Successful college writing, Eighth edition - Kathleen T. McWhorter 2020

An introduction to patterns of development
Patterns of development

✵ 10 An Introduction to Patterns of Development

✵ 11 Narration

✵ 12 Description

✵ 13 Illustration

✵ 14 Process Analysis

✵ 15 Comparison and Contrast

✵ 16 Classification and Division

✵ 17 Definition

✵ 18 Cause and Effect

CHAPTER 10An Introduction to Patterns of Development

In this chapter you will learn to

✵ recognize common patterns of development

✵ identify patterns of development in essays that use more than one pattern

✵ write an essay using more than one pattern

Writing Quick Start

ANALYZE

Study the photograph. It presents an unusual situation, and there are numerous possible interpretations of what is happening.

WRITE

After identifying your writing situation (your purpose, or reason for writing; the audience you are trying to reach; the genre, or type, of text you will create; and the medium in which the text will be read), write a paragraph explaining one possible scenario that explains what is happening.

CONNECT

Because the photograph is open to interpretation, there are numerous ways you could plan, develop, and organize your paragraph. For example, if you wanted to express your thoughts and feelings to your friends, you might have texted them a story about what the people in the photograph are doing or how they got there (narration). If you were writing an exam for your biology instructor, you might have described the changes in the physiology of the woman in response to environmental cues (process analysis) or analyzed the differences in responses of the woman and the group of people observing her (comparison and contrast). If you were writing a response to the photograph for a composition class, you might have described how the winter scene looked, felt, and sounded from the perspective of the scantily clad woman or one of the furred and booted group of observers (description).

Likewise, in many writing situations, you have a wide range of choices of what to write about and how to write it. This chapter explains how to use patterns of development to organize both your ideas and how you express them.

Many paragraphs and essays use specific patterns of development (also called rhetorical modes, or just modes) like narration, process analysis, and comparison or contrast, because they help the writer to

✵ devise a strong thesis or topic sentence

✵ select appropriate evidence

✵ create a unified paragraph or essay

The patterns also help readers learn and remember by, say, comparing something they know well with something unfamiliar or describing a place they’ve never been so that they can picture it.

While some authors write essays that focus mainly on a single mode, many others create essays from paragraphs in a variety of patterns, choosing among the patterns that will best help them achieve their goals. In the chapters in Parts 3 and 4, you will read essays that focus mainly on one mode but may also use a variety of patterns to supplement the main one. As you read these essays and write your own mixed-mode essay later in this chapter, think about how writers use patterns to achieve their goals.

Understand the Patterns of Development

The most common patterns of development are

✵ narration

✵ description

✵ illustration (or exemplification)

✵ process analysis

✵ comparison and contrast

✵ classification and division

✵ definition

✵ cause and effect

✵ argument

Narration Tells a Story

Narration uses a sequence of events — a story — to make a point. The following excerpt from a narrative essay tells the story of one man’s experience with the police:

EXAMPLE

Friday for me usually means a trip to the bank, errands, the gym, dinner, and then off to the theater. On this particular day, I decided to break my pattern of getting up and running right out of the house. Instead, I took my time, slowed my pace, and splurged by making strawberry pancakes. Before I knew it, it was 2:45; my bank closes at 3:30, leaving me less than 45 minutes to get to midtown Manhattan on the train. I was pressed for time but in a relaxed, blessed state of mind. When I walked through the lobby of my building, I noticed two light-skinned Hispanic men I’d never seen before. Not thinking much of it, I continued on to the vestibule, which is separated from the lobby by a locked door.

— Alton Fitzgerald White, “Right Place, Wrong Face” (para. 5, p. 244)*

*Text Credit: Alton Fitzgerald White. “Rag Time, My Time.” The Nation, November 10, 1999. Copyright © 1999 The Nation. All rights reserved. Used under license.

When to use it

Use narration when you want readers to learn something by experiencing an episode or sequence of events. In the Writing Quick Start, you could use narration to tell a story of how the people in the photos got to their location. You might begin with their decision to go out walking and end at the moment the photo was taken.

Description Creates a Word Picture

Description uses words that appeal to the five senses. The following excerpt from a descriptive essay uses words that appeal to the senses to convey the appearance of a homeless man:

EXAMPLE

He sat on the sidewalk, leaning with his back against the side of a brick building, wearing a filthy, gray tank-top and dingy cargo pants with rips in the knees. His hair was dirty and wild, barely restrained by a flimsy elastic tie. He wasn’t begging; his exposed knees were pulled up to his chest and his head was cradled in his arms, hidden from view. His shoulders shook slightly from quiet sobs but he didn’t bother anyone passing him on the sidewalk.

— Maia Nault, “Sometimes, We Give” (para. 6, p. 289)

When to use it

Use description when you want to emphasize the sensory aspects of an object or experience. In the Writing Quick Start, you could use description to convey in detail what the winter landscape looked, sounded, felt, or even smelled like.

Illustration Explains with Examples

Illustration uses examples to explain unfamiliar topics, concepts, or terms. In the following excerpt from an illustration essay, the author provides a specific example (illustration) to support his thesis that road rage represents a decline in civilized society:

EXAMPLE

A most amazing example of driver rage occurred recently at the Manhattan end of the Lincoln Tunnel. We were four cars abreast, stopped at a traffic light. And there was no moving even when the light had changed. A bus had stopped in the cross traffic, blocking our paths: it was a normal-for-New-York-City gridlock. Perhaps impatient, perhaps late for important appointments, three of us nonetheless accepted what, after all, we could not alter. One, however, would not. He would not be helpless. He would go where he was going even if he couldn’t get there. A Wall Street type in suit and tie, he got out of his car and strode toward the bus, rapping smartly on its doors. When they opened, he exchanged words with the driver. The doors folded shut. He then stepped in front of the bus, took hold of one of its large windshield wipers and broke it.

— Martin Gottfried, “Rambos of the Road” (para. 8, p. 315)

When to use it

Use illustration when you want to provide specific, sometimes extended, examples to support your thesis statement. You could use the photo in the Writing Quick Start as inspiration for an essay about how global warming is changing the environment; you might cite average temperatures over the last fifty years and provide examples of how changes have affected plants and animals.

Process Analysis Explains How Something Works or Is Done

Process analysis explains step by step how something works, is done, or is made. In the following excerpt from a how-to essay, the writer describes her process for writing restaurant reviews:

EXAMPLE

I used to write food reviews for California magazine before it folded…. First, I’d go to a restaurant several times with a few opinionated, articulate friends in tow. I’d sit there writing down everything anyone said that was at all interesting or funny. Then on the following Monday I’d sit down at my desk with my notes and try to write the review. Even after I’d been doing this for years, panic would set in. I’d try to write a lead, but instead I’d write a couple of dreadful sentences, XX them out, try again, XX everything out, and then feel despair and worry settle on my chest like an x-ray apron…. Finally, I would pick up my one-inch picture frame, stare into it as if for the answer, and every time the answer would come: all I had to do was to write a really shitty first draft of, say, the opening paragraph. And no one was going to see it.

— Anne Lamott, “Shitty First Drafts” (para. 5, p. 348)

When to use it

Use process analysis when you want to provide step-by-step instructions or a part-by-part analysis. In the Writing Quick Start, you might discuss the physiological changes a swimmer in the polar bear club would experience before, during, and after an icy plunge.

Comparison and Contrast Shows Similarities and Differences

Writers compare or contrast to examine closely what two things have in common or what their differences are. Many essays use both comparison and contrast. In the following excerpt, the authors compare one aspect of the differences between pockets in men’s and women’s jeans:

EXAMPLE

Predictably, skinny jeans, which more closely hug the hips, have smaller front pockets for both men and women, but the gap between women’s and men’s jeans is still noticeable in both skinny and straight styles. On average, women’s skinny jean pockets were 3.5 inches (48%) shorter and 0.3 inches (6%) narrower than men’s skinny jeans. Women’s straight jean pockets were 3.4 inches (46%) shorter and 0.6 inches (10%) narrower.

— Jan Diehm and Amber Thomas, “Pockets” (para. 6, p. 385)

When to use it

Use comparison and contrast to provide an in-depth analysis that explores the similarities and/or differences between two or more people, places, things, experiences, concepts, arguments, and so on. In the Writing Quick Start, there is opportunity to compare physiological differences between the woman in the swimsuit and her companions in heavy coats and hats.

Classification Categorizes Items, and Division Separates an Item into Parts

Classification sorts people, things, or ideas into groups; division takes a single item and breaks it down into parts. In the following excerpt from a classification essay, the writer classifies bystanders of bullying into three categories:

EXAMPLE

Together with colleagues from Boston College in the United States (V. Paul Poteat) and York St. John University in the United Kingdom (Nathalie Noret), I have attempted to better understand the “mindset” of the bystander, in the hope that it will provide me with further clues as to why bullying continues, despite forty years of research and intervention. In essence, this research has resulted in a recasting of the role of the bystander into three very distinct types of pupil: the confederate, the co-victim, and the isolate. These three types are very different from the pupil who does not engage; these are pupils who are desperate to avoid the torment being meted out on their classmate. This is not rocket science, but it does highlight a flaw in much of the research that has gone before: Without taking into account the experiences of bystanders, we may have underplayed the lasting impact that bullying can have on individuals and the school community.

— Ian Rivers, “Empower Pupils to Beat the Bullies” (para. 2, p. 440)

When to use it

Use classification or division when you want to look closely at the subcategories or parts of a particular topic. In the Writing Quick Start, you might classify people in terms of how likely they are to indulge in extreme sports, such as swimming in icy waters.

Extended Definition Explains How a Term Is Used or What It Means

An extended definition explains in detail how a term is used or differentiates among its shades of meaning. To define a term fully, writers frequently need to use other patterns of development as well. In this example, the writer not only defines the term gullibility briefly; he also uses illustration (the April Fools’ example), comparison and contrast (gullibility versus credulity), and cause and effect (the realization that it’s April Fools’ Day causes skepticism to take hold).

EXAMPLE

Gullibility is a tendency to be easily manipulated into believing something is true when it isn’t. Credulity is closely related, a willingness to believe unlikely propositions with no evidence behind them. April Fools’ tricks often work because they exploit our baseline inclination to accept direct communications from others as reliable and trustworthy. When a colleague tells you the boss wants to see you immediately, the first, automatic reaction is to believe them. Once we realize this is April 1, a more critical mindset will increase our threshold of acceptance and trigger more thorough processing. Rejection is then likely unless there is strong corroborating evidence.

— Joseph Paul Forgas, “Why Are Some People More Gullible Than Others?” (para. 2, p. 455)

When to use it

Use an extended definition when you want to conduct a close analysis of a word, phrase, concept, or phenomenon. In the Writing Quick Start, you might use the photo as a jumping-off point to define the term adventure tourism, which means traveling to participate in physically challenging outdoor activities.

Cause and Effect Uses Reasons or Results to Explain

Causes are the reasons that an event or phenomenon happens, and effects are what happen because of the event or phenomenon. Often, causes and effects are discussed together. The following excerpt explains the effects of recognizing the three types of bystanders to bullying:

EXAMPLE

So what do we learn if we recast the bystander in these three roles? We learn that the confederates of the bully may not be the mythical monsters we have demonized, but pupils who experience a great deal of emotional turmoil, such as feelings of self-loathing. This can lead to a series of harmful outcomes for all involved, such as an escalation in violence perpetrated against the victim (ironically to maintain a positive self-image), substance use, or truancy.

— Ian Rivers, “Empower Pupils to Beat the Bullies” (para. 3, p. 440)

When to use it

Use cause and effect to show how one (or more) thing(s) leads to another or many other things. In the Writing Quick Start, you might use the photo as inspiration for writing about what motivates some people to join the polar bear club on its annual New Year’s plunge.

Argument Takes and Supports a Position

Writers use arguments to persuade readers to adopt (or at least to consider) their position on an issue. In the following excerpt from an argument essay, the author tries to persuade readers that the system of tipping is flawed and offers evidence to support that claim:

EXAMPLE

But the system [of tipping] is flawed. Tips are paid after the service is provided, allowing opportunistic generosity of others. Society tries to stop this by imposing a strong social norm on diners — tip much less than 15—20% and either be engulfed with shame, or face disapproval from your date. But this strong social norm undermines the original rationale for tips as a way to incentivize excellent service. Studies of tipping have found that diners do part with more cash when they feel they have been better served, but not much. A study from 2000 (Lynn and McCall) found that differences in customer-service ratings accounted for only 1—5% of the variation in dining parties’ tips. So much for performance-related pay. A country like Japan, where tipping is seen as rude and the service is excellent, shows that you don’t need to tip to be well-looked-after.

— S. K. (The Economist), “The Case against Tipping” (para. 4, pp. 552—53)

When to use it

Use argumentation when you are trying to convince your readers that your point of view is correct or when you want them to take action. In the Writing Quick Start, you might argue that taking a swim in freezing water in winter is a challenge more people should experience.

Combine the Patterns

Some essays use only one major pattern, but many writers combine several patterns to engage their readers and support their ideas. For example, an essay may mainly tell a story (the primary pattern), but it may also include description and illustration (secondary patterns). The following excerpt is from an essay that mainly uses cause and effect but also uses several other patterns of development:

We ate breakfast at the hotel, but we had to eat lunch and dinner at the little seafood restaurants around the old port. We quickly discovered that having two restaurant meals a day with a toddler deserved to be its own circle of hell.

Narration: The writer tells the story of restaurant meals.

Bean would take a brief interest in the food, but within minutes she was spilling salt shakers and tearing apart sugar packets. Then she demanded to be sprung from her high chair so she could dash around the restaurant and bolt dangerously toward the docks.

Description: The writer helps you picture the child’s behavior.

Our strategy was to finish the meal quickly. We ordered while being seated, then begged the server to rush out some bread and bring us our appetizers and main courses at the same time. While my husband took a few bites of fish, I made sure Bean didn’t get kicked by a waiter or lost at sea. Then we switched. We left enormous, apologetic tips to compensate for the arc of torn napkins and calamari around the table.

Process: The writer explains how they proceeded through a meal.

After a few more harrowing restaurant visits, I started noticing that the French families around us didn’t look like they were sharing our mealtime agony. Weirdly, they looked like they were on vacation. French toddlers were sitting contentedly in their high chairs, waiting for their food, or eating fish and even vegetables. There was no shrieking or whining. And there was no debris around their tables.

— Pamela Druckerman, Bringing Up Bébé

Comparison and Contrast: The writer contrasts her child’s behavior with that of French children.

Recognizing that many writers combine patterns, Chapters 11—20 offer readings that focus primarily on a single mode but that also show multiple patterns at work in a single essay.

PREWRITING DRAFTING REVISING EDITING & PROOFREADING

A Guided Writing Assignment*

MULTIPLE PATTERNS OF DEVELOPMENT

PREWRITING

1 Choose and narrow a topic, and select a main pattern of organization.

Chapter 4 can help you narrow your topic. Many essays benefit from following one dominant pattern of organization. Select the major pattern of organization that best fits your purpose.

2 Write a preliminary thesis, and generate details to support it.

Chapter 5 can help with devising a thesis and generating details. You may also want to consult the chapter in Part 3 or 4 that corresponds to your main mode of development.

3 Determine which secondary patterns will help you support your thesis.

The idea-generating strategies from Chapter 4, especially using the modes of development, can help you flesh out your ideas with specific evidence. Be cautious about using too many patterns of organization, though, because doing so can make your essay difficult to follow.

DRAFTING

4 Prepare a graphic organizer or an outline of your essay.

Make sure your graphic organizer or outline

✵ clearly indicates the essay’s organization and each paragraph’s relationship to the thesis statement

✵ includes only details that support your thesis

The chapter in Part 3 or 4 that corresponds to your main mode of development can provide a model graphic organizer.

5 Keep your purpose and audience in mind.

Do not worry about grammar or spelling at this point. Instead, focus on the following:

✵ using supporting details that help you achieve your purpose with your readers

✵ making sure your introduction and conclusion signal your primary pattern of organization, so readers know what to expect or experience a satisfying sense of closure

✵ using transitions to signal that you are moving from one pattern to another, so readers can follow your train of thought

REVISING

6 Evaluate your draft and revise as necessary.

As you reread your essay, ask yourself questions like these:

✵ Have I fully developed my primary pattern?

✵ Have I effectively used secondary patterns to support my thesis?

Then ask a classmate or friend to read your essay and answer your questions. Refer to Chapter 8 for help with revising, and use the flowchart for revising essays from Chapters 11 to 20 that corresponds to your main pattern of development.

EDITING & PROOFREADING

7 Edit the words and sentences of your essay, and then proofread carefully.

As you edit your essay, ask yourself questions like these:

✵ Are my sentences concise, varied (in type, length, and sentence pattern), and parallel?

✵ Do they use strong active verbs?

✵ Are my words at an appropriate level of diction for my readers?

✵ Do I use concrete language, with appropriate connotations and fresh figures of speech?

As you proofread, look for errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Look for the kinds of errors you regularly make, and do not rely too heavily on spell- or grammar-checkers, which can lead you astray.

For additional help, refer to Chapter 9, “Editing Sentences and Words,” and to the guided writing assignment in the chapter that corresponds to your main pattern of development.

✵ * The writing process is recursive; that is, you may find yourself revising as you draft or prewriting as you revise. This is especially true when writing on a computer. Your writing process may also differ from that of your classmates or may vary depending on the assignment.

In the following reading, note how the author effectively combines multiple patterns of organization.

READING

Against Forgetting: Where Have All the Animals Gone?

Derrick Jensen

Derrick Jensen writes about environmental issues for a number of publications, including Audubon and The Sun Magazine. He is the author of Resistance against Empire (2010), Truths among Us: Conversations on Building a New Culture (2011), and The Myth of Human Supremacy (2016). This article originally appeared in Orion (July/August 2013). According to the magazine’s mission statement, “It is Orion’s fundamental conviction that humans are morally responsible for the world in which we live and that the individual comes to sense this responsibility as he or she develops a personal bond with nature.”

Before Reading

1. Preview: Use the steps listed in Chapter 2.

2. Connect: Ask yourself questions, such as “Why do you think animal species are declining?”

While Reading

Notice how the author uses a variety of patterns and consider why he is doing so.

After Reading

To examine the author’s use of multiple patterns, list the items he compares, the terms he defines, the examples he offers, the causes and effects he identifies, and the argument he makes.

1Last night a host of nonhuman neighbors paid me a visit. First, two gray foxes sauntered up, including an older female who lost her tail to a leghold trap six or seven years ago. They trotted back into a thicker part of the forest, and a few minutes later a raccoon ambled forward. After he left I saw the two foxes again. Later, they went around the right side of a redwood tree as a black bear approached around the left. He sat on the porch for a while, and then walked off into the night. Then the foxes returned, hung out, and, when I looked away for a moment then looked back, they were gone. It wasn’t too long before the bear returned to lie on the porch. After a brief nap, he went away. The raccoon came back and brought two friends. When they left the foxes returned, and after the foxes came the bear. The evening was like a French farce: As one character exited stage left, another entered stage right.

2Although I see some of these nonhuman neighbors daily, I was entranced and delighted to see so many of them over the span of just one evening. I remained delighted until sometime the next day, when I remembered reading that, prior to conquest by the Europeans, people in this region could expect to see a grizzly bear every 15 minutes.

3This phenomenon is something we all encounter daily, even if some of us rarely notice it. It happens often enough to have a name: declining baselines. The phrase describes the process of becoming accustomed to and accepting as normal worsening conditions. Along with normalization can come a forgetting that things were not always this way. And this can lead to further acceptance and further normalization, which leads to further amnesia, and so on. Meanwhile the world is killed, species by species, biome by biome. And we are happy when we see the ever-dwindling number of survivors.

4I’ve gone on the salmon-spawning tours that local environmentalists give, and I’m not the only person who by the end is openly weeping. If we’re lucky, we see 15 fish. Prior to conquest there were so many fish the rivers were described as “black and roiling.” And it’s not just salmon. Only five years ago, whenever I’d pick up a piece of firewood, I’d have to take off a half-dozen sowbugs. It’s taken me all winter this year to see as many. And I used to go on spider patrol before I took a shower, in order to remove them to safety before the deluge. I still go on spider patrol, but now it’s mostly pro forma. The spiders are gone. My mother used to put up five hummingbird feeders, and the birds would fight over those. Now she puts up two, and as often as not the sugar ferments before anyone eats it. I used to routinely see bats in the summer. Last year I saw one.

5You can transpose this story to wherever you live and whatever members of the nonhuman community live there with you. I was horrified a few years ago to read that many songbird populations on the Atlantic Seaboard have collapsed by up to 80 percent over the last 40 years. But, and this is precisely the point, I was even more horrified when I realized that Silent Spring came out more than 40 years ago, so this 80 percent decline followed an already huge decline caused by pesticides, which followed another undoubtedly huge decline caused by the deforestation, conversion to agriculture, and urbanization that followed conquest.

6My great-grandmother grew up in a sod house in Nebraska. When she was a tiny girl — in other words, only four human generations ago — there were still enough wild bison on the Plains that she was afraid lightning storms would spook them and they would trample her home. Who in Nebraska today worries about being trampled by bison? For that matter, who in Nebraska today even thinks about bison on a monthly, much less daily, basis?

7This state of affairs is problematic for many reasons, not the least of which is that it’s harder to fight for what you don’t love than for what you do, and it’s hard to love what you don’t know you’re missing. It’s harder still to fight an injustice you do not perceive as an injustice but rather as just the way things are. How can you fight an injustice you never think about because it never occurs to you that things have ever been any different?

8Declining baselines apply not only to the environment but to many fields. Take surveillance. Back in the 1930s, there were people who freaked out at the notion of being assigned a Social Security number, as it was “a number that will follow you from cradle to grave.” But since 9/11, according to former National Security Agency official William Binney, the U.S. government has been retaining every email sent, in case any of us ever does anything the government doesn’t like. How many people complain about that? And it’s not just the government. I received spam birthday greetings this year from all sorts of commercial websites. How and why does ESPN.com have my birth date? And remember the fight about GMOs? They were perceived as scary (because they are), and now they’re all over the place, but most people don’t know or don’t care. The same goes for nanotechnology.

9Yesterday I ate a strawberry. Or rather, I ate a strawberry-shaped object that didn’t have much taste. When did we stop noticing that strawberries/plums/tomatoes no longer taste like what they resemble? In my 20s I rented a house where a previous resident’s cat had pooped all over the dirt basement, which happened to be where the air intakes for the furnace were located. The house smelled like cat feces. After I’d been there a few months, I wrote to a friend, “At first the smell really got to me, but then, as with everything, I got used to the stench and it just doesn’t bother me anymore.”

10This is a process we need to stop. Milan Kundera famously wrote, “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Everything in this culture is aimed at helping to distract us from — or better, help us to forget — the injustices, the pain. And it is completely normal for us to want to be distracted from or to forget pain. Pain hurts. Which is why on every level from somatic reflex to socially constructed means of denial we have pathways to avoid it.

11But here is what I want you to do: I want you to go outside. I want you to listen to the (disappearing) frogs, to watch the (disappearing) fireflies. Even if you’re in a city — especially if you’re in a city — I want you to picture the land as it was before the land was built over. I want you to research who lived there. I want you to feel how it was then, feel how it wants to be. I want you to begin keeping a calendar of who you see and when: the first day each year you see buttercups, the first day frogs start singing, the last day you see robins in the fall, the first day for grasshoppers. In short, I want you to pay attention. If you do this, your baseline will stop declining, because you’ll have a record of what’s being lost.

12Do not go numb in the face of this data. Do not turn away. I want you to feel the pain. Keep it like a coal inside your coat, a coal that burns and burns. I want all of us to do this, because we should all want the pain of injustice to stop. We should want this pain to stop not because we get used to it and it just doesn’t bother us anymore, but because we stop the injustices and destruction that are causing the pain in the first place. I want us to feel how awful the destruction is, and then act from this feeling.

13And I promise you two things. One: Feeling this pain won’t kill you. And two: Not feeling this pain, continuing to go numb and avoid it, will.