Bernie’s basic questions that lead to writing better pieces by writing better paragraphs first.

Recently I’ve been trying to ask myself these questions whenever I write paragraphs for a new piece:

– For each paragraph, if I leave only the first sentence, does the collection of paragraphs still make sense?
– For each other sentence in the paragraph, does it help support the first sentence?
– Does each sentence do one thing in the paragraph?
– Are the sentences varied enough to make it interesting to read?
– Can I take words out of each sentence and still have a good sentence?
– Can I take out sentences of the paragraph and still have a good paragraph?
– Do the paragraphs hang together?
– Does the first paragraph make me want to read the next paragraph?
– If they only read the first paragraph, is that enough?

I came up with these questions because I wanted to make my writing better. It doesn’t matter what I am writing: an email, a press release, a blog post, you name it. Whatever it is, if I apply those questions, the collection of paragraphs gets better.

These questions are related to rules for writing paragraphs in many pieces you will find on the Internet. I thought I would share my version of that. I hope it helps!