One of the most fundamental things we’ll learn about writing is the concept of unity: that every piece of writing is made up of smaller pieces working together. It’s a little bit like a pit team in auto racing. It’s not one guy doing all of the stuff for each car. It’s a bunch of different people, each doing different jobs, but all with the same goal. The guy who unscrews the lug nuts is doing something different from the guy who puts the gas in, and that’s totally different from the guy who’s actually changing the tire. But all of them are trying to get the car ready to go back on the track as soon as possible.

Writing is the same way. Each paragraph in a paper should have its own purpose and job, and they should all work together to accomplish the same goal. Each paragraph should be different, but connected. So we can look at an essay—a longer, multiple-paragraph piece of writing—and talk about its goal. And we can also look at the paragraphs within that essay, and talk about the individual, smaller goals that those paragraphs have.

So in a paper where I’m writing about a book, I might have a whole bunch of paragraphs doing different things. In one paragraph, my goal might be to introduce the book and summarize the story. In another paragraph, I might want to explain the point I want to make about the book. I might have a paragraph where I give a specific example from the book, and show how that example backs up my point. And maybe one where I explain what someone else thinks about this book, and how it connects to my point. We can look at and talk at each of those “small jobs” within the larger paper separately.

This is how the Paragraph Spotlight and the Writing Projects are related.