Write Better: Tips and tricks

Making Paragraphs

Thanks to language classes everywhere, most of us know the basic rules about creating paragraphs. A lot of us suffered through rules mostly for essay writing, but it's actually very helpful in other formats!

If you need a brush up, check out the Purdue Online Writing Lab and search for "On Paragraphs." That site will give you a great idea on what a paragraph is and what to keep in mind as you write.

Of course, the focus there is on essays and more formal writing. In fiction we've got characters, actions, plots,  descriptions,  dialogue, and more that can also influence our paragraph breaks. Our paragraphs aren't often proper paragraphs, but for the sake of ease that's what I'm calling them today.

So, if you're struggling a bit with deciding what should or shouldn't make up a paragraph in fiction, here's a bit of help!

Change in scene.

This one is rather obvious. If you're changing scenes, take a paragraph break. This lets you find the scene, your reader find the scene, and it gives everyone a chance to process what happened and prep for something new. 

New speaker=new paragraph

Keep readers aware that there has been a shift in perspective/character. A new speaker gets a fresh line to minimize confusion over who said what. In addition to providing clarity, it breaks up your page by adding white space, which is friendly and inviting to readers vs a wall of text.

For example:

I drummed the edge of the warm sheet. "So what do you think?"

My brother took a bite of the cookie. He frowned. "Eh, it's okay," he said and reached for another.

There are times and places where you could probably get away with two people speaking in one paragraph, but there's also a chance you could probably get away with picking your nose in front of your crush. You really don't want to do it unless you know things'll work in your favor. And I'm telling you right now, they probably won't.

New speaker, new paragraph doesn't always mean new character, new paragraph.

When you're writing dialogue, you don't want to have two characters speaking in the same paragraph (unless it's one of those odd "Bob and Bill said...."). However, if your characters are performing actions, they don't always need to be separated.

For example:

The egg rolled across the tilted counter. Jake lunged, missed. At the last second, as if on instinct, as if I cared about our stupid home-ec 'baby', my hands extended. The egg plopped into my cupped palms.

Here we have three actors: the egg, Jake, and our narrator. Our story would start to look a little silly if every time we changed characters, we had a new paragraph. White space is inviting, but too much of it and you're going to be writing a list, not a story.

This is where other understandings of paragraphs come in. What we grouped together above is cohesive in the sense that it all revolves around an action and the immediate resolution (the egg falls --> I catch it).

So let's go to the next elements:

Give something its own paragraph for pause and emphasis. Combine something into one paragraph for (generally) speedier action. Remember though, long paragraphs read slower than shorter ones.