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Writing Warmup: Writing Topic Sentences for Body Paragraphs
When you write a narrative paragraph, it is important to express a main point. If you simply describe a list of activities, it is boring for the reader. To make your paragraph both creative and interesting to readers, make sure that your topic sentence has a controlling idea that
creatively informs the reader of the paragraph’s purpose.
Example of a strong topic sentence:
Topic Controlling Idea
When somebody broke into my house, I felt totally invaded.
Make a Point
In a narrative paragraph, the topic sentence should make a point. To help you find the controlling idea, you can ask yourself the following questions.
–What did I learn?
–How did I change?
–How did it make me feel?
–What is important about it?
Example:
Topic: Moving out of the family home
Controlling idea: Becoming more independent
Topic
Controlling Idea or Purpose
When I moved out of the family home, I spread my wings to take flight.
*(imagery to convey her independence)
Templates to Guide You: Below are some templates that are guides to help writers write strong and effective topic sentences. Templates show writers how to organize their thoughts and communicate their controlling idea or purpose clearly.
Employ
literary devices
to offer a single claim for the paragraph.
When I moved out of the family home, I was adrift without an anchor.
*(Feeling lost without a sense of purpose.)
As I grew older, I understood that time is a stream.
*(Time moves forward and beyond our control.)
Use
direct, precise insights
to offer a single claim for the paragraph.
In my first job, I learned how to manage my time and take feedback maturely.
When I heard the news about heard about my grandfather’s death, I realized that I lost part of myself.
Fragments
are a powerful and engaging way to delay the topic sentence.
Insecure, overweight, listless. I grew divorced from my body.
*(A list of adjectives FIRST that show how he’s disconnected from his body.)
Feo (ugly). I cross my arms to shield myself.
*(Uses Spanish to convey their feelings and the need to protect themselves.)
Fifteen. Sixteen years old. I was awkward in the presence of girls.
*(Use fragments to show the passage of time and convey your central claim.)
Rhetorical questions
allow writers to transition to their central claim, express and evoke emotions, provide readers with complicated or clear answers, and ask readers to reflect.
What is the world without music? For me, the world was a dreary place without it.
*(The question sets up the central claim.)
Why did I take this trip to England? There wasn’t one reason that took me on this trip of self-discovery.
*(The question allows the writer to show shades of grey motivating their decision.)
Doesn’t everyone have a right to quality education? The terms of my scholarship revealed that my education wasn’t a right but something that could be taken from me.
*(The question conveys compassion for everyone and the writer’s circumstance.)
“Don’t you have eyes?” My mother’s frustration aimed to shame me for a simple mistake.
*(The question is used to express the mother and son’s different emotions.)
Writing Topic Sentences for Your Unit 1 Essay:
Now it is your turn. You will need to create 3 topic sentences, one for each body paragraph. These topic sentences will be the opening sentence of 3 body paragraphs in your Unit 1 essay. These 3 body paragraphs will appear after your Introduction & Hook paragraph.
Topic Sentence for Body Paragraph #1:
Topic Sentence for Body Paragraph #2:
Topic Sentence for Body Paragraph #3:
*For this Writing Warmup, I am just asking you to write 3 topic sentences for 3 body paragraphs to fulfill this weekly assignment. To be clear, you will need more than 3 body paragraphs to make the required page length for the Unit 1 essay.