Short Paragraphs or Long Paragraphs

The long paragraphs are annoying and make me often feel lany, most of the time though the long 1's have more meat in them, the short ones are similar though I feel like their lacling detail or something not explainable, though I just know

 

I think that the best paragraphs are, kind of what how you said SyWry, not too long...in my opinion, three-to-seven paragraphs. Any longer or shorter, without needed reason don't really make sense or are just too long and tedious. When I do episode summaries in my more recent Pokémon anime rewrites, I usually do five-to-seven paragraphs. But with others...that range I mentioned earlier. Also, if there's something that doesn't fit that range, I'll just split it up or something. Hope that helps!

 

My writing is very dialogue heavy, so the only time a paragraph gets really long is when a fight is taken seriously. IE: No one talks. I personally feel jealous of those who can describe everything in great detail, but sometimes I have to ask, why? Why do we need to know what was laying on the desk if nothing comes from it? Overall, my paragraphs are short, and I like to read medium sized ones. But, nothing is really wrong with either, it only comes down to preference.

 

People normally describe things that don't turn out to be super important to:
a- give the reader a better image of the scene
or
b- give some more insight to the character who owns the desk, as in your example
Sorry, I just wanted to explain it to you please don't hate me >.<

Anyway, I prefer medium-sized paragraphs, although it all depends on what's going on. With dialouge-heavy stories, I find short paragraphs best, otherwise it feels like the author is trying to smush everything together. With long-paragraph stories, I sometimes lose my spot or realize I have no clue what's been going on for two pages.

 

I prefer short paragraphs, text usually cuts them up so I think they would be kept short but full of just the necessary details.

 

Brain says: "write short paragraphs so that people don't die from the sheer overwhelming weight, let them breathe"

Heart says "keep writing, don't let anyone tell you when to stop"

Not that I write fiction, but even in non-fiction I am constantly at odds with my internal monologue of KEEP THEM SHORT and never managing to. As a reader though, long paragraphs don't worry me unless it's possibly part of an online chat type situation, where I have to keep up replies in a short space of time and refer back to it. Reading without replying though, no worries. I don't feel interrupted by paragraph breaks either though, I read like a steam train, literally ploughing through everything.

 

As someone who, when writing, does not assign itself any sort of word count or page restriction, I use my own set of guidelines when constructing paragraphs. In practise, my paragraphs aren't too large, but it's not what I aim for; that's really just coincidence.

A paragraph is meant to present or exemplify a single thought. Thoughts can be very quick, or they can be rather lengthy and detailed. Thus, when making a paragraph, I make it as long as the thought requires. Standardly, I also break paragraphs when it's a good time to "take a breath", a place where the mind or reader can easily make a pause to store the information, and I've found that's a rather good guideline to go by. The "take a breath" is a bit of an odd metaphor, as it refers to something you do mentally, but it's the best metaphor I know how to describe the practise with.

I've also been in the habit to, for dramatic effect, break off the last sentence of a paragraph that indicates a dramatic change (a mood, a situation, or some other development) and put it all by itself on the next line, if it's sufficiently short enough.

This is one of those times.

 

Personally, I do a mix, but an organized mix. There will be areas of very short paragraphs, and then a few longer ones. It all depends on the setting and the emotion, and how effectively you can convey meaning in the paragraph, not the word count.
#MissingNo

 

I use a lot of dialogue in my stories, so usually the paragraphs are not very long, although I have written long paragraphs at some point, too. But I'm working on writing better narratives and descriptions, so hopefully I can write longer and better paragraphs.

 

I usually mix the two. When I have dialogue the paragraph tends to be a bit shorter unless there is some action following it.

 

One thing that shortens up my paragraphs is dialogue, definitely @MarineAurora . They're shorter simply because I separate by speaker to make the conversation more clear. But I can get pretty lengthy if I'm describing some intricate scenario. It all depends on the impact I'm going for.

 

It depends on the type of paragraph. For "prose" type writing, longer paragraphs are preferred but for dialogue I tend to make them shorter.

It's always writer preference in the end however. Just do what makes you happy.

 

I'm guilty as charged for writing short paragraphs because in all of my formal writing my paragraphs are ridiculously long. That and I don't want that to be intimidating to my readers haha~

 

It always depends on the topic for me, if it's something I have detailed thoughts on, I will go in length to describe it. If the occasion calls for a short paragraph, I will respond appropriately.

 

whenever i wrote something for english class (which i loved by the way), i was very guilty of writing pretty long paragraphs. i did that though because i tried to describe everything in detail and give the reader a sense of comfort and like they were there. whenever i wrote (still do write just not as often) oneshots, i tended to write very long paragraphs. i'm guilty of writing paragraphs and stories in general that were probably much too long for the writing assignments my teacher gave me. sure did love it though..i miss english class.

edit: like, i used to have to be told by my teacher if there was a page limit or word limit, and most of the time there wasn't, so i just wrote the assignments as long i felt they needed to be to get everything i was trying to convey out on the word document or on paper.

 

When reading, I like a mix of long and short paragraphs. Too many long paragraphs are hard to read and I feel like there are too many unnecessary words. However, too many short paragraphs makes the story feel oversimplified and not very well fleshed-out. Granted, the lengths of the paragraphs aren't always what makes the story, but it is what helps me decide whether or not I want to read through something.

However usually when I'm writing, I don't tend to pay much attention to how long my paragraphs are, they're finished when they're finished. Depending on the tone of the scene, my paragraphs tend to be around 1-3 lines long on Fanfiction.net (which is actually kind of long, come to think of it). Though this does entirely depend on the narrator, setting, tone of the scene, whether or not there's a need to go into depth on the character's surroundings, feelings, etc.

When writing essays... Ooooh boy, those are some big paragraphs. It actually pains me to write them as it does not feel natural to write paragraphs that big. I can't wait until I graduate and (hopefully) get some control over my paragraph length in essays...

 

I've actually started writing longer paragraphs recently, and I must say describing things is getting more fun.

 

For me it's just whatever's needed. I usually have a mix of both or alternate. As long as a paragraph doesn't go on longer than a page, I think they're okay. If you think of it from the perspective of a reader who might want to put the book down for a while, you'd want them to have an easy stopping point, so having paragraphs that go on for too long can be intimidating or feel like a chore to read through.