Avoid a vague start

Starting a paragraph by repeating what was previously said is one of redaction’s capital sins. It should be instantly condemned, with no right to appeal. It’s a vague, ambiguous idea with no support, especially when we take pleasure in the false certainty that the reader agrees with the interpretation of an object, conclusion or reasoning that, in the peak of our inspiration, we’ve given to the previous text.

And what’s the previous text? What’s that everything? You ask yourself these questions when you read the text... You have to go back, reread (sometimes rereading several paragraphs of pages), only to discover that we can’t really find that powerful, clear and wonderfully evident part, and I, as the reader, shouldn’t have overlooked it if I was actually paying attention (according to the author, of course).

Why do we do it? When we use the “From the above”, we’re also creating a logical relationship between two components: an event happens and has consequences, they’re intimately linked by a cause and effect relationship, or rather, an antecedent relationship. It’s vital for this relationship to exist before inserting a “from the above”, that in another way, wouldn’t be more than just an unfortunate filler.

Without a doubt, where we find this expression the most is in technical writing, essays, narratives... It’s rare to find it in literature, fiction and poetry, and if it is used, then it had better be used with such mastery that it brings out something unexpected.

In academic-didactic works, this is a really common bad habit, because of the nature of the texts: they’re expository works, many of them self-explanatory, whose main purpose is to teach whoever is there to learn. This is why redaction should be really important. The student needs clear, well-constructed texts, where there’s no place for ambiguity or doubt as a result of bad redaction. Expressions like “from the above” only contribute to create vague ideas, without the necessary definition that helps the reader recreate a clear, vivid and precise image of what he’s trying to learn.

Can we have too many references?

Excessive references can also become a strategy to hide a lack of the author’s own arguments and the lack of a real connective thread in his own proposal.

This can all be read between the lines when a paragraph starts by using another person’s name, with a foreign voice, a voice that belongs to someone who has nothing to do with who we are, or with what our writing can be like.

From a reading point of view, a reference placed in the most prominent part of the paragraph is a constant nuisance when it’s reiterated, paragraph after paragraph, through the pages and full works. Our mind, instead of reconstructing special content that require conscious attention, gets distracted with an onomastic geography that assumes more importance than ideas or crucial images.

When we make a correction, we need to ask ourselves: Is this what I was looking for? Is this the most appropriate style to help the public benefit from the text? Do we really want to value more what someone else says, instead of valuing our own ideas more? Does using too many references make it seem like the text is empty, disordered and without an original idea? The answers to these questions determine the way in which the text has to be rewritten, corrected, edited and published. If ethics ruled the selection of work published in college, not a single sheet of paper would be miserably wasted in texts written just to earn points towards an academic grade, getting job positions and enlarging pseudo-academic egos.

Jumping in feet first: starting a paragraph with a reference

In academic writing, it’s common to witness a really unpleasant habit: starting paragraphs with the name of the author that’s being cited, or the source that’s being used as reference.

The first word or phrase in a paragraph is much more than just the beginning: it is a marker, a hook, a signal that lets us know what we’ll read within. It’s a starting point, and also a toehold for when we’re making our way back, when we’re not reading but rather rereading, because there’s something that interests us about it: we’re researching, reviewing, studying, reliving a passage with a special impact, or maybe we’re just sharing with a dear friend a scene that really stimulated our imagination.
A reference is, by nature, secondary. It doesn’t correspond to the meat of the text, rather to its origin. At least, that’s what happens most of the time (there are numerous exceptions). So, when we’re using the narrative technique of starting with “According to Fernández...” or “Rojas says...” we’re jumping in feet first.

Why is this stylistic technique used? (Yes, there are some who like this style and defend its use). Citing another person is one of the most evident uses of the appeal to authority fallacy: this is true, not because I say it, but because so-and-so says it. With its use, the author shows his peers (the real targets of his discourse) how much he knows and how much he’s read: the amount and quality of his references validates his work, but only if the readers recognize them. This leads us to understand the style: using only the last name (going beyond what bibliographical manuals advise), without bothering to explain who it is or to contextualize his or her work. It’s linked to an implicit tone, a pose, a way of saying he knows what he’s talking about, and if you don’t know it, then it’s your problem. The other reader, the common reader, the student, the researcher who’s worried about its depth and not its form, is not kept in mind by these kinds of authors. Academic status is worth more than the act of communication.

Don't waste the first words of your text

There are many ways to miserably spoil the first words: an ambiguous and imprecise title, a filler word, a foreign voice, a badly-chosen and misplaced word, empty and insubstantial words, a circumstantial complement without sense, endless bibliographic references (which should go at the end, not the beginning)...

Here, we’re playing with first impressions. Unlike us, the readers still don’t know anything about our work of literature. They can only work with what we’ve given them in those first words. So, we should ask ourselves: Is this the first thing the reader should see? Why do I want him to know this and not something else? What impression do these first words give the reader about the rest of the book (about its tone, direction, purpose)? What do I need to emphasize, and what do I need to place in a privileged spot? What do I want to make the reader feel so I can get him hooked enough to keep reading?

If you thought this kind of thought is only applicable to the first page of a book or a chapter, here’s a reason to constantly do this exercise all over the text: When a reader comes back to what he has already read, maybe to read back a key idea or to study (something typical of didactic academic works or those works that have to be read in an academic context), then he uses the first phrases in each paragraph as guides. If he can’t remember, with the help of those first five or six words, what the paragraph is about, the text becomes a dark jungle, with characters that are too similar to one another and are overused.

The usefulness of this method is not confined solely to creative or fiction writing. Non-fiction in particular, with the density of its contents and with how they can already be painfully tailored, should also try to make life easy for its readers, with a fluent, well-written text that makes the reader want to keep reading. I’m not saying it should be superficial, but it should be well-written. There’s a big difference.