: Re: Simple rules for separating paragraphs in books? I'm writing a fiction book and noticed that my paragraphs seemed excessively long, most having three or more sentences in them. The Online Writing

@Murray831

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Here are two guidelines I use.

Camera Shot.
In Zen in the Art of Writing,
Ray Bradbury offers this simple and useful idea:
Think of each paragraph as a single camera shot in a movie.
Every time the shot changes
(e.g. change in camera angle),
start a new paragraph.

Character tempo.
This is a more complex idea.
At what "tempo" is the character experiencing
the events in the text?
If the character is experiencing events very rapidly,
use shorter paragraphs.
If the character is experiencing events more slowly,
use longer paragraphs.

Study any of James Patterson's Alex Cross novels.
In most scenes,
things are happening rapidly.
The paragraphs are short.
But in the scenes at home,
the paragraphs are generally longer.

In a way,
these two guidelines are more or less equivalent.
They each have a similar effect on the pace
that the reader experiences.

But they feel different to me when I apply them.
When I use "camera shot" trick,
I'm watching the scene as a writer or director.
So it can feel (to me, at least) kinda writerly.
There's a little danger there.

When I use the "character tempo" trick,
I'm experiencing the scene as the character.
It feels more organic.

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