Chapter 4: Building Paragraphs

What You Will Make

You will draft and revise one body paragraph using a point from your essay plan. Have your source and its page or other locator beside you. Write in your working document or on paper; the planner holds your notes, while the paragraph develops their reasoning.

This lesson continues the analytical reading of “The Empty Chair” from Chapter 3: Finding a Main Idea and Making a Plan. The passage is fictional and was created for these lessons. Its paragraph numbers are practice locators, not page references to a published book. Follow your teacher’s required citation style when working with assigned sources.

Give the Paragraph One Main Job

A body paragraph develops a point that helps support the essay’s thesis. The Harvard College Writing Center identifies a topic sentence, evidence, and analysis as useful elements while noting that paragraphs can arrange them differently. (Harvard College Writing Center)

For this exercise, begin with your point, show the source detail, and explain the connection. Treat that sequence as a starting aid. You may need several pieces of evidence, explanation between them, or a different order to make your meaning clear. Follow any structure your teacher requires.

Our working thesis: “The chair changes from a barrier into an invitation, showing Mina becoming willing to connect even though she still seems hesitant.”

The first paragraph will explain the barrier. It does not need to explain the whole story or prove every part of the thesis at once.

Compare a Weak Paragraph with a Revision

Here is the relevant part of the fictional teaching passage, reproduced from Chapter 3:

Paragraph 1. Every lunch hour, Mina put her backpack on the chair beside her. When a new student stopped at the table, she pointed towards the crowded benches by the window. After he left, she moved her bag to the floor.

A paragraph that needs work

Mina is unfriendly. She puts her bag on a chair. Then she moves it. This proves that she does not like people. The chair is important in the story.

The paragraph notices the bag, but it leaves out when Mina moves it. It also jumps from one encounter to a claim about her attitude towards everyone. The final sentence announces importance without explaining it.

A more careful revision

At first, Mina uses the chair to keep the new student at a distance. In paragraph 1 of “The Empty Chair,” she directs him elsewhere while her backpack occupies the seat beside her. The next sentence begins “After he left” and describes her moving the bag to the floor. That timing suggests the seat could have been made available while he was there. The bag therefore appears to serve as a barrier to company, although the passage does not establish why Mina wants that distance.

The quotation preserves the exact words “After he left” from the passage. Naming the passage and paragraph makes the detail traceable within this exercise.

Notice what each part does

• Claim: The first sentence identifies a specific action and its possible meaning. It gives the paragraph a manageable job.
• Evidence: The next two sentences describe the encounter and quote the timing. They include enough context for someone to check the reading.
• Explanation: The fourth sentence shows why that timing matters: the seat becomes available after the student goes away.
• Limit and connection: The final sentence connects the evidence to the thesis’s idea of a barrier while leaving Mina’s motive uncertain.

The improvement comes from more precise reasoning. Adding extra sentences about friendship in general would not repair the original paragraph.

Explain the Detail You Selected

When you get stuck after a quotation, ask: Why did I choose these words? What would change if the detail were different?

If Mina had kept a heavy bag on the chair throughout lunch, the evidence for deliberately excluding the student would be weaker. Moving it after he leaves is what makes the timing worth examining. This comparison helps you explain the source; it does not add an event to the story.

Try the same move with your own evidence. Identify a word, action, contrast, or pattern that matters to your claim. Explain its significance, then check that the source actually supports your explanation. Avoid treating a guess about a character’s feelings as a stated fact.

Connect the Next Paragraph

Your second planned point concerns Mina’s invitation in paragraph 3. Its opening could establish the change directly:

By Monday, Mina makes the same chair available and invites the student to join her.

“The same chair” carries the object forward; “by Monday” locates the change in time. The next sentences need to examine the invitation and her hand on the chair. A word such as “furthermore” would not, by itself, explain this movement from exclusion to invitation.

In your own essay, decide what the next paragraph does: adds another reason, contrasts with the previous point, qualifies it, or follows an event in time. Write the relationship in ordinary words before choosing a transition. Use “therefore” only when you have explained why the conclusion follows.

Try It Yourself

Revise these two sentences using paragraph 3 of the fictional passage:

Mina keeps her hand on the chair. This means she is definitely afraid of rejection.

1. Read paragraph 3 in Chapter 3 and locate the exact detail.
2. Identify what the passage states and what the draft infers.
3. Add the invitation as context, then revise the explanation so it does not claim to know Mina’s exact fear.

One possible revision: “In paragraph 3, Mina invites the student to play but keeps one hand on the chair until he sits down. The gesture may suggest that she is still hesitant, even as she makes room for contact.” This answer connects the action to the working thesis without inventing a stated motive. Another reading can work if it explains the evidence fairly.

Now choose one main point from your own plan. Draft the paragraph, keeping source wording clearly marked and recording the required citation as you write. If evidence is missing, mark the gap and return to the source before calling the paragraph complete.

Check Before You Continue

• Focus: Can I name the paragraph’s main point? Move a competing point into the plan for another paragraph if it needs its own development.
• Evidence: Can a reader locate the detail I used? Restore missing context, quotation marks, or citation information.
• Explanation: Have I shown why the detail supports the point? Replace “this proves my point” with the actual reasoning.
• Accuracy: Does my wording distinguish an observation from an interpretation? Revise certainty that the source cannot support.
• Connection: Does this paragraph help establish the thesis, and does the next one have a clear job? Adjust the order or opening if the relationship is unclear.

Read your revision aloud if that helps you hear a gap. The paragraph is ready for the next drafting step when its claim, evidence, and explanation work together; there is no fixed sentence count for this exercise.