Your Y Joints

When a nonfiction writer assembles chapters, the gathered material can be placed within broad groupings. Yet the juxtaposition of two diverse subjects can be jarring. For instance, a history of cataract diagnosis does not logically lead into intracapsular cataract extraction, an older surgical procedure. Often what happens is that an inexperienced author thinks, “Oh, I’ll just put a boldface heading between sections.” And what often happens? You end up with a chapter that has 15-20 headings. Many times a section consists of only a single paragraph, because that’s all the material you have on that topic. The problem is, headings don’t make a chapter’s progress logical by themselves.

The solution to joining up two topics is a paragraph that encompasses both subjects. If you think of your narrative as a journey, you can signal to the reader when you’re about to turn left. If you remember your wooden train tracks as a child, this device could be called a Y section. That’s because the best junction is a transition paragraph between the topics.

The key is to find an overarching idea that includes both of the topics. For instance, the first sentence of the Y paragraph might summarize your section on cataract diagnosis. The second sentence might draw back the “camera lens” to tell the reader that finally ophthalmologists discovered a way to do something about what they were observing. A third sentence might describe the cataract film (diagnosis) and how it might be shattered (surgery). The final sentence might then introduce the idea of intracapsular cataract extraction. Now you’re on a new topic, and it all happened in one natural flow. 

You can do the same with two headings that are close to each other. Expand the first heading into a complete sentence. Now do the same for the second heading. Those become the first and last sentences in your Y paragraph. Now write a few sentences that will bridge the first and last sentences, and voilà—the headings disappear.

Exercise: Pick out a chapter and look for boldface subheadings. You should shoot for only five or so sections per chapter. How much material follows a heading? A paragraph? Two paragraphs? You should shoot for two pages, minimum, for a section. That will discipline you to create larger sections.

“Pay no attention to what the critics say; there has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.” 
—Jean Sibelius

Copyright @ 2019, John Paine