How do experienced writers introduce the topic sentence halfway or near the end of the paragraph?
I have repeatedly come across the comment that experienced writers are able to put their topic sentence anywhere in a paragraph, but I wonder what that looks like and how they are able to do this. How would one go about accomplishing that? What would such a paragraph look like?
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Personally, I would regard this more as a critique of the notion of a topic sentence than as and evidence of skilled writing. The theory of the topic sentence is part of a theory of paragraph design that really doesn't hold much water when you look at the practice of real writers. So maybe the fact that the putative topic sentence can, in fact, occur anywhere in the paragraph is just a sign that the notion of a topic sentence as an analytical category is not very sound (and that therefore there is no problem to solve here).
That said, you could look at the idea of the topic sentence as a way of teaching very basic writing techniques to third graders. Maybe it works as a way to help them organize their thought and write more coherently. In other words, you could look at the idea as training wheels for writers. But the mystery is not that adults ride without training wheels. That is just what normal bike riding is.
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