Lars Eighner's Homepage Writers' Workshop FAQ: Q. I need help in deciding the length of paragraphs--especially when they seem to me to be too long. Also, when should I make a chapter break? What are the basic rules to follow?

Q. I need help in deciding the length of paragraphs--especially when they seem to me to be too long. Also, when should I make a chapter break? What are the basic rules to follow?

A. Especially in magazine writing (i.e. articles and short stories) it is important to bear in mind that one line of typescript will usually be two column lines. (Your results may vary. And yes, editors can use double-wide columns and so forth. This is just a rule of thumb.)

Readers don't make the adjustment from magazine columns to book columns and back. A paragraph that sets up as more than a dozen lines looks like a big block of type and may be off-putting. This is nothing to be concerned about in the heavy literary market, but ought to be considered if you are writing lighter fare.

Ideally the paragraph should be as long as it needs to be and no longer. That is not completely facetious. The paragraph should have a subject, treat that subject, and go on to the next paragraph. Of course, most fiction paragraphs should be about the action of the story and such paragraphs won't always have topic sentences, etc. But for the appearance of the work it is often necessary to break paragraphs somewhat more arbitrarily. In preparing work for magazines, I aim to keep paragraphs shorter than six typescript lines, and most of them are shorter than that.

Fortunately dialogue gives you a good excuse to break paragraphs and to have some that are shorter--unless your characters give Ayn-Rand-like speeches at every opportunity. I usually reparagraph a short story when preparing it for a collection.

In books, on the other hand, a long passage of dialogue in which the speeches are only a few words each seems to be lost in a blizzard of white space. There is no magic, all-purpose answer to this question. In the one case look for excuses to break the paragraph. In the other, look for excuses not to. There is considerable leeway here for personal taste and type of work, etc. Someone who buys a three-inch thick paperback is going to expect to see some longer paragraphs, and so forth. Also, this is something of a matter of averages and overall effect. Any work might have a few very much longer paragraphs and usually will have a few that are very short.

Chapter lengths also vary. You can almost make chapters as long (or as short) as you please. Readers generally won't take in the length of the chapter at a glance as they will with paragraphs.

Naturally, the best thing is to end each chapter with a cliffhanger. My working chapter outlines start with whatever the zinger or cliffhanger is that will end the chapter. Of course, they are not all earthshaking. They are just the milestones in the overall plot. Then the chapter consists of whatever it takes to get from where the previous chapter left off to the climatic scene of the present chapter.

In the writing it sometimes becomes apparent that a chapter in the outline will have to be broken into two or three or that a couple of outline chapters just don't have enough substance and will have to be collapsed into one.