Originally Published: May 11, 2018
We all know what paragraphs are, and those of us who’ve been through school know how they are used in academic essays, letters, and business contexts. But when it comes to creative writing, so many beginners have no idea what to do. During my years working as a tutor, I encountered several personal and narrative essays that had very long paragraphs and a few that didn’t have any paragraphs at all. Clearly, these students weren’t taught how and where to split their draft into paragraphs. That’s a problem I hope to remedy with this post.
The only hard and fast rule for paragraphs is to add a break whenever you change speakers. I go more in depth on this particular rule in my post on dialogue. Beyond that, paragraph breaks are used to signal shifts and transitions in the narrative. The shifts that benefit the most from this signaling are changes in time, location, and idea.
Time
These shifts should be easy to spot in your draft. Whether you are taking a jump forward in time or pausing for a flashback, adding a paragraph break will visually reinforce the chronological movement.
He unlocked the door at the end of the hallway. It opened onto a dark stairwell. He turned a knob on the top of the lantern, igniting its icy white light. “Watch your step,” he warned Kaelyn as he descended the stairs. Kaelyn followed close behind, feeling the inner wall as she climbed down the steep, narrow stairs.
After a few minutes, they reached the bottom. The lantern’s light revealed a room as big as the sanctuary above, with as many shelves as there were pews. The shelves reached floor to ceiling, and every one was filled with books and papers. “Woah,” Kaelyn whispered. She had never seen so many books in one place before.
The phrase “after a few minutes” makes it clear to the readers that the story has skipped forward in time. The larger context indicates that the characters have moved from one location to the next. Additionally, the amount of time skipped implies how deep underground their destination is. The paragraph break in this passage visually mimics the structure of the church in that what happens on the main level is contained within the first paragraph, and what happens in the basement is confined to the second one.
Location
Like time, shifts in location should be easy to spot. Whenever the story moves to a new place, you can use a paragraph break to signal a change in scenery.
Brice gives you his hand and that wide smile he always wore when he’s plotting a surprise. You take his hand and walk with him back toward the camp’s entrance.
Sure enough, there are more cars parked in the gravel lot just inside the front gate. All of your old friends — Jamie, Alex, Greg, and Diego — are unloading chairs, grills, fishing poles and coolers. They stop long enough to shout and wave happily at you. Everyone is here, just like Brice had said.
This example isn’t as obvious with the change in location as the previous example was with its change in time. There’s the mention of going back to the camp’s entrance at the end of the first paragraph and of a gravel parking lot at the beginning of the second. The paragraph break is the only sure clue the reader has that Brice and the “you” character have moved within the campground. If this example had been one continuous paragraph, the story would have a less certain and more dream-like ending where it’s unclear who’s where and what they’re doing. That wasn’t the kind of ending I wanted for this story, so I chose to break this passage into two, shorter paragraphs.
Not every change in location or time warrants a paragraph break, though. Sometimes, you want to show the characters traveling from one place to the next. Covering a large span of space in a montage is perfectly fine.
At dawn, we set out into the jungle, along a trail marked by triangular symbols. Old hunter’s marks, I was told. By mid-morning, we had arrived at the cave. The stream fell steeply downhill, pouring into the black mouth of the forest. No one, not even Hernando, would descend with me. So I went into the earth alone. That was my first mistake.
The cave of Bael-Sur was typical for the region at first. Bats and beetles, snails and snakes, blind newts and fish were all species I had seen before. Beyond daylight’s edge, the rocks gave way to crystals, all pure white like untouched snow. Some were over a foot long.
Further on was the village’s ritual chamber. I recognized it by the central fire pit, blackened ceiling, and the angular symbols carved into the floor. The chamber was surrounded by crystals. It must have been quite a sight to behold — shadows and firelight playing over the sparkling walls. As for myself, I felt transported to Iceland’s glacial caves. The place didn’t look like the Amazon at all.
The first paragraph (primarily) focuses on the mouth of the cave. The third paragraph details the first landmark that the narrator reaches — a sacred ritual chamber. The second paragraph, by logical extension, must be talking about the unspecified distance between A and B. This stretch of the cave system wasn’t essential to the story, but it did give me an opportunity to provide some general description of what the caves looked like. So I subtly leveraged the mechanism of a montage to insert this necessary description in an otherwise empty stretch of the narrator’s journey.
Idea
Shifts in idea aren’t the easiest to detect. I’ll admit the term “idea” itself is vague and broad. This third category is a catch-all by result, covering any time you stop talking about one thing to start talking about the next. Here’s an example:
A fire burns strong and steady in the center of the room. You see a dozen figures resting in the amber glow — other people wrapped in cloaks and blankets. Whether they’re asleep or sitting still in reverent silence, you can’t tell.
Candles flicker beyond the firelight’s reach. They look like stars from where you lie. In their dim light, you see the emblem stitched onto the banners hanging from the tall ceiling — the Crest of the Sacred Flame. You must be in a shrine.
I should give a bit of context for this one. The flash fiction piece this example is pulled from is an exercise in atmosphere and description within a second-person perspective. The piece follows the gaze of an ailing “you” character as they observe the shrine where they’ve woken up. The ideas of the example passage (and the larger piece) are the features of this shrine. For instance, the idea of the first paragraph is a central fire. The idea of the second paragraph is what the observer sees when they look up — lit candles and emblem banners. The paragraph breaks are present to guide the reader’s attention and maintain the illusion that the reader is in the observer’s place.
One place where shifts in idea are a bit more obvious are when the story shifts between external events and internal events.
Ville’s chapel was a small stone building in the northwest corner of town. Kaelyn pulled her wagon over the threshold and passed through the shadowy entrance into the sanctuary. The wheels clattered over the stone as Kaelyn walked past the wooden pews. Sunlight filled the room, tinting the white walls ever so slightly pink. Ahead of Kaelyn was the altar, covered in white cloth and candles standing on either end. A large cross of wood and bronze hung on the wall above it.
She knew this place well. Her father was one of the masons who built it. It had changed little since she was last here — the day of her father’s funeral. The realization unsettled her. Standing in the sanctuary conjured memories of her father, ones that had turned bittersweet with the years.
The first paragraph is a straightforward description of the chapel as Kaelyn enters. There’s no change in location or time between the first and second paragraphs. Instead, the second paragraph’s focus turns into Kaelyn’s mind, specifically her memories and what this chapel means to her.
Like I said before, none of these are hard and fast rules. But if you have no clue where to put your paragraphs, start with these transition points. If you’ve gotten feedback that passages are too drawn out or too choppy, go through your draft and mark the transition points. Do your paragraph breaks line up? If not, maybe that’s where you should start.
Have you ever thought about paragraphs in your stories? Do you have any specific guidelines or do you just wing it? What other pacing or rhythm problems have you encountered? Let me know down in the comments, and feel free to suggest what you want me to cover in the next “How Do I…?” post.