Patterns of Development in Writing

A. Narration
 Describes what, when, and where something happened.
 It is simply telling a story, usually from the viewpoint of one person. Many times, the writer
is also making a point as well as recounting events that occurred.
 Narration can be found in any form of literature, including plays, short stories, poems,
novels, or even jokes. They are considered narration, or narrative, as long as they tell a
story.
 This sort of pararph requires chronological ordering. Using transitional words and phrases
that signal time are highly recommended. It is like telling a story.
Example Text:
Narrative Novel
The last example is an excerpt from the novel, Moby Dick by Herman Melville.
"Landlord!" said I, "what sort of chap is he -- does he always keep such late hours?" It was now
hard upon twelve o'clock. The landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be
mightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. "No," he answered, "generally he's an
early bird -- airley to bed and airley to rise -- yea, he's the bird what catches the worm. -- But to-
night he went out a peddling, you see, and I don't see what on earth keeps him so late, unless,
may be, he can't sell his head. “Can’t sell his head? -- What sort of a bamboozingly story is this
you are telling me?" getting into a towering rage. "Do you pretend to say, landlord, that this
harpooner is actually engaged this blessed Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling
his head around this town?”

Another example”
Around 2 a.m. something woke Charles Hanson up. H elay in the dark listening. Something felt
wrong. Outside, crickets sang, tree-frogs chirruped. Across the distant forest floated two muffled
hoots from a barred owl. It was too quiet. At home in New Jersey, the night are filled with the busy,
comforting sounds of traffic. You always have the comforting knowledge that other people are all
around yu. And light: at home he can read in bed by the glow of the streetlight. It was too quiet
and much too dark. Even starlight failed to penetrate the 80-foot canopy of trees the camper was
parked beneatg. It wa the darkest dark he had ever seen. (excerpt from Longleaf)

B. Description
 Details what something looks like and its characteristics.
 Descriptive writing uses sensory writing and includes vivid and rich details. It portrays
certain events, people, or objects in a way that the reader can visualize what the writer is
describing. The writer uses figurative language, like metaphors and symbolism, to
enhance the sensory experience for the reader. In descriptive writing, the author does not
tell the reader what was seen, felt, tested, smelled, or heard. Rather, he describes
something that he experienced and, through his choice of words, makes it seem real. In
other words, descriptive writing is vivid, colorful, and detailed.
 In this paragraph, you convey how something sounds, smells, tastes, feels, and/or looks.
Using transitional words and phrases that indicate location are often recommended.
Examples Text:
•The sunset filled the entire sky with the deep color of rubies, setting the clouds ablaze.
 •The waves crashed and danced along the shore, moving up and down in a graceful
and gentle rhythm like they were dancing.
•The painting was a field of flowers, with deep and rich blues and yellows atop vibrant
green stems that seemed to beckon you to reach right in and pick them.
•The old man was stooped and bent, his back making the shape of a C and his head
bent so far forward that his beard would nearly have touched his knobby knees had he
been just a bit taller.
•His deep and soulful blue eyes were like the color of the ocean on the clearest day
you can ever imagine.
•The soft fur of the dog felt like silk against my skin and her black coloring glistened
as it absorbed the sunlight, reflecting it back as a perfect, deep, dark mirror.

Another example:
The dirt of the girls’ cotton dresses continued on their legs, feet, arms,and faces to
make them all of a piece. Their grasy unclored hair hung down, uncombed, with a grim
finality. I knelt to see them better, to remember them for all time. The tears that had slipped
down my dress left unsurprising dark spot, and made the front yard blurry and even more
unreal. The world had taken a deep breath and ws having doubts about continuing to
revolve. (from Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings)

 There are two types of description-subjective and objective.

 Subject dscription- the writer is describing an impression of what is observed.
Description of characters, their appearance, mannerisms and utterances help us
imagine what they are like. It is often used in fiction.
Example: It was dark and lonely night. -this helps us imagine the kind of night it
was.
 Objective description is usually employed in reportorial and scientific writing.
 The goal is to present an impartial and actual picture of an object or scene.
 The writer has to stay away from emotional impressions or responsesn, bracketing
his/her biase.
 Example; news writer present their report objectively, or detectives cover crime
scences

Read each of the paragraphs below and identify whether it is developed using
subjective description ot objective description.

1. The kitchen table is rectangular, seventy-two inches long and thirty inches
wide. Made of a two-inch-thick piece of oak, its top is covered with a waxy
oilcloth patterned in dark red and blue squares against a white background.
In the right corner, close to the wall, a square blue ceramic tile serves as the
protective base for a brown earthenware teapot. A single white placemat
has been set to the left of the tile, with a knife and fork on either side of a
 white dinner plate, around nine inches in diameter. On the plate are two
thick pieces of steak.
(Notice how "objective" the narrator in the piece is; his or her eyes scan the scene, but
there is no emotional response provoked by the scene).
2. Our lives at home converged around the pleasantly-shaped kitchen table. It
was the magnet that drew our family together quite warmly. Cut from the
sturdiest oak, the table was tough, smooth, and long enough for my mother,
my two sisters, and me to work or play on at the same time. Our favorite
light blue ceramic tile, stationed in the right corner, was the table's sole
defense against the ravages of everything from a steaming teapot to the
latest red-hot gadget from the Sears catalogue. More often than not,
however, the heat would spread quickly beyond the small tile and onto the
checkered oilcloth, which just as quickly exuded a rank and sour odor. Yet
no matter how intensely the four of us competed for elbow room at the
table, none dared venture near the lone dinner place arranged securely to
the left of the tile. There was no telling when HE would get home from work,
but, when he did, he expected the food to be ready--steaming hot. He liked
to eat right away--steak mostly--two bloody but thick pieces.
(The narrator scans about the scene, but now, objects take on a sense of "utility" and
"meaning"--the narrator explains how certain objects are important, even bordering
on the personal and emotional meaning behind each piece.)

C. Definition
 Explains what something is in comparison to other members of its class, along with
any limitations.
 A paragraph demonstrating this technique will include a definition of the term, the
class to which it belongs, and the details that differentiate it from other members
of its class.
Example: if you were to define “whale”, you might start by saying it is an aquatic mammal.
Then you could talk about its size, shape, varities, environment, breeding habits, and so
on.
Examples Text:
“If someone or something is unaffected by an event or occurrence, they are not
changed by it in any way.”

This definition shows the typical grammar structure in which we use the word unaffected
— after a form of be (is, was, will be, etc.), and before the preposition by. So it tells you
that we often say “is unaffected by”, “was unaffected by”, “will be unaffected by”, etc. It
also shows that people or things can be unaffected by an event.
 “You say that something is stupid to indicate that you do not like it or that it annoys
you”.

The beginning of this definition (“You say that...”) shows that you use the word stupid to
talk about your feelings, and not about facts. If you say to somebody “You’re stupid”, you
don’t mean that the person is not intelligent. You simply mean that you don’t like them.
In tennis, an ace is a serve which is so fast that the other player cannot reach the ball”.
This is the definition of one of the meanings of ace. It gives you the context of this meaning
— it tells you that you use it when talking about tennis.

D. Exemplification\Classification
 Provides typical cases or examples of something.
 This paragraph uses specific illustrations to clarify a general statement. Using
transitional words and phrases that signal examples are recommended.
 In developing a paragraph using exemplication (or illustration) the writer develops
a general statement-the topic, with one or more examples. Illustrations through a
clear and specific examples help explain abstract idea and illuminate or clarify
meaning in texts.
 Writers use examples to make a general idea clear-to exemplify and idea. This
exemplication may be long or it may be short.
 It may be a story, an anecdote, a quotation or a statistic.
Example Text:
An exemplification paragraph develops a general statement--the topic sentence--with one
or more specific examples. Not only do these examples illustrate and explain the topic
sentence, but they also make your writing more interesting and more convincing. The
following paragraph about the Woodstock festival uses a number of short examples to
illustrate its main idea.
In most respects, after all, Woodstock was a disaster. To begin with, it rained and
rained for weeks before the festival, and then, of course, it rained during the festival. The
promoters lost weeks of preparation time when the site had to be switched twice. They
rented Yasgur’s field less than a month before the concert. The stage wasn’t finished,
and the sound system was stitched together perilously close to the start of the show. As
soon as the festival opened, the water- and food-delivery arrangements broke down, the
gates and fences disintegrated, and tens of thousands of new bodies kept pouring in.
(One powerful lure was the rumor that the revered Bob Dylan was going to perform; he
wasn’t.) In response to an emergency appeal for volunteers, fifty doctors were flown in.
The Air Force brought in food on Huey helicopters, and the Women’s Community Center
in Monticello sent thirty thousand sandwiches. One kid was killed as he was run over by
a tractor, one died of appendicitis, and another died of a drug overdose.
Hal Espen, “The Woodstock Wars”

The writer of this paragraph piles on many examples, one after the other, to support his
main idea. Each example gives a specific illustration of how Woodstock was a disaster: it
rained, the promoters had to switch sites, water and food were not delivered as planned,
and so on.
If a single example is particularly vivid and compelling, it can sometimes be enough
to support a topic sentence. The following paragraph uses one extended example to
support its main idea--that fear can move one to action.

Classification Paragraph
Different students attend various types of schools; however, they can usually be
classified as either public, private religious, private non-religious, or alternative. Public
schools are funded by the state, and the majority of students in the United States attend
them. Private religious schools are based around a particular faith, such as Catholicism,
Judaism, and so forth. The religion is part of the everyday lives of the students and they
also learn about the faiths. All types of private schools do not receive state funding.
Therefore, private non-religious schools are simply just that: schools which do not receive
state funding and have the ability to make their own rules. Alternative schools can be
made up of a variety of different categories, such as the Montessori program or technical
schools. Most students who attend class in an actual school building go to one of these
types of institutions.

E. Comparison and Contrast

 Tells how something is like other things or how something is different from other
things.
 A paragraph that demonstrated comparison/and or contrast examines how given
subjects are either similar or different.
 Comparison examines how the subjects are the same.
 Contrast examines how the subjects are different.
Example signal words”
For comparison: in the same way, similarly, in the like manner, likewise
For contrast: yet, nevertheless, however, otherwise, in contrast

Example Text:
Contrast Paragraph

Even though Arizona and Rhode Island are both states of the U.S., they are
strikingly different in many ways. For example, the physical size of each state is different.
Arizona is large, having an area of 114,000 square miles, whereas Rhode Island is only
about a tenth the size, having an area of only 1,214 square miles. Another difference is
in the size of the population of each state. Arizona has about four million people living in
it, but Rhode Island has less than one million. The two states also differ in the kinds of
natural environments that each has. For example, Arizona is a very dry state, consisting
of large desert areas that do not receive much rainfall every year. However, Rhode Island
is located in a temperate zone and receives an average of 44 inches of rain per year. In
addition, while Arizona is a landlocked state and thus has no seashore, Rhode Island lies
on the Atlantic Ocean and does have a significant coastline.

Comparison Paragraph
My hometown and my college town have several things in common. First,
both are small rural communities. For example, my hometown, Gridlock, has a population
of only about 10,000 people. Similarly, my college town, Subnormal, consists of about
11,000 local residents. This population swells to 15,000 people when the college students
are attending classes. A second way in which these two towns are similar is that they are
both located in rural areas. Gridlock is surrounded by many acres of farmland which is
devoted mainly to growing corn and soybeans. In the same way, Subnormal lies in the
center of farmland which is used to raise hogs and cattle.

F. Cause and Effect

 Details why something happens, what causes it, what are the effects and how it is
related to something else.
 When you use this technique, you are exploring why event occur and what
happens as a result of them.
Example Text:
When water is heated, the molecules move quickly, therefore the water boils. A
tornado blew the roof off the house, and as a result, the family had to find another place
to live. Because the alarm was not set, we were late for work.

G. Problem and Solution

 In composition, problem-solution is a method for analyzing and writing about a
topic by identifying a problem and proposing one or more solutions.
 A problem-solution essay is a type of argument. "This sort of essay involves
argumentation in that the writer seeks to convince the reader to take a particular
course of action. In explaining the problem, it may also need to persuade the
reader concerning specific causes" (Dave Kemper et al., Fusion: Integrated
Reading and Writing, 2016).
 This pattern presents the readers with a problem and some facts or reasons why
it is a problem. The closing statemen underscores the connection between the
problem and solution.
Example Text:
Problem
Drug abuse causes multiple problems for countries and communities.
The medical and psychological effects are very obvious.
Addicts cannot function as normal members of society. They neglect or abuse their
families, and eventually require expensive treatment or hospitalization.
The second effect is on crime.
Huge police resources are needed to fight smuggling and dealing. Criminal gangs and
mafia underworlds develop with the money from drugs.
 Solution
However, the menace of drugs can be fought.
Education is the first battle.
Children need to be told at home and in school about drugs. People need to be aware of
the effects so that they can avoid this problem.
A second approach is to increase police manpower and create effective laws to stop
dealers.
However the main target should be the user
: Families and counselors need to talk to children and people at risk. Parents need to look
at their children and help them to become responsible. Worthwhile jobs and housing are
also needed to give people a role in society.

H. Persuasion
 Describes an issue and your position or opinion on the subject.
 This sort of paragraph requires convincing the readers that the opinion of the writer
on a subject is the right one. Considering the type of audience and the kind of
evidences your audience would likely respond to are helpful.
Example Text:
Barack Obama makes a public speech a night before his election campaign in Virginia on
November 3, 2008 by saying,
“This country is more decent than one where a woman in Ohio, on the brink of
retirement, finds herself one illness away from disaster after a lifetime of hard work…This
country is more generous than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment
he’s worked on for twenty years and watch it shipped off to China… We are more
compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families
slide into poverty; that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our
eyes…”
This emotional speech plays on the sense of the guilt of people — the reason that it is a
good example of pathos. Although Obama employs snob appeal fallacy in his argument,
however, it is a very influential and emotional appeal.