: Re: Must every piece of speech get its own paragraph? I've had a few people read pieces of narrative writing I've done, and they seem to take issue with the fact that I sometimes put a piece

@LarsenBagley300

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The trick is to not think of dialog as script, but action... in this case speech... so if your paragraph contains dialog, it is either the subject action of the paragraph, or part of the subject action. So lets parse out what is happening here by marking the individual actions taking place:

Action: As Jill walked home, the mints jiggled happily in the box in her pocket, as if they were waiting to be eaten. Suddenly, the box snapped open and one mint fell out.

Action: "Dammit," said Jill, bending down to pick it up. As she picked it up, eyeing it, she noticed that the mint didn't have any dirt on it at all, despite falling onto the dirty, wet sidewalk.

Action: "I guess you're spoiled anyway, so I can't bring you to Fran," muttered Jill, so she popped it in her mouth. Suddenly, she felt changes occurring in her.

You'll notice at each break, there is a new verb happening... Jill Walked, Jill said, Jill muttered. Even though Jill is the only person in the entire paragraph, she's not doing all this at once, there is a causality to each and a response. As a rule, dialog should either be at the very begining or very end of a paragraph, never in the middle. "Dammit" could be be at the tail of Action 1, or lead Action 2 (in the former case, you can drop the Jill said, since we know Jill's action and reaction is the topic of that paragraph). Similarly, the dialog in the third action could end the second action, leaving the third action to her eating the mint and then feeling the changes... It's fine for the opening of the third paragraph, but my mind is drawn to the the " so she popped it in her mouth" part, which... needs work... I can't tell you why it's not right, but it reads horribly... either make it action she says as she eats the mint or break it off into another sentence or better yet, another paragraph (or fix it as something she does while muttering and make suddenly feeling changes and the description of said changes a fourth action.

Yes, in this scene, Jill is talking to herself... just because only one person is involved, it doesn't mean she's not having a conversation. Assume Jill's mind is talking back to her and we're just not able to hear it... though it can be contained in a single paragaph if Dammit is the first sentence and "I guess you're spoiled..." is the last sentence... as submitted, there's too much going on for this to be a single paragraph.

The trap this falls into is that a paragraph must be a certain length... in a story... especially when describing action at a normal pace (you're not moving fast, you're walking) needs to contain enough to describe one big action and all immediate reactions to it. Hope this helps.

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