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Topic : Larger structure - followup to Sense of Style by Steven Pinker I have read Steven Pinker's Sense of Style, which is a great book. In chapter 4, he talks about how to form lucid coherent - selfpublishingguru.com

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I have read Steven Pinker's Sense of Style, which is a great book.

In chapter 4, he talks about how to form lucid coherent sentences, and in chapter 5, called "Arcs of Coherence", he extends his analysis of coherence to relations between sentences within a paragraph (and also somewhat about coherence between subsequent paragraphs).

I think his analysis is truly brilliant, about how a text is not merely tree-like, because there are connections between sentences apart from the tree-like structure of chapter -> paragraph -> Sentence -> words. His analysis of how to make a paragraph coherent by connecting sentences in specific ways is truly very helpful.

Also he has a brilliant analysis (more in chapter 4) of how lucid prose is created by taking into account the effect that the order of words has on the memory of the reader.

However, he does not really extend this analysis to the level of chapters/pages. He does not really address the question of "how do we write entire chapters so as to make them coherent with each other". "How do we make connections between sentences in different sections/chapters, so as to make them coherent".

So my question is: For people who have read Steven Pinker's chapter on Arcs of Coherence and found it as useful as I did, do you know any other writers who have similar insights, but about how to connect elements of a larger text, to make the larger structure of the text more coherent?

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My PhD thesis was divided in a nested manner into parts, chapters, sections and subsections. Whatever you're working on, I hope some of what helped me will help you:

Divide the work into numbered components, even if the reader never sees the numbers (although they can help the work reference other parts of itself).
Write a description of what each component's components do; for example, what do the sections in a given chapter do? Then zoom down even further. My thesis benefited from this for three reasons: I knew what to write (which helped me push on through the slog), I knew how I would explain it, and enclosing these descriptions in the thesis itself helped the readers follow. Whether you should enclose the descriptions I'll leave up to you, but write them at least.
As you write or redraft, think carefully about whether you've really explained things in the right order. If you have to move things around, fair enough; I know I certainly did. But if you've done the work above, you'll more readily notice better ideas, more easily think through how to do it, and know how to explain the revised structure.

I know this doesn't read like advice Pinker would have written, but it complements his advice well enough. If you do everything I suggest at the large-scale level and everything he suggests at the small-scale level, you should be fine. I linked to my thesis above in case my advice is easier to follow when you see a worked example. And if unfamiliarity with the terminology used therein threatens to distract you from seeing what role such sentences play, just nurble your way through everything but the section numbers.

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