When do you hit that return key, and why?

[fictualities]

Here's a weird question: what is it, exactly, that paragraphs do in fiction? I ask because I just came across a theory that strikes me as intuitively right but hard to work out in detail. It appears in a book by Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17 (fascinating sixties sci-fi about the power of language, go read), where a character remarks, apropos of

Comments

[mizbean]

Interesting essay. I've struggled with paragraph breaking, myself. Last night I was actually dithering over this same issue. My paragraphs tend to be short, adding breaks for emphasis, but then I worry if my writing is too choppy, or if I'm doing it incorrectly. I did have a beta a few years ago re-paragraph a significant portion of one of my fics. She hated one sentence paragraphs, for example, and I wasn't sure if I agreed with her changes. It was a comic fic, and I wanted to the humor to pop, and I felt her changes took away from some of the comic punch. So I got a second opinion from another beta, who agreed with me, and in the end I incorporated some of her changes, but for the most part kept my paragraph breaks as is.

Also, as a reader, I tend to have trouble focusing when presented with fics with lots of long paragraphs. I lose interest fast unless the prose is top notch.

[fictualities]

Ack, I'm sorry to be getting back to this so late! I posted when I though I had no work to do, and found out I was thoroughly mistaken.

Paragraph breaks are such a huge issue in comedy; they regulate the rhythm of the jokes, and rhythm is everything. In angst, I'm wary of too many one sentence paragraphs -- maybe they disrupt the buildup of emotions? But in comedy, oh my yes -- one-sentence paragraphs can keep the punch lines popping, just as you say. Terry Pratchett uses them all the time -- judiciously, and in alternation with longer paragraphs so readers are always kept guessing. If it works for him, and it does, then there must be something to it!

[amanuensis1]

That was a nifty illustration! I've never really thought about it beyond breaks for character dialogue--otherwise I can tell you where I put paragraph breaks but not why, it's just the way they feel to me.

[fictualities]

it's just the way they feel to me.

That's really interesting that you have a feeling for where paragraph breaks go. Other people on the thread compared paragraphing to other instinctive processes like rhythm in music -- there's a strong sense that the break should go here and not there , but not much sense of WHY that's the case. All the technical explanations (POV shifts etc) don't hold up well under close scrutiny -- so: feeling, and I suppose the more deeply a writer is engaged with her characters, the more she'll just know when their experience is punctuated by some infinitesimal pause or shift, and when it isn't.

[sistermagpie]

Wow, good question. Because I *love* paragraph breaks. There's nothing that bugs me more than super long paragraphs. They almost make me feel like they can't be good. Sometimes putting in a new paragraph makes the information better. It's sort of like putting it more in focus depending on where it's broken

And definitely that comes into the emotional breaks or how the character is feeling or the voice of the narrator. It's funny I've never thought about it, but you really do almost get a visual sense of the narrative just by looking at the page. It's not just about dialogue, for instance, but also the length of each thought.

Also in life I tend to like to break things down into parts to make them more managable. I must feel the same way about my reading and writing. I was just editing a story for another writer here and I remember just sticking in tons of paragraph marks because that's how I like it to look, and it bugs me when two people speak in one paragraph.

[fictualities]

Gah, I'm so sorry to be getting back to this so late! I got totally sandbagged at work with Boring Things.

Really long paragraphs bug me too. There's nothing more disheartening than a page or a screen that's all one a mass of text; it looks like a fog of words, within which nothing very definite can be distinguished. Writers like Dickens and Austen have a reputation for long paragraphs, but that's not really true; sometime's they'll go on for three-quarters of a page or so, but if they do, the next paragraph will be much shorter -- and the thought in the paragraph will be emphasized as clearly as if the paragraph were standing there and ringing a little bell.

It's sort of like putting it more in focus depending on where it's broken

Yes yes, exactly. I like the metaphor of focus; paragraph breaks seem like such a technical thing, but they're really all about perception.

Also in life I tend to like to break things down into parts to make them more managable. I must feel the same way about my reading and writing.Oh, very

[darius]

What about the trajectories within the paragraphs? The original eases from relaxing to cramped and snarling in the first para, then eases back through the next -- like a legato passage down the scale, break, legato back up. I'm not sure if I ought to generalize from this to a Musical Theory of Writing, but it was what struck me here, and I think it goes in the same direction as your conclusion, doesn't it?

I'd like to put in a word for robots and computers. They can care more about some moments, too, in their lovable dimwitted way.

[fictualities]

What about the trajectories within the paragraphs?

Oh, excellent point! I think that's one of the effects of paragraphing: not only do certain experiences get grouped together, but each paragraph has a certain direction, at the level of character (tension/relaxation) or at the level of plotline (increase or decrease suspense; end a paragraph on something that raises curiosity or on something that satisfies it. You can have the same sequence of sentences with a totally different effect, for that reason alone.

(Can you tell that I obsess about this sort of thing? Because I do.)

I'd like to put in a word for robots and computers. They can care more about some moments, too, in their lovable dimwitted way.Cool! How? I'd love to hear about that. (And, erm, I didn't mean to put computers in the Stupid Box; just to speculate that they'd process time differently than humans do. Query: do you think a computer with a sufficient degree of complexity to achieve sentience would necessarily be capable of boredom -- of perceiving some

[darius]

If you don't do anything on your Mac laptop for a few minutes, it goes into a power-saving mode, and eventually goes to sleep. Of course even bacteria do that, so we're not talking about a terribly fancy behavior. Maybe a better example is a chess program: it'll spend more time on some of its moves than others, because they're judged more crucial to the game. (Or more properly, they're the moves where analysis looks most likely to pay off. The opening is pretty crucial, but you want to save time and pull out a book opening.) The ways it could make this judgement range from rules of thumb all the way up to a kind of economy populated by independent programs that buy and sell timeslices from each other -- the market price for a timeslice would reflect the supply and demand for computation at the moment.

do you think a computer with a sufficient degree of complexity to achieve sentience would necessarily be capable of boredom -- of perceiving some time as non-valuable dead time -- or could boredom be designed out of an artificial mind?

[matildafilch]

Oh, cool post. Yes, absolutely.

I realised this very quickly after writing fanfic myself. A story has its own rhythm which takes the reader through the experience you want them to have. And yes, it is paragraphs that create the emotional arc of the story. I chop and change mine most often when coming to the end of the piece - when all the pretty similes and lines of dialogue are in place, and the last touches are just about getting the pacing exactly right. Though, as you show in your example, putting breaks in different places can radically alter the meaning of a piece without changing a single word of the text.

You know, pushdragon is unusual in that she writes much longer paragraphs than are usually found in fanfic (and that's great: she's not afraid to take her time setting up the emotional backstory of a fic, but without wasting a word.) But the generally shorter paragraphs in fanfic do serve a purpose

[matildafilch]

Er, I just re-read your post and my comment. This is how they go:

YOU: Hey guys! Paragraphs are the emotional units of fictional writing!
ME: Yes, BUT. Paragrahs are the emotional units of fictional writing.

*shakes head* Sorry. Clearly not coherent that day. Great post though. Thanks again!

[fictualities]

OMG no, I loved your comment! And I feel like the World's Biggest Dork for not getting back to this thread to say so, to you and to the other thoughtful people here. I got so excited about the issue that I did the Very Stupid Thing of posting in the middle of a work week, which is sort of like going out in the rain without an umbrella, causing rain: posting in mid work-week causes unexpected work to descend from the skies. *grovels* Will have more intelligent stuff to say later; am still at work, unfortunately. Yes, on a Saturday. *hangs self*

[matildafilch]

My sympathies! Don't worry about the time - I figured you'd been snowed under (I'm sure everybody else understands too!) I hope you get to rest tomorrow.