Paragraphing

First, I'd like to say that Self-editingfor Fiction Writers has some brilliant passages about paragraphing (chapters 5, 7, 8, and 9), and you should really read that book before I drive to your house and cram it in your throat.

But I love ranting, so I'll talk about it a little.

The surprising truth is, in fiction, paragraphing can be done more or less as you please. Most important is that it's done to achieve an effect in the reader's mind. That's why I do a lot of short paragraphs.

For emphasis.

That said, there are a few principles I follow. In academic and nonfiction writing, a paragraph is generally organized around a single idea. Even in fiction, I try to follow this whenever possible. In the narrative voice, I will keep one related series of actions in a single paragraph. If someone is sneaking down a hallway, I'll keep all the movements and descriptions related to that general action in one paragraph.

Bob crept along the darkened hallway. The paintings seemed to be looking at him through the blackness. He ran his hand along the wall, searching for the doorknob. His hand hit something rigid. 

But it wasn't the doorknob.

The last line there could have been part of the previous paragraph, and frankly, it is a related idea, but I chose to put it in its own paragraph for emphasis.

Paragraphing dialogue is a little more complicated. In dialogue passages, you have three main elements in play:

1. The Dialogue itself
2. Beats
3. Internal Monologue

Dialogue

With respect to dialogue itself, every speaker should get their own paragraph for every line of dialogue. If a speaker is speaking at length, you should divide their dialogue into paragraphs just as you would a speech or academic paper; with each paragraph relating to some specific subject. You put an open-quote at the beginning of each paragraph, but you only put a close-quote on the last. So if this entire article so far had been one big hunk of dialogue, and this was the final paragraph, I'd have open-quotes on every paragraph, but a close-quote on only this paragraph."

A "line" of dialogue is tricky to define (I already tried in this article), but for our current purpose, lets define it as whatever one speaker says at one time, without interruption. A line can be as short as a single word, or as long as an entire book. In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand had the stones to write a single line of dialogue that went on for seventy pages. There is an open-quote at the beginning of every paragraph, and one lonely little close-quote all the way at the end.

So you have some freedom with length. But let's be honest, a seventy-page speech doesn't belong in most fiction, and Rand was really using that scene as a soapbox, which is something I don't advise in popular fiction. (Atlas Shrugged of course, isn't popular fiction, it's literary fiction, which works toward different goals and abides by different rules. But you see the point.)

Beats

Beats are little bits of action or "stage business" interspersed in the dialogue. They are cast in the narrative voice, and broadly follow the rules of narrative voice. In general, if a beat and a line of dialogue are from the same character, I keep them in the same paragraph. Like this:

"I don't know why you're acting like this!" Betty wiped the tears from her eyes. 

Steve slammed his coffee cup on the table. "Because you're a lying bitch!"

The beat can go before or after the line of dialogue, depending on how you envision it. If you envision the action coming before the line, place it before. If you envision the action coming after, place it after. If you envision the actions simultaneously, then the best method is to insert it into the first natural pause in the line:

"You know," Betty pulled her coat off the rack, "you can be a real jerk sometimes."

You can also put a simultaneous action before or after, depending on which you want to have greater emphasis. If you want the action to be more emphasized, put it at the end. If you want the line to be emphasized, put it at the end. All things being equal, people tend to remember what's at the end of a paragraph more than what's at the beginning. Whatever you do, do it with purpose.

If Steve has a line of dialogue, and then Betty has a beat, then that beat needs to be in its own paragraph, even if Steve speaks immediately after:

Steve grabbed her arm. "You piece of trash!" 

Betty slapped him. 

"Bitch!" Steve bellowed. 

"You'd better not say something like that to me again!" Betty said.

The line immediately following the beat also needs a speaker attribution, because either of them could have spoken next. If Betty had spoken next, you don't need the attribution, because you can just use the beat in its place:

Steve grabbed her arm. "You piece of trash!" 

Betty slapped him. "You'd better not say something like that to me again!"

A beat that stands as its own paragraph breaks up the see-saw structure of dialogue. And it usually signals a pause in the conversation, after which either speaker could talk next. Every time you break up that see-saw structure, you need at least one speaker attribution (or a beat attached to a line) to re-anchor the reader.

Everywhere you could have a speaker attribution, you could also have a beat. But that doesn't mean you always want a beat, because too many of them slows down the dialogue. It makes readers visualize something, which takes time (more on beats here)

That's the great thing about speaker attributions. They inform the reader who is speaking without even drawing your attention away from the dialogue itself. But that magic only works with the verb "said" and maybe "asked" (more on the magic of "said" here).

Internal Monologue

In passages of dialogue, internal monologue is really just a specialized type of beat. It follows the same rules as a beat. It can come before or after a line, or be set in its own paragraph.

"You'd better watch your ass," Steve said.

What did he mean by that? "I'm not afraid of you." 

"You should be."

The only hard and fast rule is that the interior monologue should be adjacent to the speaker who thinks the thought. If the scene is from Betty's point of view, you cannot put her internal monologue in the same paragraph as Steve's dialogue.

"You better watch your ass," Steve said. What did he mean by that? 

"I'm not afraid of you."

Doing this makes the whole thing feel kind of disembodied, and it knocks the reader out of the scene. Now, this would be acceptable:

"You better watch your ass," Steve said. 

What did he mean by that? 

"I'm not afraid of you," Betty said.

Just notice that even though the thought is Betty's and it is still adjacent to her next line, you still need the speaker attribution because the internal monologue/beat implies a pause in the conversation, which then breaks up the see-saw rhythm. So you need the attribution if you want to emphasize the thought.

Overall, I find it preferable to keep the thoughts and lines of a single character in the same paragraph, because it eliminates the need for the attribution. When you are writing any scene, you are writing from a single point of view, and therefore the internal monologue all comes from a single character. If the scene is written from Betty's point of view, the reader will assume all the thoughts belong to her. So if you have a line of internal monologue, it's as good as a speaker attribution because the reader already knows who the thought belongs to.

If you want to include the internal monologue of more than one character in a given scene, you are going to have to write the scene from an omniscient point of view, and this means setting internal monologue in it's own paragraph, in italics, and using thinker attributions.

In an omniscient point of view, internal monologue follows all the same rules as dialogue, except for one: instead of enclosing thoughts between quotes, you cast it in italics. Quotes are only used for actual spoken dialogue. Never, ever use quotes around internal monologue, it will confuse the reader. Even if you do quotes and italics, it's still confusing, because in dialogue, italics denote vocal emphasis, and it is possible for a speaker to emphasize an entire line of dialogue (in fact, casting a whole line of dialogue in italics is a great way to show that someone is yelling without having to say 'he yelled' at the end. It saves you a speaker attribution).

So. That's how to paragraph dialogue, and all its constituent parts.

***

Outside of dialogue, pretty much everything is either narrative or internal monologue. In an intimate point of view (like first person, or the intimate third person that I favor), it's perfectly fine for internal monologue and narrative to be in the same paragraph, even if it's every other sentence.

He walked down the hallway. What was that noise? The darkness caved in on him. This must be what death felt like.

In fact, this is a great way to add sentence variety to a paragraph. Internal monologue will have different grammar than narrative, and therefore your paragraphs will have a harder time slipping into a repetitive rhythm.

Descriptions are a special kind of narrative, and I tend to keep big blocks of description in their own paragraphs. If you're interspersing a sentence here and a sentence there, it's fine for description to flow into the 'stage business' narrative (he walked there, she sat here). In fact, that's a great way to involve your descriptions in your plot. Large chunks of description are boring, and not memorable. But if you show a character walking around a darkened house, and slip the descriptions into the 'stage business' narrative, then the setting suddenly becomes part of the scene, not just a list of facts we review before the scene begins.

Overall, the most important guideline is to paragraph often. It's better to paragraph too much than to paragraph too little. Readers are turned off by books with no white space.

Frequent paragraphing also makes the reader read quicker, which pulls them into the story more. So only use big, long paragraphs when it really matters. In Atlas Shrugged, Rand's seventy-page line of dialogue is actually a philosophical speech, and it's the centerpiece of the entire story. Every event in the previous thousand pages leads up to this monumental speech, and the entire plot hinges on how the audience reacts to it. It's a world-changing speech made by a man who brought the world to its knees. It's the climax of the book. So you can do crap like that, but you better make it count. And even if it does, you're still guaranteed to lose at least half your audience. Long paragraphs make people put books down. It's a law of nature.

Paragraph often, and paragraph with purpose, and people will be gripping your book with white knuckles.