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Topic : 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 - selfpublishingguru.com

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I am in the middle of editing a book where I'm adding this technique, so I endorse it whole-heartedly. :) My two rules are:

Don't confuse the reader. Make sure that no matter what, it's clear
who is speaking. This applies to narration, dialogue tags, action tags, and lack thereof of all of them.
A new speaker gets a new paragraph, regardless of where the dialogue
starts in the paragraph.

Your examples follow both these rules, and I quite like them. There's no reason to start Jill's dialogue on its own line in the middle of a narrative paragraph when it's perfectly clear she's the only one speaking. And since she continues to speak without anyone else interrupting her, the second line of dialogue still doesn't need a new paragraph.


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