,920
Speaker 1: very short short stories named Lydia Davis. Do you know

755
00:42:56,000 --> 00:42:57,920
Speaker 1: Lydia Davis? I don't think I know that one though. Oh.

756
00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:02,360
Speaker 1: She writes a lot of like really gray, excruciatingly observed

757
00:43:02,520 --> 00:43:07,160
Speaker 1: relationship stories, um, that are just full of like horrible,

758
00:43:07,280 --> 00:43:10,840
Speaker 1: grown inducing details and dynamics. But they're they're wonderful. Is

759
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:12,719
Speaker 1: She's a great writer, and she has a lot of

760
00:43:12,719 --> 00:43:16,640
Speaker 1: single paragraph stories that are really good nice. So yeah,

761
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:18,440
Speaker 1: I guess it comes down to ye, depending on how

762
00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:20,960
Speaker 1: you shake it and depending on how you discuss the paragraphs.

763
00:43:21,320 --> 00:43:24,040
Speaker 1: There are works out there that have no paragraph breaks.

764
00:43:24,640 --> 00:43:28,440
Speaker 1: But um, but yeah, the the extreme interpretation of that

765
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:31,720
Speaker 1: would just be works I guess that are just big

766
00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:37,040
Speaker 1: vomit of of just a big bolus of of of words,

767
00:43:37,080 --> 00:43:40,520
Speaker 1: of words and symbols, right, I mean it just you

768
00:43:40,600 --> 00:43:43,880
Speaker 1: when you lose the form, you you lose the message.

769
00:43:44,239 --> 00:43:47,360
Speaker 1: Like the format is part of the communication. It's just

770
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 1: something I keep coming back to and thinking about this topic. Okay,

771
00:43:50,800 --> 00:43:53,719
Speaker 1: so if somebody was teaching something you wrote in a classroom,

772
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:55,520
Speaker 1: you wouldn't know, you would not want them to go

773
00:43:55,600 --> 00:43:59,120
Speaker 1: in and insert paragraph breaks where you did not have them.

774
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:01,040
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know, I don't, I don't. I

775
00:44:01,040 --> 00:44:05,880
Speaker 1: would guess throw them in if you need to write. Okay, no,

776
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:07,879
Speaker 1: I I see what you're saying. Then it is part

777
00:44:07,920 --> 00:44:09,840
Speaker 1: of the message. But you're not gonna be so precious

778
00:44:09,840 --> 00:44:12,440
Speaker 1: that you couldn't add a few extra right. Well, I

779
00:44:12,480 --> 00:44:14,879
Speaker 1: think part of this, this exploration in the paragraph says,

780
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:17,799
Speaker 1: made me question that the use of paragraph breaks in

781
00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:21,080
Speaker 1: other works, especially older works, like I really kind of

782
00:44:21,080 --> 00:44:23,759
Speaker 1: took it for granted. You know, some some paragraphs are long,

783
00:44:23,800 --> 00:44:27,000
Speaker 1: summer short. I didn't really think that about the the

784
00:44:27,080 --> 00:44:29,239
Speaker 1: idea of even breaking them up. And now I'm looking back,

785
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, well, you know, Borhes is going a

786
00:44:31,760 --> 00:44:34,799
Speaker 1: little long in this opening paragraph to this story. Uh

787
00:44:34,840 --> 00:44:37,080
Speaker 1: And and indeed he does go pretty His paragraphs tend

788
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:40,560
Speaker 1: to be kind of chunky, especially some of the opening paragraphs.

789
00:44:41,120 --> 00:44:44,040
Speaker 1: But um, I'm not saying I would break up his

790
00:44:44,120 --> 00:44:46,960
Speaker 1: text it's not my place, but I guess if someone

791
00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:48,640
Speaker 1: came around and broke some of my text up, I

792
00:44:48,640 --> 00:44:51,360
Speaker 1: would be like, okay, yeah, it's it's probably better. You

793
00:44:51,480 --> 00:44:54,359
Speaker 1: probably probably improved it. Hey. So we got to end

794
00:44:54,400 --> 00:44:56,200
Speaker 1: with the call to the listeners here because there was

795
00:44:56,239 --> 00:44:58,399
Speaker 1: something we were curious about that we couldn't really find

796
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:03,440
Speaker 1: good answers to. UM, which is, are there languages where

797
00:45:03,920 --> 00:45:08,360
Speaker 1: paragraph organization is significantly different than it is like in

798
00:45:08,480 --> 00:45:11,919
Speaker 1: English that we're familiar with. Uh, Bilingual listeners who read

799
00:45:11,920 --> 00:45:15,280
Speaker 1: and write in in other non English languages? Uh, any

800
00:45:15,080 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 1: any interesting differences in how paragraphs are used in those

801
00:45:18,239 --> 00:45:21,239
Speaker 1: languages or or is there a language without paragraphs at

802
00:45:21,239 --> 00:45:23,200
Speaker 1: all that you can tell us about. Yeah. I wasn't

803
00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:25,839
Speaker 1: able to find any good answers on this myself looking

804
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 1: around there weren't There weren't any discussions about it, and

805
00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:30,680
Speaker 1: certainly I didn't see it addressed in any in any papers.

806
00:45:30,719 --> 00:45:32,680
Speaker 1: So yeah, I would love to hear from anyone out

807
00:45:32,680 --> 00:45:34,560
Speaker 1: there who can can speak to this. It seems like

808
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:38,040
Speaker 1: it seems like the answer is yes, there are things

809
00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:42,280
Speaker 1: like paragraphs or paragraphs and in in other languages. And

810
00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:47,280
Speaker 1: I didn't see anything about there being particular language traditions

811
00:45:47,320 --> 00:45:49,319
Speaker 1: today where there are no paragraphs, but maybe there are.

812
00:45:49,360 --> 00:45:51,359
Speaker 1: Maybe I missed something, so definitely right in and let

813
00:45:51,440 --> 00:45:54,919
Speaker 1: us know, tell us and certainly the call remains open

814
00:45:55,320 --> 00:45:58,680
Speaker 1: paragraphs that you love in particular works, especially again, I'm

815
00:45:58,680 --> 00:46:02,279
Speaker 1: fascinated by opening aerographs. Uh. And and part of that

816
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:05,239
Speaker 1: is like thinking, like newspapery about things that this is

817
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:07,520
Speaker 1: the hook, This is the thing that you are presenting

818
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:10,000
Speaker 1: the reader with to get them to keep going. So

819
00:46:10,200 --> 00:46:12,360
Speaker 1: what is the what is the opening dish? What is

820
00:46:12,400 --> 00:46:16,279
Speaker 1: the appetizer that will uh make us remain seated for

821
00:46:16,280 --> 00:46:18,399
Speaker 1: the remainder of the meal? Uh? If you have great

822
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 1: examples of that right in, let us know. Or perhaps

823
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:22,440
Speaker 1: there are some other works out there you can think

824
00:46:22,480 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 1: of in which there are no paragraph breaks. In the meantime,

825
00:46:26,239 --> 00:46:27,840
Speaker 1: if you would like to check out other episodes of

826
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:29,520
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you will find them in

827
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed Core episodes

828
00:46:33,560 --> 00:46:36,880
Speaker 1: come out on Tuesdays and Thursday's Short Form Artifact or

829
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:39,880
Speaker 1: Monster Fact episodes come out on Wednesdays on Monday's We

830
00:46:39,920 --> 00:46:42,200
Speaker 1: Do Listener Mail on Friday's We Do Weird How Cinema

831
00:46:42,480 --> 00:46:45,239
Speaker 1: That's our Time to set aside most serious concerns and

832
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:48,320
Speaker 1: just talk about a strange film. Huge thanks as always

833
00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:51,360
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you

834
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:53,400
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback

835
00:46:53,440 --> 00:46:55,680
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic

836
00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:57,920
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can

837
00:46:57,960 --> 00:47:00,759
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind

838
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:10,759
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of

839
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:13,400
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart radio,

840
00:47:13,640 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 1: this is the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

841
00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:30,280
Speaker 1: wherever you listening to your favorite shows