Confused by format: speech

To me, Toto Too, clarity and flow, aided by common-sense, are the ultimate guides when fretting over a new paragraph.

In the end it's individual choice and yes, I'm sure it's possible to see a whole page or chapter of solid narrative. I wouldn't like to see it or use it because it's not exactly reader-friendly, but if that's the author's choice...

A new thought calls for a new paragraph.

in the Zara specific example, I would have more than one line.

"It's such a quiet night," said Sheila.


"It sure is," said Zarla.


[two or three sentences of description for hearing a sound, the women turning around, fear reactions, emotional reactions, AND THEN zombies flooded into the room. ]

Zarla grabbed her sword. "Don't worry, I got this!"

"I hope so!"


But that's me nitpicking.

Toto Too said:

I can't imaging having an entire chapter being one huge paragraph just because there is no dialogue or time break.

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I also can't imagine going to the other confusing extreme because a new paragraph at every bit of dialog--new speaker or not--causes problems.

Lots of writers here have offered good ideas for middle ground. My job as an editor is to suggest, sometimes more than once. The author who's my boss always has the option to do as he or she pleases.

Chase said:

A new speaker.

A new chapter.

A lapse in time after an asterisk break.

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OK, what am I missing here? Because surely you don't mean to imply that everything else should be one long paragraph.

There can be a lot of different reasons for starting a new paragraph: a shift in focus, change of idea, dramatic effect, a new event, a new observation....

Or did you mean the above to be the only absolutes in paragraphing? Sorry if I'm being dense.

BethS said:

Or did you mean the above to be the only absolutes in paragraphing? Sorry if I'm being dense.

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Maybe a little. The question was what does generally call for a new paragraph? I listed three before others added more, to which I wrote:

Chase said:

Lots of writers here have offered good ideas for middle ground.

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I'm not on board with every single reason listed for beginning a new paragraph in conversations, but I see room for differences in styles.

Harlequin said:

A new thought calls for a new paragraph.

in the Zara specific example, I would have more than one line.

"It's such a quiet night," said Sheila.


"It sure is," said Zarla.


[two or three sentences of description for hearing a sound, the women turning around, fear reactions, emotional reactions, AND THEN zombies flooded into the room. ]

Zarla grabbed her sword. "Don't worry, I got this!"

"I hope so!"


But that's me nitpicking.

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Yes, that sounds good. That was just a quick mock-up, however I do have a tendency to be too "efficient" like that in my descriptions, and that contributes to the problem. I agree that proper pacing should help resolve things like this.

Miss_Vix said:

Thanks for the help, guys. I figured this was one of those 'absolute' aspects that cannot be played with. Thanks for assuring me the writer has choice and the clarification on speech and action and new paragraphs. But what is an asterisk break?

Also, can someone explain chapters and what I can mini-chapters? I had assumed chapters were like act breaks but this doesn't seem to hold true. Some books have 20 chapters (way too many to be acts) and similar books will have just 3 - which indicates author stylistic preferences. Mini-chapters - that break up the page - seem to have no rhyme or reason. They are breaks within blocks of text ans can occur once a page or every 5 pages. Some indicate a change in location, time or perspective but other times they continue with the same scene as before which makes me wonder why a break was inserted at all, especially as the same novel will not break up other scenes in such a way

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You will drive yourself nuts worrying about this trivia.

Your best bet here is to read widely and make up your own mind as to how you wish to approach the use of chapters.

There are basic rules of punctuation and grammar, and proven methods for achieving various effects, but no hard and fast rules exist about the uses or lengths of chapters or mini-chapters etc..

As writers, we are communicators via the written word.

Clarity should be our aim and each of us is free to do whatever we think aids the achievement of clarity, and comprehension by the reader, of whatever we write.


Good luck.

Miss_Vix said:

Thanks for the help, guys. I figured this was one of those 'absolute' aspects that cannot be played with. Thanks for assuring me the writer has choice and the clarification on speech and action and new paragraphs. But what is an asterisk break?

Also, can someone explain chapters and what I can mini-chapters? I had assumed chapters were like act breaks but this doesn't seem to hold true. Some books have 20 chapters (way too many to be acts) and similar books will have just 3 - which indicates author stylistic preferences. Mini-chapters - that break up the page - seem to have no rhyme or reason. They are breaks within blocks of text ans can occur once a page or every 5 pages. Some indicate a change in location, time or perspective but other times they continue with the same scene as before which makes me wonder why a break was inserted at all, especially as the same novel will not break up other scenes in such a way

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Chapters have nothing to with "acts", which is playwright terminology having to do with structure. The basic storytelling unit of a novel is the scene. Most novels are divided into chapters--think of them as thematic units--and within each chapter there can be one or more scenes. Scenes, unless they end when a chapter ends, are divided from one another by white space or a symbol. That's what was meant by an "asterisk break," though in a manuscript, the standard character for a scene break is #, centered.

The scene itself a method of advancing the story in discrete chunks. Each scene changes something about the story, so it can move forward. That's its purpose.

Scenes and sequels have quite clear definitions, and they are fairly consistent in the stuff I have read about them.

Everyone will treat this differently, but for me they're all extensions of the same principle. A sentence is a thought, and usually (often) needs more than one sentence to 'complete' that thought (thus turning into a paragraph). Scenes and sequels (to me!) feel like ideas, and chapters completed arguments; the book builds towards a conclusion of that argument.

But that's too abstract to do anything with, and is only something I can look at retroactively. In practice, I create paragraphs as often as I can. If I'm running on past six sentences, I take a critical look at whether or not I'm being too wordy, or stalling in my pacing. I like a lot of white space, I suppose.

For chapters, I tend to look at length. I like my chapters to be a similar length because, for me, that means my pacing is at an even keel. If my chapters are too long or short, then I might have too many ideas in the individual scenes, or I might be dragging in certain areas.

Not everyone does this, though. There are perfectly competent writers whose chapter lenghts are all over the place.


Edit: Chapters are a psychological thing. Like pauses in music, writing needs breaks to be more effective. I mean theoretically, you can take out all the paragraph breaks from a novel and it is the same book, but in practice we would process differently, with a lot more difficulty mostly. Chapters are similar, and this is why I am reluctant to pin this kind of thing down. Stories have their own pacing, where breaks seem to fit. Maybe there is an exact science and I'm just a dolt, but it has always felt organic to me.

Miss_Vix said:

Fair point when applied to every little nuance - and I can see why I may appear so anal - but at the same time, I think questions on dialogue and chapters are fair.

'Why do we have chapters in books?, said aspiring writer 1.
'Don't worry about it', said writer 2.

How can you plan and write chapters if you don't know what they are?

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Reading books should give a pretty good idea what a chapter is.

When writing about an event in the story there comes a point where the writer may want to write about something removed - either in time or place - from what they were just writing about. If, by following straight on with no break of any sort, the narrative reads awkwardly or jerkily then perhaps there is cause to give the reader pause or notification that he (the reader) is about to be switched 'somewhere else'. A new Chapter is one method of preparing the reader for such a change but the length of any chapter is entirely up to the writer's discretion.


If you've already written a novel or are part way through one and have used chapters of some sort, ask yourself why you used a new chapter. Is your answer close to the above?


Any help?

Miss_Vix said:

'Why do we have chapters in books?, said aspiring writer 1.
'Don't worry about it', said writer 2.

How can you plan and write chapters if you don't know what they are?

Click to expand...

If you don't know what chapters are, read more books. Read a wide variety of books that are not all your favorite genre.

Once you've read enough books, you will have internalized what chapters are.

The main functional purpose of chapters is to break up the flow of the narrative in some way that makes sense *in context.*

A chapter is mostly for the convenience of the writer and/or the reader. Chapters can be used to signify a change of POV, a change of time or location, a change of narrative thread (in a multi-threaded narrative), or simply as punctuation to enhance suspense or give readers a convenient place to rest.

Chapters are NOT fundamentally related to the structure of a story -- they are not parallel to acts in a script. Chapters are also not necessarily related to scenes -- it's possible, in fact common, to have a chapter that contains multiple scenes, or lengthy scenes that extend over multiple chapters.

There is no ideal or perfect length for a chapter. A chapter can be 1 word long. It can be 10,000 or 20,000 words long. (There have been many threads on AW asking "how long should a chapter be?" Go ahead and read them. Your head will spin. You will find no consensus. It's a fundamentally meaningless question and there will never be a definitive answer.)

Chapters are not necessary or mandatory. Novels are published that do not have any chapters at all. But not that many... most novelists find chapters too convenient to give up.

Surely this is mostly stylistic choice. Sometimes writers don't even break for new speakers and still manage to offer a clear conversation (though I think that falls under 'know the rules before you try to break them').

Toto Too said:

Sure, that all makes sense. Maybe there's confusion over paragraph vs. line break? I can't imaging having an entire chapter being one huge paragraph just because there is no dialogue or time break.

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A line break is different. In a manuscript, one generally types a centered # to indicate a line break. These are generally used to denote a scene break, time break, or a change in narrative viewpoint, or some other major shift in story focus you want to emphasize with more than just a paragraph break but less than a chapter break.

Paragraphs (in fiction) are simply denoted by indenting the first sentence a half inch. You can set your ruler bar to do this for you when you hit return.

Note what benbenberi said: chapter breaks and when and whether to use them is rather subjective. Not all writers take the same approach. Some writers don't even use chapters, per se. They may go with "acts," "parts" or "books" within the book, or simply do scene breaks. Heck, some might even be able to write an entire novel with nothing but paragraph breaks, though I wouldn't advise this unless you have a reason for doing so, since it probably violates reader expectations

Most of the books I've read have more than one scene in a chapter, and some even have more than one narrative viewpoint within a given chapter. Fuzzily, I'd say a chapter advances a chunk of the story that may contain multiple scenes and viewpoints, and they break in a place where something has come to a resolution of sorts while setting expectations for where the story will go next.

Line breaks in published novels typically leave a space, or sometimes have a symbol of some kind inserted by the typesetter (or book designer or whoever does such things in a publishing house). I prefer the symbol these days, because with so many books published in e format, sometimes simple line breaks don't come through and I'll be 2-3 sentences or more into a new paragraph before I realize there has been a shift in scene, time, or pov.

Actually, don't get me started about some of the cruddy formatting and editing errors that show up in e-books, even ones published by big publishing houses.