Coherence
Identify/Generate the principle
Time: 20 minutes
Write three sentences from different sources on the board (these
come from 3 short stories by different authors).
1) After breakfast the next morning they set out from the main
dock, in four canoes, three in each.
2) "
Is that an obscene gesture?" she asked.
3) But children bring you grief, the same way they bring you joy.
Ask students to write a paragraph filling in the story between
the three sentences; they may rearrange the sentences if they want
to. Ask two or three students to read their paragraphs aloud. Explain
then that the sentences actually come from three separate sources.
As readers, we expect things to make sense, to be connected. Even
if there's no obvious connection, we'll fill one in. As writers,
then, we'd best make connections clear if we don't think they'll
be obvious to readers; otherwise, left to their own devices, readers
may devise connections that don't help our argument.
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