I posted a piece earlier last year that gave some good reasons for and advice on breaking paragraphs, but I see I missed something important. Recently, I reviewed a couple of posted assignments by students and a novel from an editing client that showed the same pattern in each.
Let me give an example.
“Get out of my way or you’re going to get hurt,” Joel warned Beanie. Beanie just wanted to try to help.
“I’m not moving until I talk some sense into you,” Beanie told him.
What’s the problem? The writer needs to let Beanie have her own paragraph—give the girl some privacy. So the paragraphing here would change if we followed some logic.
“Get out of my way or you’re going to get hurt,” Joel warned Beanie.
Beanie just wanted to try to help. “I’m not moving until I talk some sense into you,” she told him.
Paragraphing is a way of sensibly structuring your writing. What is more reasonable—having information about the speaker in her own paragraph, or using her information in a paragraph about someone else? Yes, package the information next to her speech, not next to his.
My other observation of what people do is related.
What I also see is that people like to break paragraphs for no reason if dialogue is involved.
To give you an example.
Joel was never the calmest of men.
“Get out of my way or you’re going to get hurt,” Joel warned Beanie.
Why separate commentary from the dialogue as if the dialogue needs a paragraph all to itself. It doesn’t. A paragraph with narration can certainly tolerate some accompanying dialogue.
Joel was never the calmest of men. “Get out of my way or you’re going to get hurt,” Joel warned Beanie.
If you can, scroll down and see my original post on paragraphing. But I’ll summarize the main point here. One reason we break paragraphs is to put more white space on the page and make the page look more readable. Of course we break at appropriate spots, but break we must or the page will seem grey and intimidating.
Now the point in this post in front of you now is that you need to group the sentences in your paragraph according to logic and why you might not need a paragraph break just because you have a piece of dialogue.
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Come take one of my classes at Writer’s Digest and learn more—and download my style guide, The Naked Writer, at Amazon. I’m an award-winning writer—I won an award for my Writing the Mystery (take a mystery writing class with me) and I won an Edgar for a short story of mine. I have a mystery writing class coming up as well as 12 Weeks to a First Draft (both online with a couple more coming at Writer’s Digest University). Oh, next up is Showing vs. Telling, starting on 8/3/2017.
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