Beginning, middle, and ending is so important in teaching kids to write that I created an acronym for it: BME. Clearly, I’m not trying to be creative with that acronym. I just use the term so often that I need an acronym for it.
Over the centuries, humans have come up with numerous writing terms that refer to aspects of beginning, middle, and ending: e.g., introduction, body, conclusion, greeting, closing, topic sentence, details, concluding sentence, sentence opener, subject/verb/object, ending punctuation, exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, denouement, etc.
The list goes on. In short, everything that relates to structure in writing relates to the beginning, middle, and ending (BME). Beginning, middle, and ending is so universal in writing that students must understand it.
Mastering Two Levels of Beginning, Middle, and Ending (BME)
Let’s keep things simple. As we move forward, let’s consider just two sets of two topics:
Set 1: narrative story vs. expository text
Set 2: whole composition and paragraphs
For students to master these four topics, they will need to master two levels of beginning, middle, and ending:
1. Beginning, middle, and ending in paragraphs.
2. Beginning, middle, and ending in whole composition.
The tricky part of mastering these two levels of BME is that they work together and are intimately interconnected and interrelated. The belief that a paragraph is a building block is only half right. This building-block theory of paragraphs is founded on the belief that a paragraph is a whole. The reality is that a paragraph is both a whole and a part of a whole composition. This is part of the reason why dictionaries list the word paragraph as both a noun and a verb.
Mastery over these two levels of BME is the foundation of student writing success! Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay is the fastest, most effective way to create this foundation! Be sure to check out the program on the homepage!
Organized and Natural Writing
My goal is to help my students become organized and natural paragraph and multi-paragraph writers across the curriculum. Students won’t reach this goal until they master two levels of beginning, middle, and ending (BME), and Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay is the fastest, most effective way to get there!
But in addition to using the program, teachers need to understand the truth about paragraphs and multi-paragraph writing. To understand this truth, teachers should open up a few different magazines, newspapers, textbooks, encyclopedias, picture books, chapter books, and popular novels and compare what they see. They should do it for a few different audiences and age groups. In short, we find the truth of paragraph and multi-paragraph structure on the page of professionally edited and professionally published texts.
The one nearly universal trait of structure is beginning, middle, and ending. Of course, as you examine different types of writing for different audiences, you see that beginning, middle, and ending is not a formula.
Narrative Stories: Beginning, Middle, and Ending (BME)
Beginning, middle, and ending (BME) has been one of the most important concepts in story writing for over 2,000 years! In Poetics (c.333 BC), Aristotle said that a story must have a plot, and the plot must have a beginning, middle, and ending. This beginning, middle, and ending forms a complete whole and is “the first and most important thing” in a story.
Thousands of years later, Steven Spielberg knows the importance of beginning, middle, and ending. When I think of my favorite Steven Spielberg movies, I clearly remember the beginning, the middle, and the ending. He definitely knows how to tell a good story!
Unfortunately for audiences everywhere, many modern storytellers are neglecting Aristotle’s time-tested wisdom. In fact, Spielberg recently complained, “People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end anymore. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.”
Teachers need to bring BME to life! Initially, students aren’t seriously interested in beginning, middle, and ending. It’s boring. It doesn’t pique their interest. And they don’t see what’s so important about it. In contrast, kids love the idea of flashbacks, flash-forwards, foreshadowing, red herrings, and creating suspense or curiosity by holding back information. All of that’s interesting to them.
Of course, it’s difficult for students to understand all of those concepts if they don’t have a solid understanding of BME. Those advanced techniques assume that a reader and a writer grasp that the plot has a BME. Both the reader and writer must be able to sort through all of those distractions and see the plot’s beginning, middle, and ending.
Finally, we must not forget what the French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard said about BME: “A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end but not necessarily in that order.” And Seneca said, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
Story vs. Expository: Beginning, Middle, and Ending (BME)
When it comes to paragraph and whole-composition structure, stories and expository texts have a great deal in common. However, they also contain differences. As a rule, if you compare a popular novel to an encyclopedia, the paragraphing will look quite different. Here is one way to think of BME in our students’ writing:
» Expository Texts: Have two clear levels of beginning, middle, and ending (BME).
» Stories: Have the feeling of two or more levels of beginning, middle, and ending (BME).
The Truth: What we teach students about the traditional paragraph and multi-paragraph structure works better with expository text as compared to stories. But if we don’t teach students this kind of formal structure, many students will NEVER write in an organized or coherent way.
One easy-to-remedy consequence of teaching this formal structure is that beginning multi-paragraph story writers often create stories that are informational or episodic. For this reason, students need additional instruction on story structure, story elements, and story techniques. But with a little practice, students do become “Organized and Natural” multi-paragraph story writers. With Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay as the foundation and framework, it’s guaranteed!
The Short and Lively Paragraph Style
If you read the Ten Stages of Paragraph and Multi-Paragraph Mastery, you will see that I call Stage 9 (the second-highest stage) the Short and Lively Paragraph Style. When I looked over high-scoring released student writing samples from state writing assessments, it was clear that many of the best student writers write in a Short and Lively Paragraph Style. These students just get it!
In everything from newspapers to novels to children’s stories to magazine articles to the internet to presidential letters—the Short and Lively Paragraph Style is ubiquitous. It’s more than just common; it’s truly ubiquitous! No one likes to read long paragraphs! That’s a fact.
To be clear, the Short and Lively Paragraph Style is not appropriate for academic writing. However, if a writer can’t write in the Short and Lively Paragraph Style, they don’t understand writing.
The Short and Lively Paragraph Style is built on the feeling of beginning, middle, and ending. Put simply, short paragraphs do not need to follow a paragraph formula as long as the indents are in the right place. What does that mean? It means that readers feel beginning, middle, and ending as they read.
Closure and the Zeigarnik Effect: The Scientific Need for Beginning, Middle, and Ending (BME)
BME is a feeling. If you don’t believe me, try this experiment: Go to a party or get-together, and at some random point, just walk out and leave. Even if no one notices, it’s going to feel really weird.
You may have heard of the pop psychology term “needing closure,” but have you heard of the Zeigarnik Effect? Both of these terms refer to needing an ending. Although I’m sure there is some debate over if these two concepts are scientifically valid, they frequently feel valid.
The Zeigarnik Effect holds that people remember unfinished activities better than completed activities. Is this true? Well, I once began reading a book, and I didn’t really like it. I ended up getting busy and never finished the final 30 pages. Ten years later, I was still thinking about how I had not finished that book. I finally went to the library and checked it out so that I could finish it. This was for a book that I did not like! In short, it was easier for me to complete the book than to continue thinking about it for another ten years!
I know that in this complex world, I have put systems in place to bring an end to things that I don’t want to continue with. As an example, I am merciless with TV shows. I don’t have the time to watch anything that I’m not enthralled with. To solve this problem, I created a QUIT list on my computer so I can mark TV shows as “QUIT.” Once a show goes on that list, it’s finished.
In storytelling, there is a technique called an “Open Ending.” It’s exactly what it sounds like. It’s an ending that is not finished or left open to interpretation. You are probably aware of a TV show or movie that has one of these open endings. Sometimes these open endings make the national news because people are so livid. To invest time in something and not get a great ending—that makes people mad.
Personally, if I love the story, I’m okay with these endings because they get me thinking about the deeper meaning of the story. However, I have also created a way to put an end to things. The ending is clearly what I think it is. The ending is my interpretation of things. And that’s final!
Beginning, Middle, and Ending and The Reading-Writing Connection
As much as possible, I teach writing across the curriculum. Why wouldn’t I? It’s an excellent use of time. Furthermore, as I read with students across the curriculum, I reinforce various concepts that I have taught them about writing. To be clear, I am always trying to achieve two goals at once while I do this. I am trying to (1) teach content, and (2) teach writing.
Teaching students about the structure of the texts that we are reading teaches both writing and the subject content, and BME is a helpful tool. In particular, BME is beneficial when previewing and reviewing texts across the curriculum. Students tend to lose interest quickly when previewing and reviewing texts, and BME creates a short three-part structure for the process. In fact, with BME, teachers can lead a preview or review as quickly or as thoroughly as they want to. Note: I prefer often and rapidly over slowly and seldom.
Previewing the structure of a text is one of the most valuable things a teacher can do to improve the comprehension of expository texts. Reviewing the structure of texts makes the information stick. Furthermore, teachers can analyze the BME of paragraphs, sections, lessons, chapters, books, and even sentences.
Beginning Writers and Struggling Writers: Beginning, Middle, and Ending (BME)
I always look at my students’ independent writing. Teachers can get students to do anything in a lesson, but if students don’t write nicely in their daily work across the curriculum, they don’t get it.
Ask yourself these questions: Do your students jump around in their writing? Do they write whatever pops into their head? Do your students begin ideas that go nowhere? Do they include ideas or details that have no important point? Do your students write endlessly-long rambling sentences? Do your students naturally grasp when it’s time to indent?
If your students exhibit any of these problems, they don’t have a developed sense of beginning, middle, and ending. They don’t understand it at the paragraph level, and they don’t understand it at the whole composition level. Pattern Based Writing: Quick & Easy Essay is the fastest, most effective way to improve your students’ paragraph and multi-paragraph writing. Be sure to check it out on the homepage!
