Paragraph breaks

[Slammr (imported)]

As some of you know, I'm helping Paolo out with story submissions.

I would like to caution our authors about using reasonable paragraph breaks. Our opinions about how often to use them may vary, and some might think I use them too often in my writing, but I can't think of ANY circumstance under which a paragraph should go on for a page or two.

I just approved a story that had such a paragraph. I almost trashed it because it did.

[turtle12 (imported)]

I agree with you on that. Makes them very difficult to read. While we're at it please ask writers to avoid using all caps as well. Makes it a pain in the back of my lap to try to read. Thanks!

[Slammr (imported)]

I agree with you on that. Makes them very difficult to read. While we're at it please ask writers to avoid using all caps as well. Makes it a pain in the back of my lap to try to read. Thanks!

If they use all caps, the story will be trashed.

[smoothie (imported)]

Thinking back on my literature classes...A topic{paragraph} should contain 6 sentences for the body and a conclusion, on an average!!!!!

[transward (imported)]

As some of you know, I'm helping Paolo out with story submissions.

I would like to caution our authors about using reasonable paragraph breaks. Our opinions about how often to use them may vary, and some might think I use them too often in my writing, but I can't think of ANY circumstance under which a paragraph should go on for a page or two.

I just approved a story that had such a paragraph. I almost trashed it because it did.

While I agree with you in principle, I must point out that some of Faulkner's sentences, let alone paragraphs, were several pages long. That said, I don't think we have that many Faulkners in the story board.

Transward

[Slammr (imported)]

While I agree with you in principle, I must point out that some of Faulkner's sentences, let alone paragraphs, were several pages long. That said, I don't think we have that many Faulkners in the story board.

Transward

Well, if Faulkner were still around and submitted a story, I would probably make an exception for him - as long as his story included someone getting something down there cut off, of course.

[Slammr (imported)]

This may be sacrilege, but here is a paragraph written by Faulkner and an example how I would re-write it with more paragraph breaks.

When she was twelve years-old her father and mother died in the same summer, in a log house of three rooms and a hall, without screens, in a room lighted by a bugswirled kerosene lamp, the naked floor worn smooth as old silver by naked feet. She was the youngest living child. Her mother died first. She said, “Take care of paw.” Lena did so. Then one day her father said, “You go to Doane’s Mill with McKinley. You get ready to go, be ready when he comes.” Then he died. McKinley, the brother, arrived in a wagon. They buried the father in a grove behind a country church one afternoon, with a pine headstone. The next morning she departed forever, though it is possible that she did not know at the time, in the wagon with McKinley, for Doane’s Mill. The wagon was borrowed and the brother had promised to return it by nightfall.

When she was twelve years-old her father and mother died in the same summer, in a log house of three rooms and a hall, without screens, in a room lighted by bugswirled kerosene lamp, the naked floor worn smooth as old silver by naked feet. She was the youngest living child.

Her mother died first. She said, “Take care of Paw.” Lena did so.

Then one day her father said, “You go to Doane’s Mill with McKinley. You get ready to go; be ready when he comes.” Then he died.

McKinley, the brother, arrived in a wagon. They buried the father in a grove behind a country church one afternoon, with a pine headstone. The next morning she departed forever, though it is possible that she did not know at the time, in the wagon with McKinley, for Doane’s Mill. The wagon was borrowed and the brother had promised to return it by nightfall.

Any thoughts?

[kb57z (imported)]

Did Faulkner have more coffee breaks than paragraph breaks?

[NaziNuts (imported)]

Faulkner wanted us to stay and concentrate within his paragraphs, with no attention span deficit, and in a Faulkner Zone; and, a dying man would have no time to fully stop for a period or semicolon. Infinite eloquence cannot be improved. Nobel Laureate William Faulkner, Stockholm, 10 December 1950:

“I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work – a life's work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will someday stand here where I am standing.

“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

“He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

“Until he relearns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.”

[gandalf (imported)]

Your re-write is the preferred way of writing something.