: Re: Are newlines effective for adding weight to certain phrases? Sometimes I'll write something where there's a few paragraphs of buildup, then a "whammy line" or two. I wrote a quick example, pretend

@Kevin153

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Putting a sentence in a paragraph by itself does give it emphasis.
It can also break up the monotony
of a sequence of long paragraphs.

Brandon Sanderson once said (on the Writing Excuses podcast)
that he likes to add a one-sentence paragraph
after every few long paragraphs.

But take care not to use this trick so often that the reader notices.
What constitutes "overdoing" depends a great deal
on the pace of the surrounding paragraphs.
In a fast-paced scene,
you'll have lots of short paragraphs,
and those one-sentence paragraphs won't stick out
(but they also won't get any special emphasis
among all the other short paragraphs).

Genre also significantly influences how frequently
you can use this trick
without the reader noticing.
For example, an abundance of such one-liners
may feel out of place in a literary work.

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