Literary paragraphing

Could be some of it is getting lost in translation, or possibly this author (or his/her editor) likes long paragraphs.

There is no standard length of paragraph. Each should be a focused unit of meaning. Each should have a topic. The type of paragraphing most people learn in high school is very, very basic--and sometimes completely wrong (not to say anything specific about you; there are great high school teachers out there--it's just one of the harder things to teach and when you have a large class with mixed levels of interest and ability it can be hard).

A lot of litfic tends towards very interior propulsion and a lot of interior monologue and deep POV work. You also get techniques like stream-of-consciousness and metonymy that can result in longer paragraphs for structural reasons (tone, diction, parallelism, etc.).

Even in commercial fiction, there are situations where a story needs to explore a deep subject. The risk is that exactly what happened to you will happen. It's hard to keep track of info through a long paragraph without a lot of care in the clarity, logic, and phrasing.

I've written a couple paragraphs that are up towards those lengths. I try not to do it too often and I often end up cutting those sorts back on revisions. Every so often, they're useful for creating a sense of urgency or chaos. It can be a useful technique to immerse a reader in the moment. Look at the narrative around the passage and see if it's being used to some purpose. But if it's throwing you out of the book, chances are something's off with either the paragraph's focus/topic or its execution. Which brings me back to translation, because even with the best translations it's often very hard to preserve the exact metre, rhythm, and even parallelism that might make the long paragraph work in the first language but not exist in the new one.

wonderactivist said:

We all learned basic paragraphing in high school, but it seems that the higher-falutin' the literary text, the more they don't bother with paragraphs. I'm currently reading a very good translation of an awesome book for my next column and ... well:

* In the first section (there are no chapters), the paragraphs I got lost in were 1-1/2, 2 and 2-1/4 pages long. This is a larger-than-trade sized paperback with a 9 pt font, 520 pages.

* I almost put the book down but liked the imagery, so I pulled out an orange highlighter and started marking paragraphs as I read. No more getting lost.

Why do they put readers through that?

Click to expand...

You apparently don't read many classics, or even many books by foreign writers. Or by some of the American greats such as William Faulkner. A paragraph of two and a half pages? Try one that's fifty thousand words long. Then there's the original version if Kerouac's on the road, which is only one paragraph.

William Faulkner wrote some immensely long paragraphs. In Absalom, Absalom!, he had a single sentence that was 1,287 words.

In Cushing Biggs Hassell’s History of the Church of God, there's a single sentence that's over three thousand words. Paragraphs are merely a convention, and a two and a half page paragraph is not very long. Certainly not long enough to lose a reader. Numerous books have no paragraphs at all. Some languages have no paragraphs.

Whether it's a short sentence, or fifty thousand words, you shouldn't get lost because of how long a paragraph is. Poor writing can confuse anyone, can lost anyone, but long paragraphs do not mean poor writing. No paragraphs at all does not mean poor writing. Poor memory and lack of concentration is why most readers get lost.

But really, a two and a half page paragraph is not at all unusual. It's actually pretty darned short compared to thousands found in great novels.

Academic writing is nothing like commercial writing. The paragraphs come as they're needed. You kept reading; it's likely others do as well. It's not like this is for a grade.