Five Paragraph Essays: A Blessing or a Curse
I 'd like to say that my style as a writer has come a long way. However I would not argue I still may have much farther to go as well. My Sophomore year of high school was the golden year for five paragraph essays, what I mean is I was constantly writing essays in a five paragraph format, and looking back on I see that as a blessing as well as a curse. It was a gift because to write a five paragraph essay became extremely easy for me. Yet, it was a cure because to write in any other form became much more difficult. So, it comes as no surprise that my two rhetorical analysis papers were originally written in five paragraph essay form. Also, I was never a fan of revising, so when it came to making changes I either did the bare minimum or made no changes at all. However, this time around I made very drastic changes to both Paper one and Paper two. Within this reflection I would like to discuss how this literary condition limited my writing for both my first and second papers. I would also like to discuss the changes I made to both papers to break free from the chains of 5 paragraphs.
First of all, for Paper one I had a lot of ideas I wanted to discuss. However I struggled with how to organize these ideas, and so I resorted back to my security blanket of five paragraphs. For instance, when I first wrote Paper one I had four different rhetorical topics I wanted to discuss, kairos, present tense language, intrinsic proofs, and extrinsic proofs, but I limited myself to only three body paragraphs, forcing me to combine intrinsic and extrinsic proofs into one paragraph. This also limited the amount of detail I could provide for each idea. During the revising process I attempted to keep the st...
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...in Paper one, I changed the arrangement of my paragraphs as well to have my newly organized ideas flow more seamlessly. Overall I feel the changes I made strengthened my Paper as a whole.
In conclusion, I am glad that I took the time to revise my papers. I was stuck in a five paragraph essay mindset and I feel it really hurt the overall outcome of my Papers. I also don 't think I would have realized this issue if I hadn 't gone back into each paper and attempted to make changes. I believe the restructuring of my papers, and the additional information and analysis I was able to put in because of the new and improved structure, made my papers stronger and more organized. So, as I stated early, the five paragraph essay form is a blessing and curse; a curse because I can easily get stuck in one way of writing, but a blessing because it gives me a good place to start.
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