Transcription
Hey guys, it's Ellen Brock, novel editor. I hope you're all doing really, really well.
In the last video, we talked about sentences, and today we're going to talk about paragraphs. So, paragraphs are, of course, a little bit more complicated because we have not just the individual sentences, but also how those sentences sound up against each other, how they interact with each other, and combine to create the paragraph, the, the bigger sense of, of purpose than just the individual sentence level. So that's what we're going to talk about today.
It might be a little bit counter-intuitive, but most problems that occur on the paragraph level are actually problems with perspective and voice. So, when we write strong sentences, of course, we do have a little bit of voice and perspective that show up on the sentence level, but it's the paragraph level that's really where we start to build up the voice and the perspective. It's where we sort of build a stronger sense of what the character thinks and feels and perceives about the situation.
So, we've talked about scene structure in the past, and it's entirely possible to have both scene structure correct and your sentences at a high level, but still feel like your paragraphs are just kind of lacking. Maybe they're not very entertaining, um, maybe they feel bland, or they feel too utilitarian, like they're just serving a purpose, but they're not very entertaining to read. So, that is what we're going to try to solve today. And my hope is that through this video, you can improve not just your paragraphs, but also your voice and your perspective. And I also hope to really demonstrate how those things interact with each other, um, and why it's very difficult to write really strong paragraphs if you haven't really nailed the voice and the perspective. So, that's what we're going to talk about today.
As with all the topics that I cover, these are just recommendations. There's nothing set in stone. There are always creative reasons why you might ignore certain advice or why it might not make sense in your specific situation. So, always use your own reasoning for your project and what makes sense. Um, these are just things you can think about if you're struggling with your paragraphs, especially if you're struggling with pinpointing exactly what you don't like about your paragraphs.
Number one: Avoid monotonous sentences. So, monotonous sentences can happen for a variety of different reasons. Most writers have some sort of sentence structures that they tend to lean on more than others. But by far the most common culprit of monotonous sentences is over-reliance on the subject and verb at the beginning of the sentence. For example: He walked into the store. He grabbed a cart. He walked to the produce. He picked up a head of broccoli. He put it into his cart.
I want to be totally clear that this is not at all a bad structure. We normally do want to put the subject first in a sentence because that way we can avoid passive voice. So, most of our sentences, when there's an action involved, it's better if the subject is at the beginning of the sentence. The tricky thing is that if we use this structure over and over and over, it starts to feel very monotonous and repetitive and just gives the writing a not very nice sound. So, we, of course, want to avoid that, but we also don't want to end up in passive voice. And this is actually a really common question that I get from aspiring writers, and it's actually a really common conundrum. So, let's talk about some solutions.
Sometimes this type of monotony can be improved by condensing the action into fewer sentences. Instead of: He walked into the store. He grabbed a cart. He walked to the produce. He picked up a head of broccoli. He put it into his cart. We can change it to: He walked into the store, grabbed a cart, then walked to the produce. He picked up a head of broccoli and put it into his cart. Now, this sounds a little less monotonous because we use "he" less often, but it's not a huge improvement because we still have a lot of word repetition. "Walked" is used twice, "into his" used twice, and two clauses end in "cart," which doesn't sound great either.
We can improve this paragraph a bit more by eliminating the repetition. He walked inside the store, grabbed a cart near the entrance, then shuffled over to the produce. He picked up a head of broccoli and put it into his empty cart. Here, we've replaced one instance of "into" with "inside." We added "near the entrance" to avoid ending two clauses with "cart," and added "empty" in front of the second instance of "cart" to give it a little bit of a different sound. Lastly, we changed one instance of "walked" to "shuffled." Now, "shuffled" does have a connotation or implication that is different from "walked." It's difficult to think of a word other than "walked" that is as neutral as "walked," but we're going to touch on that issue again in just a minute.
Now, this paragraph isn't particularly stunning. It's not a great, award-winning paragraph, but it might be okay in a situation where the individual actions don't really matter, aren't really important. It's just a sort of quick moment that we don't really need to linger on. But sometimes we will have paragraphs where all of the actions are important on an individual level, and we really want to emphasize all of those actions individually, and we don't want to just lump them together. For example: Lizzy picked up her bag from under the desk. She yanked out her book and knocked her lunch out of her bag. She slammed the heavy book onto her desk. She flipped through page after page, unable to find what she was looking for. She found the right page, and she clapped her hands together.
This paragraph feels very monotonous in structure, but it's a lot longer, and each individual action feels deserving of a little bit more emphasis. We can't condense this down into one or two sentences of action because it would be extremely awkward. Lizzy picked up her bag from under her desk, yanked out her book, and knocked her lunch out of her bag. She slammed the book onto her desk, flipped through page after page, found the right page, and clapped her hands together. Though we've dropped the repetition of "she" in this version, the paragraph still sounds fairly monotonous because of the repetition of "ed" verbs at the start of almost every sentence clause: picked, yanked, knocked, slammed, flipped, clapped. Not only that, but we've lost some comprehension by lumping all of the actions together, making them harder to process.
Instead of simply lumping everything together, another option is to intentionally vary our sentence structure. For example: Lizzy picked up her bag from under the desk, yanking out her book. She knocked her lunch out of her bag. The heavy book made a loud thud when she slammed it onto her desk. She flipped through page after page, unable to find what she was looking for. Finally, the right page was found, and she clapped her hands together. This does not really sound good at all. It's less monotonous, but it feels unnatural, a little lifeless. And to purposefully vary the sentences this much, we had to use some passive voice: "the right page was found." Sometimes intentionally varying the sentence structure can be a reasonable option, but there can be a lot of potential downsides and pitfalls. Not to mention, it is often a mental workout trying to come up with ways to vary the sentences enough to get rid of the monotonous sound while also avoiding convoluted structures and passive voice.
So, in this kind of situation, where it's not really ideal to make the sentences more efficient and just lump all the actions together, and when varying the sentence structure either isn't possible because there's just too many sentences to create a nice variety of, of action sentences, um, or it's just sounding awkward, or we just don't love the way it sounds, what is the solution at that point?
So, this is where voice and perspective play an enormous role. If we take this paragraph and we assume that it's from Lizzy's perspective, that we're writing in third limited from Lizzy's point of view, we can then add her thoughts and feelings about the situation to break up the actions. We can also use more emotionally charged words, which will help us add more variety to the writing. For example, we could rewrite to: Lizzy picked up her bag from under the desk and grabbed the spine of the thick book. The dumb thing was wedged so tight she could barely get a grip on it. When it finally yanked free, her lunch plopped out onto the floor. She didn't bother picking it up. She just slapped the book onto her desk and flipped through page after page. Why could she never find what she was looking for? And then there it was. Eureka! She clapped her hands together.
This is so much easier to achieve than trying to simply purposefully alter the sentence structures to avoid repetition. It's much easier to avoid repetition when we dig a little bit into the perspective of the character. Often, when we're struggling with monotonous sentences, it's, it's frequently during action sequences, and usually the problem is that we are being too observational. We're being too distant from what's occurring. We're not digging into the point of view. We're not really experiencing that action in, in the thoughts and feelings and sensations that go along with it. We're being too observational, and that results in action paragraphs becoming just a sequence of "this happened and this happened and this happened and this happened."
Number two: Avoid awkward word repetition. We touched on word repetition a little bit in the previous section, but it's very common to have a problem with word repetition because we are describing similar, um, circumstances, the same objects, the same people. So, it makes sense that we might struggle with repeating the same words frequently. Of course, sometimes word repetition is an artistic choice, which is why I titled the section "avoid awkward word repetition." We might repeat words for an artistic or creative reason, and of course, that's completely fine. But we're talking about situations where repeating the words sounds awkward. For example: Bill ran around the corner and ran into his friend. His friend stood up and leaned his hand against the corner, and his friend's other hand was the bag.
This doesn't feel like creative repetition; it just feels clunky and unpolished. We have repetition of "ran," "friend," "hand," and "corner." Often, writers will look at this issue and try to solve it by consciously substituting different words to avoid repetition. Sometimes this can be a great way to add more variety to the writing, but it can also often result in some very awkward choices. For example, we could rewrite that paragraph: Bill ran around the corner and crashed into his friend. His pal stood up and leaned his hand against the place where the two walls met. He held the bag. Consciously avoiding repetition has mixed results here. "Bill ran around the corner and crashed into his friend" sounds much better than "Bill ran around the corner and ran into his friend." Though "crashed" does add a connotation not in the original, which I'll touch on later. But "the place where the two walls met" is a very awkward way to avoid saying "corner." Additionally, "he held the bag" avoids repeating "hand," but feels a little bit like it's dangling off on its own. This paragraph might lack repetition, but it also sounds awkward and unnatural.
Simply replacing a repeated word with a different word often doesn't work well because there are three different sort of pitfalls you can fall into. So, the first is that often there's only one common word for a specific thing or a specific item. So, we only typically refer to a corner as a corner. It's rare that you would have someone refer to it as anything else. So, when we go in to try to vary the words by simply replacing them with something else, we might replace "corner" with something distracting or unusual or bizarre, like "the place where the two walls met."
The second is that typically when we speak, when we talk about something, we refer to the same things by the same words. So, that tends to sound more natural. For example, if we talk about our friend, we usually won't interchange "pal" with "friend." We'll usually just stick to one. So, when we vary that type of word, we vary it by just adding a sort of similar word to replace out that repetition, it can almost give the impression that you're talking about a different thing. So, even if only for a second, the reader might think that you're talking about a different person, that there's "the friend" and then there's "this pal," and that those are two different things. So, even though that may be a very brief confusion, we generally want to avoid even the briefest confusion for our readers. Um, and also, it can just sound fairly awkward.
The third problem is that all words, for the most part, have connotation. So, there are very few words that have no connotations in English, so that are just completely neutral, that don't mean anything at all. So, when we try to replace something with a different word, we're most likely going to pick a word that has a connotation, that means something beyond just this simple description of the action.
Let's go back to our example in the previous section when we were focusing on monotonous sentences: "He walked into the store. He grabbed a cart. He walked to the produce. He picked up a head of broccoli. He put it into his cart." Coming up with an alternative to repeating "walked" was extremely difficult because the only common word for "walk" that is entirely neutral, at least that I can think of, is "walked." So, any other word we could possibly use has some sort of implication or connotation. As soon as we use a different word, for example, I ended up using "shuffled," over the action is no longer neutral.
If you struggle frequently with repeated words, this is probably the exact issue that you're running into. We normally don't want to be writing neutrally. We generally want to be putting a perspective, an angle, a bias onto what we're writing because we're trying to write from the perspective of a specific character, of what that character thinks and feels. So, we don't want to just become an observer that's just simply reporting the events that occurred. We want to put some sort of bias or some sort of, sort of angle, or some sort of emotional charge onto what we're writing. And this will help a lot because we'll be picking words that have this emotional charge, that have a sort of connotation.
If we look at the example that we talked about a second ago with Bill, we actually have no idea what Bill or his friend feels in this situation because the way that it's written, it actually has no emotional connotation at all. "Bill ran around the corner and ran into his friend. His friend stood up and leaned his hand against the corner, and his friend's other hand was the bag." If we deepen our point of view a little, we can rewrite this: Bill shot around the corner and crashed into something hard. This was it. The cops. His plan was ruined. But it wasn't the cops. It was Alex. Of course, it was Alex. His friend scrambled to his feet and leaned a hand against the corner, and winded in his other hand, he squeezed his bag.
By focusing on the perspective, we avoided some of the repetition by focusing on words with stronger connotations: "shot" and "crashed" instead of "ran" and "ran." We can also add flavor from the sensory experiences of the character. Instead of "Bill ran around the corner and ran into his friend," we can dig deeper into how Bill would have actually perceived the events and write "crashed into something hard" because maybe he didn't immediately know it was his friend, which allows us to not repeat "friend." We can also use the friend's name, "Alex," because when we're really thinking about the event from Bill's point of view, we can see where it makes sense to use his friend's name. When we describe things purely observationally, without digging into the perspective, we tend to describe things in a bland way that results in more repetition and distance.
Now, you might be wondering how this applies to omniscient point of view. I'm not really going to get too much into omniscient point of view because it's just very rarely used, so it doesn't, I don't think it helps you guys all that much because it's just not very common. If you guys want a video specifically on omniscient, um, let me know. We can plan that out in the future. Um, but it is important to note that omniscient point of view is still a perspective. So, there's a narrator, and that narrator either has their own perspective, so they do have an angle or a slant that they're putting on events, or they're sort of conveying the perspective of the character. Of course, with omniscient, it's a little bit more complicated than that, but omniscient point of view is still a point of view, so there is still a perspective or an angle being taken on the events.
Let's go back to our example sentence for a moment. Now, there's still repetition in this paragraph, but adding some unique flavor and voice from the protagonist pulls focus away from the remaining repetition. Still, we could now intentionally replace repeated words if we wanted to. We could change the second instance of "corner" to "corner of the building" to give a more diverse sound. If we really wanted to, we could change one instance of "hand." We could, he could lean his palm against the corner, or squeeze his bag in his fist. Though personally, I think that with the general reduction in repetition and the increase in voice, repeating "hand" doesn't stand out anymore. And of course, there's repetition of "Alex," but it's a creative repetition rather than reading as clunky. Remember that repetition is not always a problem if it isn't noticeable or if it doesn't read awkwardly.
Once you get used to adding more perspective onto your paragraphs, issues with word repetition will become a lot less frequent because we can use the thoughts and feelings of the character to break up the action, and we can also use words with stronger connotations, which will help us to avoid relying on really basic, observational, neutral words like "walked," which just don't have any vibe or any tone to them. It doesn't mean you can't ever use them, of course. You, like I mentioned previously, and I think we touched on this in, in other videos as well, we don't want to just replace words that sound very unnatural or very awkward. So, if "walked" sounds natural, that's completely fine. But often what we run into is trying to report all of the events very neutrally doesn't give us room to break things up with that more introspective, emotional, the thoughts, the feelings, the judgments of the character, which can really add a lot of flavor, entertainment value, uh, to the, to the paragraph, and also can really help us avoid that repetition.
Number three: Don't split the paragraph's focus. A very common problem in amateur writing are paragraphs that have the focus of the paragraph split into two, three, or more different points. So, the paragraph is making a lot of different points, and those points are really muddied and blended together. This isn't always a problem. Sometimes we might do this on purpose. For example, the paragraph might have an over-arching meaning as well as a sort of subtextual or implied meaning. Especially with introspection, the character might be doing something on the surface, but we understand that they mean something different deeper down. And that could happen both actually with actions or with introspection, where there, it could be working on two levels. That's completely fine. You also might have a paragraph where it starts at one point, sort of resolves that point, brings up another point, and resolves that point again. That's completely fine. What we want to avoid are situations where the paragraphs are blending two, three, or more subjects together. They're muddied together. It's just not, it's not clear at that point what's the point of the paragraph because you're making so many different points, and they're all getting squished and muddied together.
For example: Eric looked up at the tall building. His fingers twitched against the money in his pocket. The building had enormous curved windows and a huge gold door, taller than any he'd seen before, and it made a lump come up in his throat. Would the answers be inside this building? He wasn't sure it was worth the cost to get in, but he'd come so far already. This was nothing like his little seaside village. His plan had to work. He had no choice.
This paragraph isn't terrible, but it feels a little muddied, a little jumbled. There's a lot going on, and it's kind of hard to pick out what the specific points are that are trying to be made. So, when we go to try to fix this paragraph, it can be confusing for us as a writer or as the editor because we're looking at it and thinking, "Okay, there's a lot going on here, but all these points are very, very close. They're very similar points to each other. It's not that these are radically different ideas being jumbled together. They're very, very similar, um, in purpose, in very similar points, but there is a difference to the points being made, and we can pick them out." But to do that, we really have to focus again on the perspective, on the judgment the character is making, on the thoughts the character is having. It's the, it's the perspective level where we can really figure out what points are being made in this paragraph.
So, let's go through this sentence by sentence. "Eric looked up at the tall building" is a neutral action. It has no specific connotation. So, on its own, this doesn't seem to be making any specific point. So, we'll just skip over it for now. "His fingers twitched against the money in his pocket." This could just be an action, but "twitched" implies nervousness. Now, this is where it gets a little tricky because it matters what he's nervous about. Objectively, he could be nervous about the money, or he could just nervously twitch while happening to touch the money. But since we wrote this in this hypothetical situation, we know that he is nervous about the money specifically. So, we can identify that conveying nervousness about money is a point being made in this paragraph. So, let's make that a category.
Next sentence: "The building had enormous curved windows and a huge gold door, taller than any he'd seen before, and it made a lump come up in his throat." The beginning of the sentence is just a description of the building, but the lump coming up in his throat suggests anxiety. Again, it matters what the anxiety is about because we're trying to create clearer points here. The anxiety is about the size of the building. That is not the same thing as being anxious about the money. So, we know we have a different category going on. Let's put the sentence in a second category called "anxiety about the size of the building."
"Would the answers be inside this building?" We have to read a little between the lines on this one, but it's fairly clear that he has doubt and nervousness about whether he can find the answers inside this building. So, let's put this in a third category called "anxiety about the plan."
"He wasn't sure it was worth the cost to get in, but he'd come so far already." Here we have another commentary about the money. He's wondering, "Is it worth the money?" This is anxiety about money, so we can put it with the other sentence about anxiety about money.
"This was nothing like his little seaside village." The reason this building is nothing like his little seaside village is because it's big. So, here again, we have anxiety about the size of the building.
"His plan had to work. He had no choice." I'm going to take this as a single idea rather than addressing each of these sentences separately. Again, if we read between the lines a little, we have an expression of doubt about the plan working.
So, now we have three categories: anxiety about the building, doubt about whether his plan will work, and anxiety about money. We only skipped one line as purely neutral: "Eric looked up at the tall building." It makes sense to put this with "anxiety about the size of the building" since it's about the size of the building.
Now we've taken what was initially a somewhat muddy paragraph and grouped the sentences that are in support of the same concepts together. This gives us a much cleaner read. As a reminder, here is the original again: "Eric looked up at the tall building. His fingers twitched against the money in his pocket. The building had enormous curved windows and a huge gold door, taller than any he'd seen before, and it made a lump come up in his throat. Would the answers be inside this building? He wasn't sure it was worth the cost to get in, but he'd come so far already. This was nothing like his little seaside village. His plan had to work. He had no choice."
And here is our new version. I'm going to put the anxiety about the height of the building first because it contains the most visual descriptions, which is going to help ground the reader. "Eric looked up at the tall building. There were enormous curved windows and a huge gold door, taller than any he'd seen before, and it made a lump come up in his throat. This was nothing like his little seaside village. His fingers twitched against the money in his pocket. He wasn't sure it was worth the cost to get in, but he'd come so far already. Would the answers be inside this building? His plan had to work. He had no choice."
Now, once we've separated the concepts apart, we actually can now format the paragraphs however we want. As one long paragraph, as two paragraphs, which we could do this way, or this way. Note that the first and last sentence and paragraphs have a little more emphasis, as do shorter paragraphs, so there is some artistry behind why we might want to do it one way or another. We could also keep this as three paragraphs if we wanted to.
Now, obviously, you wouldn't want to do this exercise every single time you have a paragraph that's giving you trouble, but if you do it a few times, you'll really get used to looking for the actual points of the paragraph, and it will get easier over time. Grouping the sentences together that are in support of a main point really, really helps improve reading comprehension, and it also just enhances the flow and makes it easier to be entertained by the writing because it's easier to follow it.
Number four: Center paragraphs around a specific point. While splitting the focus of a paragraph is a really common problem in amateur writing, probably an equally common problem are paragraphs that just have no purpose at all. So, when you're in school, you probably learned when writing essays or reports that you should group sentences together in support of a main point or a main idea. In fiction, we tend to not really think of things this way. We can often think about the artistry of the paragraph or how we're splitting it up to be dynamic or interesting. For example, we might put a single sentence as its own paragraph to make it punchy and interesting, and we might also conceptualize paragraphs as simply being vehicles to move the story forward. But it's best if we can center our paragraphs around a main point or a main idea because this will make them a lot more interesting, a lot more dynamic, and it will also help to give a more focused, professional feel to the writing.
Now, most amateur writers will do this already with introspection because with introspection, the character is usually trying to solve a problem, come to a conclusion, think through an issue. So, they, the character themselves, applies the main point. For example, let's look at a paragraph from "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer. In this paragraph, the protagonist finds that his grandma isn't home when he goes to see her. "I figured maybe she went to the store or something, so I sat on the sofa and waited. Maybe she went to the park for a walk to help her digest, which I know she sometimes did, even though it made me feel weird, or maybe she was getting some dehydrated ice cream for me or dropping something off at the post office. But who would she send letters to?"
So, the concept of this paragraph is that the protagonist is sort of anxiously trying to justify where, where his grandma might be. Most amateur writers will be able to do this type of introspective paragraph, maybe not with this level of voice and subtext, but they generally will be able to have a sort of main point or focus for the introspective paragraph. They may muddy that, like we talked about in the previous point, and they would probably benefit in many cases to sort of, um, figure out the more specific nuance points so that the flow is improved, but they generally are going to have a point or a purpose behind the paragraph. They're not going to write an introspective paragraph that just has no point.
That said, in paragraphs where the character isn't supplying the main point or the intention, many amateur writers will struggle with creating a paragraph that's interesting, dynamic, and that has a point beyond just reporting the facts. So, action sequences can do more than just report the facts. They can have a broader purpose, a more entertaining perspective on the events. For example, "The Wanderer" by Sharon Creech is about a girl who goes out to sea on a boat with relatives. This paragraph describes a storm. "It's so hard to see, so hard to think, so hard to stay upright. I was kneeling on deck fastening a line, and when I turned back, I couldn't see anyone else on deck, even though just a minute before I'd seen Doc and Cody and Uncle Moe there. And when I shouted out to them, the wind blew my voice back into my mouth. Inside my head, I heard a little voice whimpering."
So, this paragraph conveys not just the action, but also that sense of isolation, of being out at sea, and how overwhelming it is. So, it's doing more than simply relaying the basic actions of what occurred. This isn't overly complicated or overly elaborate. We could easily strip this down to its essentials and take out that additional point. "I was kneeling on deck fastening a line, and when I turned back, I couldn't see anyone else on deck, even though just a minute before I'd seen Doc and Cody and Uncle Moe there. And when I shouted out to them, they couldn't hear me over the wind." This is a fairly small change, but it makes a huge difference. Suddenly now, the actions are really just actions. We don't feel as close to the character. It's not as emotionally charged. It just feels a little bit more bland.
The slant or the bias or the angle that you can add to a paragraph to enhance the point, to give it an additional layer of meaning, it acts as a sort of glue that holds the paragraph together, and it really helps to bring across the characterization and the voice in a way that will make the writing significantly more entertaining.
Another big problem with amateur writing are description paragraphs because in description paragraphs, it's easy to just rely on a list of descriptions, just a sequence of visuals, maybe some smells or some other sensory information. But it's easy to just have a list of information that doesn't mean anything. It's just a list. It's just, it's just something for the character to visualize. But we can add an additional layer of meaning by having the, the protagonist, the character, the whoever the point of view, the point of view character is, by having them put their own bias or their own slant or their own judgment on that description. For example, in "Misery" by Stephen King, the protagonist is a writer held hostage by his number one fan, and this is one of the first descriptions we get of her. "Most of all, she gave him a disturbing sense of solidity, as if she might not have any blood vessels or even internal organs, as if she might be only solid Annie Wilkes from side to side and top to bottom. He felt more and more convinced that her eyes, which appeared to move, were actually just painted on, and they moved no more than the eyes of portraits which appear to follow you to wherever you move in the room where they hang. It seemed to him that if you made the first two fingers of his hand into a V and attempted to poke them up her nostrils, they might go less than an eighth of an inch before encountering a solid, if slightly yielding, obstruction. That even her gray cardigan and frumpy housekirts and faded outside work jeans were part of that solid, fibrous, unchanneled body. So his feeling that she was like an idol in a preferred novel was not really surprising at all. Like an idol, she gave only one thing: a feeling of unease deepening steadily toward terror. Like an idol, she took everything else."
Centering the paragraph around this concept that she seems unnaturally solid gives it a sort of slant or a bias that makes it more entertaining to read. So, those descriptions inherently being more sturdy, built, wearing more practical clothes, those things don't have any inherent meaning. It doesn't mean anything in and of itself. Another character could see this woman and feel that she's very homey looking, very motherly, or maybe that she looks very practical because she's dressed very sensibly. So, those descriptions don't inherently mean anything. We have to add that layer of meaning by focusing on the perspective that the protagonist, as long as they're the point of view character, that they're bringing to that description.
The last type of paragraph I want to go over are information type paragraphs, a paragraphs intended to convey information and bring the reader up to speed. So, often these are going to be at the beginning of chapters, and it can often be difficult to sort of weave them seamlessly into the chapter. They might stand out. But we can add an added layer of meaning or a slant or a bias from the point of view character to make those paragraphs more interesting. For example, let's look at this paragraph in "The Martian" by Andy Weir. The protagonist is stranded on Mars, and this is the beginning of a new chapter. "I finished making water some time ago. I'm no longer in danger of blowing myself up. The potatoes are growing nicely. Nothing has conspired to kill me in weeks, and 70s TV keeps me disturbingly more entertained than it should. Things are stable here on Mars."
While this paragraph conveys some important information and passes this time, it also has a sort of slant or a bias, which is that the protagonist feels he's found stability on Mars despite the absurdity of his situation. And again, this is a fairly subtle point. It doesn't take a lot of extra words or a lot of, of not necessarily effort, but it doesn't take a lot of bulk to add an additional layer of meaning, but it really pays off in entertainment value. It really makes the writing more interesting, easier to pull the reader through the story. It's just beneficial on basically every conceivable level to provide a sort of bias or a slant that comes from the point of view character so that events are more interesting to read and so that your paragraphs are less repetitive and more interesting.
Of course, not all paragraphs need to have their own independent points. Sometimes we'll have several paragraphs in support of the same point. But when you have paragraph after paragraph after paragraph that's only reporting the facts, and it's not really making any additional point, it's not having any sort of slant or bias coming from the point of view character, the writing can become very bland. It can start to feel like you're simply reporting the story rather than telling it in an interesting and dynamic way. So, adding a stronger sense of perspective onto your writing will absolutely improve your paragraphs in pretty much every way, and it will help you to avoid a lot of these mistakes like repetition and monotonous sentences and just boring descriptions and boring actions. A lot of that can be avoided simply by digging deeper into perspective.
I do have one last point, and this one isn't completely about perspective. It's a little bit more about artistry. Number five: Use paragraph length strategically. Like we talked about with sentences in the previous video, the length of your paragraph can help to sort of manage the flow of the action. So, longer paragraphs are going to feel more thoughtful, slower, more introspective, and shorter paragraphs are going to feel more intense, action-oriented. They may convey a sense of panic or urgency.
Let's look at two examples from Stephen King's "Misery." The first example demonstrates a moment of thought. The protagonist is remembering an incident when his captor forced him to drink out of a dirty bucket. Notice the longer paragraph. This is one paragraph; I just broke it up into multiple slides so it would be big enough that you could read it. Notice how it contributes to a more thoughtful vibe. "He didn't want to think about it because just living it was hard enough. He didn't want to think about it because whenever he did, unpleasant images intervened: the way she went blank, the way she made him think of idols and stones, and now the way the yellow plastic floor bucket had sped toward his face like a crashing moon. Thinking of those things would not change his situation. Was in fact worse than not thinking at all. But once he turned his mind to Annie Wilkes and his position here in her house, they were the thoughts that came, crowding out all others. His heart would start to beat too fast, mostly in fear, but partly in shame, too. He saw himself putting his lips to the rim of the yellow floor bucket, saw the rinse water with its film of soap and the rag floating in it, saw these things, but drank anyway, never hesitating a bit. He would never tell anyone about that, assuming he ever got out of this, and he supposed he might try to lie about it to himself, but he would never be able to do it."
Here's another example, this time from a more intense moment. His captor and number one fan forced him to write a novel for her, and in this scene, he's about to threaten to burn it so that he can use that as an opportunity to escape. Notice how much shorter the paragraphs are in this action sequence. "The refrigerator door was opened, then bang shut. Here she came across the kitchen again. Here she came. He had not smoked a cigarette, of course. It still lay on the windowsill. It had been the match he wanted. That one single match. What if it doesn't light when you strike it? But it was far too late for such considerations. He reached over to the ashtray and picked up the matchbook. He tore out the single match. She was coming down the hallway now. Paul struck the match, and sure enough, it didn't light. Easy, easy does it. He struck it again. Nothing. Easy, easy. He scratched along the rough, dark brown strip on the back of the book. A third time, and a pale yellow flame bloomed at the end of the paper stick."
I'm not going to burn up your time going through any more examples because I feel like this is pretty self-explanatory, but I do have one other point that I want to cover with paragraph length, and that is that generally shorter paragraphs are the better choice. So, most readers prefer shorter paragraphs. They don't have to be very, very short, but I would say generally try to keep your paragraphs under 200 words. When paragraphs get very big, very lengthy, it can be overwhelming for readers, even experienced readers. Those breaks are really easier on the eyes. So, most authors or writers will have a sort of typical base length paragraph, so then they'll deviate from that. So, you might have a paragraph that's much longer than 200 words. You might have a paragraph where you want to convey the rambling thoughts of the character or a very long, in-depth description where you really want the reader to slow down and pay attention to the details. And for that reason, a few paragraphs here and there that are longer is completely fine. But in general, I highly recommend that you try to give the reader those visual breaks because it will make it a lot easier and a lot more pleasant to read.
So, those are all my tips for this video. I really hope that you found it helpful. I hope that it helped you not only with your paragraphs, but also to better understand perspective and voice and how those things impact our paragraphs. I will be putting up a PDF of show notes for this video on my Patreon. If you want to help support the channel, there are some cheat sheets from various videos and things like that on there, and I will keep building up what's on there as I'm available. So, if you want to help support the channel, it's extremely, extremely appreciated. I'm working on a video about descriptions. I'm not sure if it will be the immediate next video that goes out, but in any case, I will be back in a month or so with a new video. And in the meantime, happy writing, guys.