#active reading

This isn't a case of making them "the right length" or having "enough" sentences/words so you can move on to the next one.

This is art, baby! And as such there are no easy rules to follow like that. You can do what you want, and go by feel.

Though if you just can't seem to get it right, and need more to go on... this article dives into "what's up with these paragraphs things anyway"? And "how sentence"? So you can build up an intuition for how they work, and how you can use them to affect your readers.

And we'll do so by you reading bits of prose, and watching out for your reactions to them...

You've already read the first example, in fact! What did you think of that stream-of-consciousness paragraph up there? How easy was it to read? Could you pick out a thread of story from it? It was a bit of a mess, right?

It was more difficult to read because its basic structures—paragraphs and sentences—were not used in a way that helps the reader out.

A paragraph keeps going until it ends with a new line, and a new paragraph. That new line is called a "paragraph break." Paragraph breaks are used to break the prose down into chunks the reader can file away into their brains, slotting it into the picture they've got of the story so far.

That doesn't mean they're memorizing all the words of the paragraph, though. They're memorizing a condensed form of what they think the paragraph means. Like a summary.

So what do you think the paragraph above means? When I read it it just comes off as gobbledygook, as rambling "stuff" that doesn't really have any point it's trying to make. And doesn't have any meaning it's trying to get us to file away. It's pretty much impossible to summarise.

This is why we have the term "wall of text." When a piece of text has few structures to chunk up information, it can be daunting to even start reading it.

First, we'd have to chunk it up ourselves--which is just annoying. But also it'll either be rambly nonsense with no real information so we can't understand it well enough to file away... or in theory it could have so much real information all in one go that we'll get overloaded and can't hold onto all of it when we summarise it.

Ever seen a scientific paper like that? They can get away with that because it's meant to be packed with information. And they're largely intended to be read by people who already understand all the terms, so they have a better chance of understanding it in the first place!

But with stories, with prose, the goal is for most people to be able to understand your writing. Not just specialists that already know what you're talking about.

So, we know we need to put in paragraph breaks to "break up that wall." But where? How do you tell what should be grouped up into a paragraph and when it should just keep going?

As with all art stuff, it's more intuition than anything. So as you read the following examples, think about how it "feels like" to read them. Why do they have that effect? And how can we use our understanding of what's going on to our advantage?

Jeff leaped into the air.

A paragraph could be just a single sentence, focused in on a single moment.

Remember, our brain condenses it down into what the point was for that paragraph, like a summary. What would the summary be for this? Probably just "Jeff leaped into the air."

This seems a little pointless to point out... but think about what this is doing for the reader's experience. How much effort do they have to put in to summarising the paragraph? 0%. And how much of the paragraph's text made it into the chunk they filed away? 100%. How many words were lost? None. And how many words had important meaning that you locked in to your brain? All of them.

One action holds all of our attention.

This is why a very short paragraph can have a big impact. In this example, it's probably not worth that impact—unless that leap has a big dramatic meaning.

Perhaps Jeff is leaping down into a gorge to fight a Balrog, sacrificing himself so his friends can escape. This short paragraph by itself holds on that moment in the reader's mind. Lets them ruminate on that moment and all that it means. The implications, the dramatic weight it carries from what came before in the story!

We can use paragraph length to have things stand out in different ways like this. Flip through your favourite novel sometime and look out for the lengths of paragraphs. Why did they choose to make it shorter or longer?

But anyway... this one doesn't have such impact, but it's cool to think about. 😅 It should probably have some more going on in the paragraph.

Jeff leaped into the air. He landed hard on a shipping container, with a clang.

Here, the paragraph as a whole has a little less impact. What happened to the impact of that first sentence? Did it go up or down? The main thrust is "Jeff gets on the shipping container." That's all that will matter for whatever comes next.

So the leap doesn't really matter now. And therefore those words didn't contribute much to the "summary" we automatically formulate in our heads. Instead of all the words being important, only maybe half of them are.

That isn't to say you need to cut out the less important words. It just highlights the extra impact a short paragraph can have with its contents.

If you wanted to, you could try combining sentences.

Jeff leaped into the air and landed hard on a shipping container, with a clang.

Now it feels like one smooth action, a long moment that blends together. That actually feels better to me. Instead of a series of separate sentences, only one of which having any impact on the story that comes after it... it's one sentence that impacts the story as a whole.

Think of it like a comic panel. You can have just 1 thing happening in the panel with extra impact. Or multiple moments of action joined together with motion lines.

Or I prefer thinking of it as an animated gif, joining multiple independent photos--multiple moments in time.

You can't just join everything together into a single sentence though.

Jeff leaped into the air, and landed hard on a shipping container, with a clang, and thought he heard a noise, and ran over to investigate, and said "Who goes there?"

Ick. Right? I mean, you can probably understand what's going on. But it's a bit of a blurry mess.

Why don't run-on sentences like this work, though? Why does it feel rambly even though the paragraph isn't overly long?

Well, what is the point of this sentence? Like we did with paragraphs... think about what the summary is.

Because it's all crammed into one sentence, it's very difficult to summarise. It could be "Jeff gets onto the shipping container." Or "Jeff hears a noise."

If you want to stretch it, you could say "Jeff does some stuff." But if that's all you remember about the sentence, how impactful can that be on the your experience? Little to none. And maybe only a quarter of the words had any impact at all, if we're being generous!

That "with a clang" sensory detail was a nice little tidbit before. Now it gets lost in the noise of actions and dialogue. It kinda feels out of place. There's no longer any room for experiential stuff that grounds the reader in the scene.

So you could cut it all down and remove whole parts of what happened from that sentence. Or you could split the sentence.

Splitting Sentences

How do we do that? First, think about what separate pieces of information we're getting from that sentence. I tend to use slashes for this.

Jeff leaped into the air / and landed hard on a shipping container, with a clang / and thought he heard a noise / and ran over to investigate / and said "Who goes there?"

Now, why is each of them there? What are they contributing to the paragraph? I'll bullet these out so it's easier to label each of them.

Jeff leaped into the air --movement

and landed hard on a shipping container, with a clang --(continues moving) more movement (with sensory detail)

and thought he heard a noise --(stops moving) hears something

and ran over to investigate --movement (because he heard something)

and said "Who goes there?" --dialogue (because he heard something)

Now, you could split each of those parts into their own sentence. But that isn't always necessary. As we saw earlier, the "long moment" of the leap and landing works fine joined up. In terms of the above notes, he moves, then continues moving into the landing. It has one through-line, getting from A to B.

But then Jeff stops moving. That through-line ends, and a new one begins. That makes the perfect opportunity to split the sentence here. The sentence ending hints to the reader's brain that a new through-line is beginning, making it easier to comprehend.

Then he resumes movement, but in a new trajectory--with a new reason, a new goal. It's also implied he stops at wherever he ran to. As this action is caused directly from Jeff hearing something, you could tag it onto that previous part.

And then Jeff speaks. This is separate text that is marked as being different from normal narration. Which is why it should also be its own sentence.

That gives us:

Jeff leaped into the air, and landed hard on a shipping container with a clang. He thought he heard a noise, and ran over to investigate. "Who goes there?" Jeff said.

Just as each paragraph has 1 summary, each sentence has 1 meaning... showing 1 specific thing. One action, one moment, one linked thread of actions. One through-line.

It all has a knock on effect, up the chain of structures...

The clearer the meaning of each sentence is, the easier it is to grab the meaning. The clearer all the sentences are in a paragraph, the clearer the paragraph. And the easier it is to condense it into a summary and file it away.

Splitting a sentence into parts like this also gives us another advantage. Each sentence now has room to breathe, and to grow. We can add more detail, more description, to each sentence. We can be more specific about our meanings within those sentences.

For example, we can describe the noise he heard.

Jeff leaped into the air, and landed hard on a shipping container with a clang. A skittering sounded to his right, and he ran to the edge of the container. "Who goes there?" he called into the night, breath fog lit by the flickering floodlights.

Of course, we could strengthen the impact of certain "meanings" by giving them their own sentences, even multiple sentences. Give more time to the skittering, maybe a worried thought.

This works similarly to paragraphs:

The more focus a sentence has, the more meaningful it is.

So let's put some of that in.

Jeff leaped into the air, and landed hard on a shipping container with a clang. Skittering! To the right! If it was a Fat-Roach, this night was gonna suck. Jeff ran to the edge of the container, and peered into the dark. "Who goes there?" he called, breath fog lit by the flickering floodlights.

Okay cool. I took the liberty of throwing in narrated thoughts from Jeff, and expanding quite a bit on the "Jeff hears skittering" moment. And moving the "night" part into a different sentence where it felt more at home. Oh yeah, and introducing the idea of monstrous giant cockroaches that roam the night, just for kicks.

The sentences are clear, and have a good amount of detail to them. Though we've still got an unwieldy paragraph that's hard for the reader to condense down into a simple summary. There's just too much going on--same problem we had before.

Breaking Paragraphs

Paragraph mode! Engage!

I'll quickly split the paragraph up into threads, using double-slashes. Things I want to stand alone as something new the reader should file away. See if you can figure out what summaries I'm aiming for.

Jeff leaped into the air, and landed hard on a shipping container with a clang. // Skittering! To the right! If it was a Fat-Roach, this night was gonna suck. // Jeff ran to the edge of the container, and peered into the dark. "Who goes there?" he called, breath fog lit by the flickering floodlights.

Why did I choose those spots to split? Here's my thoughts on each part:

Moving onto the container.

(Stops moving.) Notices the skittering and Jeff's internal reaction to it.

(Stops thinking about it.) Jeff acts on what he was thinking.

Hey, those almost look like summaries, don't they? If you're not sure how to split the paragraph up, think about what summaries--what points--you want the reader to come away with after reading these new paragraphs. And break them up or group them up accordingly. Maybe even move things around so you can get a better grouping you want to stick in their mind.

Let's try splitting things up based on the summaries we want the reader to take away from it.

Jeff leaped into the air, and landed hard on a shipping container with a clang. Skittering! To the right! If it was a Fat-Roach, this night was gonna suck. Jeff ran to the edge of the container, and peered into the dark. "Who goes there?" he called, breath fog lit by the flickering floodlights.

Now, you might choose to separate them a little differently. Perhaps break before the dialogue too. Or join the physical reaction onto the mental reaction. This is art; it's all loosey goosey. And it's your art. It's up to what you what feel is best.

That said, there is one aspect every paragraph has, or should have, for it to read well.

Character Focus

Take a look at this:

Jeff ran to the edge of the container, and peered into the dark. "Who goes there?" he called, breath fog lit by the flickering floodlights. Arnold stumbled out from behind a pile of tires. "It's just me sir," he said, gasping for breath. Jeff rolled his eyes. "Well get over here would you? And stop wheezing like a demon in the night. You'll attract the Roaches." "Right you are sir."

Now we have 2 characters doing and saying things in the same paragraph. And it starts getting a bit rambly again. It's hard to follow who is saying what because it's all said as part of one stream, one paragraph, one chunk. We can't file away the previous part of the conversation before the next one barrels into our brains.

You could say this paragraph is about... "A conversation between Jeff and Arnold." But...

It's better to have a paragraph be about one person rather than multiple.

Any sentence has one subject, as in one thing that is performing an action. Even if it's implicit as to what is acting, and what they are doing. A narrated thought is one character performing the action known as "thinking." A description is one character (or perhaps narrator) performing the action known as "observing." And so on.

It works similarly for a paragraph. A paragraph is "about" one character (or narrator). Which character it's about is indicated by who acts first.

(If more than one character is involved in an action, go ahead and show that. But the paragraph as a whole should still be about one character or the other.)

Jeff heaved Arnold up onto the shipping container. "What are you even doing, man?"

In the above example, Jeff is the subject of the paragraph because he's the one performing the action. Which means we can just throw in some dialogue and it's implied that it was spoken by Jeff also.

Arnold clambered up onto the shipping container, with a helping hand from Jeff. "What are you even doing, man?"

(Read more about how paragraphs are used with dialogue.)

If Arnold was the one acting at the start, we intuit that the paragraph is about him. And we'd assume the dialogue is his, too.

Let's try putting this idea into practise with our conversation from earlier, and see how it feels. When we change to a different character acting (speaking), we break into a new paragraph.

As you read this, pay attention to who is acting, and how that sets up who you assume is being referred to in the rest of that paragraph.

Jeff ran to the edge of the container, and peered into the dark. "Who goes there?" he called, breath fog lit by the flickery floodlights. Arnold stumbled out from behind a pile of tires. "It's just me sir," he said, gasping for breath. Jeff rolled his eyes. "Well get over here would you? And stop wheezing like a demon in the night. You'll attract the Roaches." "Right you are sir."

How does that feel? Better? Clearer? Now each paragraph features one character, and what they say has its own spotlight.

You probably didn't think twice as to who each pronoun was referring to, even though both characters in the scene use the same pronoun.

How did you know that? Because the paragraph was set up earlier to be about one specific character. So using their pronoun automatically refers to that same character.

And who said "Well get over here would you"? Did you guess it was Jeff?

How did you know that? There is no dialogue tag to tell you, after all. You know because Jeff is that paragraph's character. And why is that? Because Jeff is the one acting.

See...

You know these rules implicitly as a reader.

That's how you guessed correctly. But hopefully seeing these ideas spelled out and demonstrated will let you lean on those rules. Make them work for you!

And note that last paragraph, which has no character mentioned at all... Who did you think is saying that dialogue? Arnold, right?

How did you know that? This is a conversation between 2 people. Each paragraph is a different person speaking, bouncing back and forth between Jeff and Arnold. Jeff just spoke, so it's Arnold's turn. If the next paragraph has dialogue, it stands to reason it will be Arnold's dialogue! Simple as that!

So how did the reader know who was speaking? Because a pattern was established by the writer. The way it was written set up an expectation in the reader, which let the writer use that expectation to write the scene a little easier.

(Just don't rely on such a pattern for too long. If they forget whose turn it is, that'll get real confusing. 😅)

When you next read a novel, have a look out for things like this. What patterns and expectations is the writer creating, even at the prose level? How are they relying on those expectations to tell the story?

Some paragraphs have no action though. Think back to this paragraph:

Skittering! To the right! If it was a Fat-Roach, this night was gonna suck.

This doesn't mention any character at all. It looks like plain ol' narration. But we have a viewpoint character: Jeff. So any narration is more like "what Jeff sees," "what Jeff thinks," etc.

Jeff is acting here. What is he doing? He is thinking. This paragraph is narrating thoughts what Jeff thinks in this moment. So he is the character of this paragraph, kind of by default.

But then, how do we know Jeff is the viewpoint character, and not Arnold? The same way we know which character is the focus for a paragraph, but one level higher. They were the first one to act in our story. We started with "Jeff leaped into the air." So he became our viewpoint character—for this scene at least.

That's because I'm writing in "3rd person limited," where I'm limited to only what one character experiences and their internal thoughts—known as the "viewpoint character." If you're not writing with a viewpoint character, the reader will assume it's the narrator commenting on what's going on instead.

This is why when some stories start with a description of the kingdom or some backstory of the world, readers can feel a bit lost until a character is introduced. "Who cares about the lore if there aren't any characters in this story?"

And why it's more engaging to be introduced to a character doing something instead of just being mentioned as existing. "Okay, so there exists a princess in this world. But they're not doing anything, so this is just data. Skip to the story!"

Your mileage may vary on this. Tastes differ after all. But it's something to think about for your own stories.

In summary...

Paragraphs have 1 character doing 1 or more closely related things. (Even if those actions are no physical: observing, thinking, talking, etc.) This then condenses into a summary that will have some amount of impact on what happens in the rest of the story.

Sentences have 1 character doing 1 thing, possibly with added super duper closely related things of the same kind.

Though when I put it like that, it seems way over-simplified, and comes off as sentences being pretty much the same thing as paragraphs. And maybe chapters? And stories?

The advice "focus on the story being told" applies to all parts of the text, great or small.

And it's a fair guiding principle for writing good prose and good stories. But also not necessarily that helpful when you're "on the ground," and "in the trenches," writing the prose day-to-day.

That's because it's a lot more about intuition. About heuristics. About where it feels like you should end a paragraph, etc. Hopefully the intuition you've absorbed through these exercises will be a lot more useful than trying to enforce these "rules" for every piece of text in your story.