My schedule has been way out of kilter lately. My mother-in-law had a bad fall about a week and a half ago, and so my wife has been staying with her pretty much full time. Which means I’ve been doing more driving the kids around and more chores around the house and my blogging time has shrunk drastically. Today, I’ve got a bit of time to blog so I’d like to pick up where we left off.
Last time I began critiquing various sections of the works in progress of my loyal blog readers. Today, I was going to critique Camille’s post, but then I saw that she rather badly violated the six-paragraph rule. Six paragraphs really is enough to critique, and in my view, thirteen is too many.
So instead, I’ll critique the second snippet that Camille posted in response to my latest blog post critiquing Sina’i. This one is shorter, and is actually over-paragraphed, if I’m reading it correctly. Let’s look at what Camille wrote:
Hey everyone – I know mine’s up next… but I’m flying through to wrap up the novel and came across this prime example of what gives me a headache about MRUs. If I follow the mru rules, every sentence is a separate paragraph, I think. But it looks weird. Okay, I KNOW, this text already sounds weird because it’s the mush in the middle of a romance, so ignore that weirdness. Can anyone tell me if breaking each of these lines apart is right or wrong?? Or am I getting way too legalistic here?
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What he was saying didn’t really sink in. The fact that he called and was not upset by her letter eclipsed all other thought. She leaned back against the doorframe and let out the breath she’d been holding.“I’ll tell you more about it when you arrive—you’re still coming, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Three more weeks . . .
“Emily . . .”
The sudden depth of his voice sent a warm shockwave through her.
“Do you remember when we stopped that night? On the side of the road?”
A shrill scream blasted from the teakettle.
Emily jumped, heart pounding.
“Hang on!”
She dashed to the stove, moved the kettle off the burner, took a deep breath, then put the phone to her ear. But the drumming in her chest made her words come out sounding breathless.
“Yeah . . . I remember.” Are you kidding me? How could I forget?
Randy sez: There is no reason to use so many paragraphs for this. I have often seen this in published novels–an action tag sentence, followed by a paragraph break, followed by dialogue. Honestly, I find this confusing. I interpret a paragraph break as (normally) a change of focus.
A paragraph break normally signals one of the following:
1) A change in focus from the POV character (i.e. a Reaction) to a non-POV character or some other external thing (i.e. a Motivation).
2) The opposite–a switch from any external thing (i.e. a Motivation) to the POV character (a Reaction).
3) Sometimes, a switch from one non-POV character to another non-POV character (i.e. two separate Motivations).
4) Occasionally, a continuation of the action and dialogue when one paragraph just isn’t enough to hold it all (i.e. one multi-paragraph Motivation or one multi-paragraph Reaction).
But here’s an example of the kind of thing I find confusing. This example is made up, but it’s similar to things I’ve seen many times:
“Would you like to go to the Yule Ball with me?” Ron asked.
Hermione glared at him furiously.
“What I can’t figure out is why I like you.”
Randy sez: OK, who said that third line? Was it Ron? Or was it Hermione? As written, there’s no way to know. There’s no dialogue tag. The author might well have intended paragraph two to serve as an action tag, thereby making Hermione the speaker. But the author may also have intended the paragraph break between paragraphs two and three to indicate a change of focus, thereby making Ron the speaker. There’s no iron-clad way to know. You have to read on to find out, which is annoying because it breaks the flow of your reading. Anything that loses clarity like this is likely to break the flow of the reading, and that’s bad.
I have seen this many times, and I always wonder why the author didn’t write it clearer. It is trivial to do it. Here’s one way to make it clear:
“Would you like to go to the Yule Ball with me?” Ron asked.
Hermione glared at him furiously. “What I can’t figure out is why I like you.”
Randy sez: In this example, it’s obvious that Hermione is the speaker. The first sentence in the second paragraph serves as an action tag for the second sentence of that paragraph. Now here’s a second way to write it that changes the meaning:
“Would you like to go to the Yule Ball with me?” Ron asked.
Hermione glared at him furiously.
“What I can’t figure out is why I like you,” Ron said.
Randy sez: This time, there’s a simple dialogue tag in the third sentence making it obvious that Ron said it.
Now to work on Camille’s example. In my view, the paragraphing should go as follows:
What he was saying didn’t really sink in. The fact that he called and was not upset by her letter eclipsed all other thought. She leaned back against the doorframe and let out the breath she’d been holding.
“I’ll tell you more about it when you arrive—you’re still coming, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Three more weeks . . .
“Emily . . .” The sudden depth of his voice sent a warm shockwave through her. “Do you remember when we stopped that night? On the side of the road?”
A shrill scream blasted from the teakettle.
Emily jumped, heart pounding. “Hang on!” She dashed to the stove, moved the kettle off the burner, took a deep breath, then put the phone to her ear. But the drumming in her chest made her words come out sounding breathless. “Yeah . . . I remember.” Are you kidding me? How could I forget?
Randy sez: By combining paragraphs like this, I have squeezed Camille into the six-paragraph limit that I imposed. And I think I’ve made the whole thing a lot easier to read. Emily is the POV character here, and so now we have paragraphs in a simple pattern: Reaction, Motivation, Reaction, Motivation, Motivation, Reaction. Notice that paragraph 4 is a Motivation (Ian speaking) and paragraph 5 is a second Motivation (the tea kettle). This is commonly done and works just fine. The paragraph break clearly distinguishes between the two Motivators–Ian and the kettle.
The one issue is in paragraph 4. Let’s look at that in detail:
“Emily . . .” The sudden depth of his voice sent a warm shockwave through her. “Do you remember when we stopped that night? On the side of the road?”
In Camille’s original, she made this three paragraphs. I combined the three sentences into a single paragraph because the subject of sentence 2 is Ian’s voice. This is a Motivation. It is true that Camille sneaks a bit of a Reaction into the second half of the sentence, but the fact is that the sentence serves as an action tag to remind us who is speaking. Furthermore, it interrupts Ian’s sentence. So I vote for jamming them all into a single paragraph, as shown above.
As a final note, the phrase “The sudden depth of his voice…” is technically called paralanguage. This is just a fancy term that means that it’s describing the way something is said. Paralanguage about a non-POV character simply has to be part of the Motivation, not the Reaction. You can find out a whole lot more about paralanguage and its uses from Margie Lawson and her excellent courses on writing.
Is it OK for Camille to sneak in a bit of Reaction here? Yeah, sure, why not? It works pretty well this way. I can’t see an easy way to improve it. When you have to break the rules to make the scene work better then do so. The rules are to help you write better, not write worse. Use them accordingly.