<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # Self-contained paragraph construction belongs most... > Self-contained paragraph construction belongs most naturally to philosophical, expository, and instructive writing. Fiction may deliberately disorient, delay a referent, break on an image, or carry tension across paragraph boundaries because suspense and immersion are among its instruments. An argument has a different obligation. When I am trying to teach, clarify, warn, distinguish, or enlarge perception, the reader should not be forced to guess what object my paragraph has quietly inherited. {{Mystery can be an artistic achievement in a story; in an explanation it is often unpaid labor transferred to the reader.}} **Source:** [[projects/The Argument in Miniature - How I Write Quotations, Paragraphs, and Reusable Prose|The Argument in Miniature: How I Write Quotations, Paragraphs, and Reusable Prose]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Self-contained paragraph construction belongs most naturally to philosophical, expository, and instructive writing. Fiction may deliberately disorient, delay a referent, break on an image, or carry tension across paragraph boundaries because suspense and immersion are among its instruments. An argument has a different obligation. When I am trying to teach, clarify, warn, distinguish, or enlarge perception, the reader should not be forced to guess what object my paragraph has quietly inherited. Mystery can be an artistic achievement in a story; in an explanation it is often unpaid labor transferred to the reader.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-self-contained-paragraph-labor-transferred-reader ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->