Help writers create a logical sequence of ideas

Logical flow is one of the trickier writing skills to master, but it is vital for good writing. Here’s a guide to making sure your writing makes sense.The writing skill of ‘logical flow’ can be defined as all the aspects of your writing that help the reader move smoothly from one sentence to the next, and one paragraph to another.

To illustrate, imagine that readers should ideally follow your thoughts as effortlessly as cruising down a river through the countryside. Happily sailing along, readers would hardly find it thrilling if the river unexpectedly cascaded 600 metres down a cliff, abruptly dried up, or if a massive boulder were wedged between its banks. Any of these nasty obstacles would probably make them turn around and go home.

So it is with the flow of your sentences.

Readers don’t want bumps, unintended surprises or to feel threatened in any way. They don’t want to follow a train of thought, only for it to lead to a dead-end, or for a new idea to be dumped on them without warning.

Just because your sentences have a literal stop between them, and a gap between paragraphs, doesn’t mean that readers want stops and gaps in the flow of logical thinking.

Readers want an enjoyable, stress-free journey, and logical flow helps to give them that.

So how can you achieve logical flow?

There are three main ways:

Logical layout of content, addressing one point at a time in a reader-friendly, logical sequence.

Apt use of transitions to blend paragraphs together

Consistency in the finer points of style, tone, tenses and punctuation.

Explanation:

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