Speech, narrative, and paragraph breaks?

[J5V]

This is an editing question, about paragraph breaks in the context of long novels (70K+ words).

Should a paragraph contain a mix of long narrative and speech? I'm thinking particularly where speech follows narrative, or vice versa, or both, e.g.

This is quite a long narrative passage about him. He said, "This and that, and the other" before walking out. He then did something else that needed quite a lot of text to describe.​

I would certainly start a new paragraph when changing subject.

Any opinions? I'm aware that some newer books condense paragraphs together, where all text describes the same person's actions.

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

I think the example you have is fine. I don't think you have to do it that way, but if it seems to work well, go for it.

 

[tinkerdan]

It's difficult to tell which is the biggest issue with your question. Mixing narrative and dialogue or the changing of subject.

Yes if the subject changes you usually want to start a new paragraph.

On the other hand you mention dialogue and narrative and those are not necessarily exclusively different subjects. In fact, there can be long narrative that link to the dialogue because it's all part of the same subject and same POV. And yes that might include dialogue a bit of narrative and more dialogue and a bit of narrative or even a long bit of narrative.

On the other hand there seems to be some bit of a style choice occasionally where I've seen authors try to separate all the dialogue into their own paragraphs and that sometimes either requires more dialogue tags to help keep track of the speakers or it gets confusing.

I for one would not separate dialogue from narrative just because the narrative part is long. Though, and this is style again, many readers are used to seeing the dialogue start the paragraph. But that leads to obvious problems for some writers who have a one line paragraph narrative followed by a single line paragraph of dialogue and it continues down the page because they are trying to begin all paragraphs with dialogue and naturally the subject matter matching the dialogue was in the previous sentence.

 

[J5V]

... I've seen authors try to separate all the dialogue into their own paragraphs and that sometimes either requires more dialogue tags to help keep track of the speakers or it gets confusing.

That's partly my motivation for wanting to change style. I have several one-on-one scenes, and those have ruined my reading experience in the past, where I find it difficult to know who is speaking, without serious rewinding and slow re-reading. It's usually 'narrative as separate paragraphs' or 'failure to tag' that causes the problems.

The method I learned was (a) always start speech on a new paragraph, and (b) keep descriptive narrative to its own paragraph. I want to break away from this, to let the paragraphs do the subject alternation, but I'm tentative because it's unconventional.

 

[tinkerdan]

One of the largest arguments I've heard for the Dialogue first in a paragraph is that it keeps the emphasis on the dialogue where it should be. Which makes sense, but only if you mean to emphasize the dialogue over the narrative. If they have equal rating or perhaps there is more to emphasize in the narrative then maybe you can sandwich the dialogue in, but you might still get called out for it by some readers.

The problem with separating out the dialogue comes in trying to figure out who is talking. This could be alleviated by a dialogue tag, but too many of those drives a reader up the other wall. You can, though, leave off the dialogue tags and have the character doing things and in that way have a sentence of narrative that puts action at the end of the words and help identify who said that.

The best might be to have Dialogue that is followed by narrative that stays within the subject and makes the paragraph serve two purposes by giving the dialogue and squeezing in pertinent exposition. If there really is more emphasis on the narrative you might consider squeezing the dialogue in later in the paragraph as long as the narrative sticks with that character.

Reading it back out loud might help also; because mostly you are working toward clarity in thought and if the thought becomes clearer, even though you have broken the mold a bit, then you and the reader both win.

 

[The Judge]

Think of paragraphs the way you think of sentences. You don't want a page full of either very long or very short, or all mid-length come to that. Vary them in size as much as possible.

The other thing to remember is that the opening and closing words of a sentence have more power than the middle, and the same goes for paragraphs. If you want something to stand out and be noticed, it's self-defeating to shove it in the middle of long exposition -- actually it's usually self-defeating to have long exposition at all. I'm convinced people read less carefully nowadays, and the longer a paragraph, the less likely they are to read it in full or take useful information from it.

There are no hard and fast rules. I was going to say definitely never have dialogue from two or more people in the same paragraph, but actually if you're writing a confused melee of voices all clamouring for attention, that might work better with several in one para rather than all in separate lines.

I use dialogue at the beginning and end of narrative, though more usually the former, and I've occasionally used it in the middle, but only where the narrative either side is relatively short, each perhaps only one or two medium length sentences, and where the dialogue itself isn't long. Personally I would avoid a mix of long narrative and speech no matter how constituted. In the example you use, taking the actual single sentences as representing several in reality, I think it would be far better to use three separate paragraphs.

This is quite a long narrative passage about him. How long is long is the question. Three or four medium length sentences should be fine, but the more words, the more your readers will be wanting a new para by now anyway.

He said, "This and that, and the other" before walking out. NB Walking out would usually trigger a new para for me quite apart from the dialogue issue.

He then did something else that needed quite a lot of text to describe. Again if this is a long para you'll be exhausting your readers' patience if it were all on its own, and by lumping it together with an earlier longer one you risk them skipping it in full. Plus if he's doing something else in a different place, this to me would again trigger a new para regardless of intervening dialogue.

If you're worried whether it works in reality, put some examples up in Critiques and see what reaction you get.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I've seen the issue dealt with differently by different authors. It appears to be a stylistic issue, with a couple of caveats.

The first is that if you find yourself spreading more than a couple of bits of dialogue through a paragraph of text, it may be the case that you need to simplify your prose.

Secondly, prose tends to have a natural rhythm, and your sentence structure and paragraph breaks emphasise that. If something feels like a break, then go with it.

However, I'd like to underline tinkerdan's warning:

The problem with separating out the dialogue comes in trying to figure out who is talking.

There have been a few books where I've been completely thrown, because the author has split dialogue across multiple paragraphs without suitable attribution. So take care that however you organise your paragraphs, that you ensure there's a clear logical progression that a reader can follow.

Just my opinion, though.