Stylish segues
In writing, you often pick up the outgoing idea from the end of a paragraph and show how it connects to the idea in the next one. This is a segue. Pronounced ‘seg-way’, it comes from cinema, referring to the camera moving from one scene to another without a visible cut. The classic way to create a segue, as I’ve described before, is with a hinge sentence.[1] But why not add a touch of style to your hinge sentences? Sometimes, repeating a single word is enough: ‘While political writing in the 1480s was successfully suppressed, legal writing proved impossible to censor.’ Good segue-writers use repetitions, echoes and word play to reinforce the connection they are making: ‘It was not just pubs that were forcibly shut in the revolution; publishers were closed down too.’ Your goal is to seize on the key idea linking both paragraphs so that your reader will effortlessly follow your thought process.
[1] https://rlfconsultants.com/hinge-sentences/
James McConnachie
23 July 2020
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