How long should a paragraph be?

Advanced Wordsmith

0 likes 30 Nov 2013

Quote by MadMartigan

You have that backwards. You never want to just go on describing things through dialogue. That gets boring and tedious.

As someone else mentioned, varied dialogue length is key as well as varied sentence length. Short snappy paragraphs are great for parallel structure and stating something powerful and meaningful, succinctly. Longer ones are great for showing.

Um...I think that was me who was talking about varying paragraph, sentence, and word length and type. Of course, one doesn't want to use dialogue only (at least not usually - I've seen writing that is almost nothing but dialogue, and it can be done to good effect if handled well and done right). My point was that dialogue - which usually involves a short paragraph - is a great excuse to vary from longer paragraphs.

Noticed on your profile that you're a baseball fan. Just about ten weeks until pitchers and catchers report to spring training! happy8

bethalia

Advanced Wordsmith

0 likes 30 Nov 2013

Quote by 6by6
Rule of thumb, three to four sentences long. Keeps peoples minds focused on what you are saying. Go five sentences and above, chances their mind will wander increases with each additional sentence.

I'd be inclined to disagree. I think one should write paragraphs the way they need to be written, while keeping an eye on varying length. I like to be an optimist and hope my readers will have the attention span to stay focused beyond three or four sentences. Although, I suppose the reality of it is that some can and some can't. But I don't think pandering to people with short attentions spans or dumbing down the quality of my writing is the way to go at all. Anyway, I hate - and see too much of - endless paragraphs of a few sentences, without much variation, and it's clear that some of them in terms of subject really should be together, but they've been artificially chopped up to please the god of short paragraphs.