Pennies make dollars, my old man always said.
But do sentences make paragraphs?
I used to think so.
Whenever I was having trouble with a paragraph, I'd get to work on the sentences—reword, restructure, revise—until they buffed out to a polished shine.
But zoom back out, and the paragraph is still a mess. It's just a different mess than the one that came before.
I'd end up rewriting the same paragraph again and again, and it never got better because I was working on the wrong thing.
Then I learned about Lev Kuleshov, the Soviet filmmaker.
This changed how I approach structure in writing.