Tag Archives: paragraphing

Mechanics

Comparing notes on paragraphing

7 Comments

There is at least one hard-and-fast (mostly) rule for paragraphing in fiction: when you change speakers, change paragraphs. But from there, things can get a little complicated.

If you have a character react to another character’s dialogue without speaking, does that get a separate paragraph? What if the first character continues speaking? Or, to use an example, how would you paragraph this (we’ll call it Exhibit A), assuming it’s the same person doing all the talking:

“That’s the stupidest blog post idea I’ve ever heard.” He scowled at his sister. She rolled her eyes heavenward and sighed, as if begging for the patience to endure him. He took her by the shoulders. “You’re only thinking like this because you’re editing.”

I don’t know that one way is better than another—it mostly depends on what you want to emphasize, and making sure your meaning’s clear. Interestingly, I’ve read a couple books published in the 1950s and ’60s lately, and there seems to have been a rule that every time someone starts speaking, you need a new paragraph, so this example might be:

“That’s the stupidest blog post idea I’ve ever heard.” He scowled at his sister. She rolled her eyes heavenward and sighed, as if begging for the patience to endure him. He took her by the shoulders.

“You’re only thinking like this because you’re editing.”

Which I find confusing, since I think the paragraph change is setting up a speaker change, and it’s not. (And that might be precisely why they’ve shied away from that.)

Along those same lines, I made sure to include (in this totally-made-up-not-for-real example) a sentence that brought the speaker back into actor position before the second part of his dialogue to try to make it clearer who was speaking. (This may or may not be successful. We would assume it’s him because we haven’t changed paragraphs in the first example, but if the sister’s action was the last sentence before the second part of the dialogue, it might be hard to parse who’s supposed to be speaking. While we may want to “challenge” our readers, we probably don’t want to challenge them just to understand what’s happening 😉 .)

And then there’s narrating internal monologue. How do you think you’d do this in Exhibit B?

Terrence looked up as soon as he heard the hollow clack of high heels in the vestibule. Andrea came tripping in to the chapel, casting her eyes about hopefully. Terrence read people for a living. The way she leaned forward, her eyebrows drawn up inquisitively: she was eager to see him. And she only knew him as a lie. He suppressed a sigh.

How about Exhibit C?

Angelica nearly missed the meeting. Why she’d spent so long fussing over her hair was beyond her. No amount of fussing had ever made it behave particularly well—and she shouldn’t be so concerned about how she looked. She was lucky to reach her seat before the presentation began. But she was glad of the fussing as soon as they began the introductions—and she knew Mr. Griggs was there. She hadn’t seen him yet, but she could almost feel his presence. Or maybe his eyes on her.

How would you add paragraph breaks to these examples (if at all)?

Photo by kami68k

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Mechanics

The art of paragraphing

4 Comments

Part of the reason why paragraphing is so tough is that there aren’t as many rules governing it—but then, that leaves it open for us to play with paragraphs to great effect. Paragraphing can affect meaning and pace. It’s a powerful tool that I, for one, want to learn to wield better.

One way I’ve found I try to use paragraphs to better effect is to write a paragraph of a character reasoning something out, then break to give the conclusion:

Maria shook her head. Jimmy couldn’t have stolen the diamonds. It wasn’t possible. But the passer-by was talking to the policeman, so they were both innocent. The heiress was in the kitchen, flirting with the maitre d’. And Constantina was returning a book to the public library.

That only left Jimmy.

Note that we still organize paragraphs around the same topic. Here, this set of paragraphs are all about Maria ferreting out the suspect in the case of the missing diamonds. The first paragraph, especially, is organized around a central theme. It could even have a topic sentence: “Maria sorted through the possible suspects.”

And like in nonfiction, there’s a logical progression and coherence among the paragraphs. Here Maria (rather quickly) goes through an actual logical theorem of sorts, persuading herself from the emotional denial (“Jimmy can’t have done this”) to what she knows must be true (oh, but he did).

In reality, I’d break up that first paragraph between “It wasn’t possible.” and “But the passer-by . . .” Which is the exact kind of thing that made me want to write this post: why do we paragraph the way we do? I think in this example, I want to change paragraphs because she’s almost “changing sides” in her mental argument: “A is true” versus “But A cannot be true.”

I could see an argument for breaking there and then joining “That only left Jimmy” to that paragraph, too. It seems to come down to how dramatic we want that conclusion to be. (And I have a sneaking fear I’m an overdramatic paragrapher!)

What do you think? How does art play into paragraphing? How does “art” play in to your paragraphing?

Photo by Windell H. Oskay, www.evilmadscientist.com

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
Mechanics

The science of paragraphing

5 Comments

How’s that for nitty gritty?

Usually in school, when we learn what a paragraph is, it has a fairly standard definition: three to five sentences, the first being a topic sentence and/or thesis, and the others relating to that topic. The last sentence should usually offer some sort of segue into the topic of the next sentence to show the logical structure of the overall essay. (In the first paragraph, the last sentence is the thesis of your work.) And that’s a great structure—for non-fiction.

In fiction, paragraphs are still important, but unfortunately they’re not quite as easily defined. We aren’t simply relating information or crafting a persuasive argument—we’re trying to make a cohesive narrative come to life.

There is at least one hard-and-fast (mostly) rule for paragraphing in fiction: when you change speakers, change paragraphs. Beyond that, we’re left with . . . more like “guidelines.”

One of those extremely important guidelines is clarity—break paragraphs to make your meaning clear. Breaking a paragraph between speakers is one reason why we do this. We might also break a paragraph to better illustrate the relationship between the character’s actions: showing cause and effect, for example.

Also, breaking a paragraph can help keep POV clear. I thought it was rather clear whose POV we were in in one scene that I wrote, so the POV character could comment on other characters’ dialogue in the same paragraph as the speech. My CPs found paragraphs like the made-up one in bold below confusing POV:

Lisa leaned back in her seat, trying not to look like she was eavesdropping. They were talking about her—again.

“Well, we were going to tell her.” Oh, really? Like when?

As we read, we need white space to help our minds psychologically space out information. We can use this to great artistic effect (as we’ll talk about tomorrow!).

What do you think? How do you paragraph? How would you paragraph this example?

Photo by Xosé Castro Roig

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!