Developing Paragraphs from
Incremental Writing Notes
1. Start with a question you want to answer, or a key idea, or a key statement.
2. Don’t get too far from the text—refer to the text and quote when necessary.
3. Make associations: connect with other ideas in the story.
4. Every once in a while, take stock of what you have written—make evaluations.
5. If a better idea occurs to you, start another paragraph.
Key idea:
It occurs to the mind that Mrs. Mallard is like a prisoner. The phrase
“prisoner of the heart” springs to mind.
Put into a statement that sounds like a thesis, we get Mrs. Mallard is a prisoner of the
heart.
Reasoning:
--she has actual heart disease
--she has to be “taken care of”
--their method of taking care of her is “smothering” her
Using inference:
Imagine what it is like for Mrs. Mallard—what does it mean, in her
case, to be taken care of?
--refer to paragraph 14 in the story, and any other reference you can find, and
write a paragraph exploring your inference.