For my current WIP (Lives in Time), a couple professional authors have given beta feedback on Part One. Both of them suggested that my paragraphs were too long, and should be shortened considerably. I use Scrivener, and it has a Statistics report that gives a bunch of details about the document, including Average Paragraph Length. Here are a few things from that report: Words: 50,258 Paragraphs: 800 Sentences: 3,274 Average Paragraph Length: 62 Average Sentence Length: 15 I'm interested to know how other people's work stacks up. What's your average paragraph length? Sentence length? I've shown you mine, show me yours! JD
for an actual paragraph of text 62 isn't too long, but bear in mind that its an average - dialogue will include a lot of short single line paragraphs , so that average would suggest you also have some whoppers puling the average up
whatever feels right my average looks to be about 35 - but i have some that are over 100 and others that are one line. I'd worry less about paragraph length per se and more about does the story flow ? If you have points at which it bogs down in a mire of wordy text, those are the points to cut your paragraph length
I'm not too sure about this , but I don't think you can use an average length of paragraphs and sentences to improve your writing . It's about pace , short sentences and paragraphs add action and drama. You can slow things down by lengthening them .
Unless you post examples, it's hard to say exactly why they are too long. Run on sentences? Repetition? Blathering details? There is no idea length, but there is a point where a readers eyes glaze over when you don't complete your paragraphs neatly.
In my real writing things are different than in internet board writing. In real writing a sentence is a single thought or feeling/emotion wholly described. A paragraph is a smallest possible full collection of things. Keeping it short & simple helps editing and reading.
Incidentally, has Scrivener changed, or am I missing something? Seeing this just now made me look myself, and my statistics report only lists words, characters, pages (printed) and pages (paperback)...
I don't think writing to a formula like the one you've got is such a good idea. Writing can break barriers and formulas, and good writing usually does.
In general I agree. And the criticism from my friend Steve was really that my paragraphs needed to vary more in size, not that they were too long. My friend Dan said that my paragraphs were too wordy, not that they were too long, a bit of a tougher nut to crack. On further review, I found several places where I had run-on paragraphs. I separated them into more readable segments, and dropped my average paragraph length to 52, which is quite an achievement I think. I'm not necessarily aiming to write to a formula, but knowing how other people write can be instructive.
