Young Writers Society

I wondered if this was how souls felt, waiting for judgment after death.

Only, instead of Fate deciding, it was my parents.

I waited by the door to their private rooms, trying to hear anything through the sound ward. My magic fought against the cold, solid surface to try and find a crack I could exploit, but the ward was perfectly smooth. I couldn’t even get impressions of the conversation going on behind, driving my fingers into the physical wall I was leaning against. I was glad it was limestone and not wood trim or the door.

Frustration would drive my magic to take chips out of any surface it could. Thankfully, I wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to take chips out of stone.

It’s not like I needed to know the exact words. With my sister moving to get married, they’d been debating whether or not I would accompany her for protection. It should be my duty to protect the most important heir from harm, as the family’s bodyguard. I had been protecting her almost exclusively the past three years.

RainaNight wrote:I have been working on a story lately and It's been going really well. The problem is that they never taught us how to put words into paragraphs. It was always just five sentences please help me understand this.

Raina Night

Rosey Unicorn wrote:Paragraphs are simply ways of breaking up ideas. You can use paragraphs to draw importance to pieces of information by putting them at the start or as the only piece of information in a paragraph, or you can use longer paragraphs to slow the pace of your story down.

You can have longer paragraphs, but try not to go over 7/8 lines. Then readers start to get bored with how much information is in any given idea. You can have one word paragraphs, however.

An example of long and short paragraphs:

I wondered if this was how souls felt, waiting for judgment after death.

Only, instead of Fate deciding, it was my parents.

I waited by the door to their private rooms, trying to hear anything through the sound ward. My magic fought against the cold, solid surface to try and find a crack I could exploit, but the ward was perfectly smooth. I couldn’t even get impressions of the conversation going on behind, driving my fingers into the physical wall I was leaning against. I was glad it was limestone and not wood trim or the door.

Frustration would drive my magic to take chips out of any surface it could. Thankfully, I wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to take chips out of stone.

It’s not like I needed to know the exact words. With my sister moving to get married, they’d been debating whether or not I would accompany her for protection. It should be my duty to protect the most important heir from harm, as the family’s bodyguard. I had been protecting her almost exclusively the past three years.

You can use short paragraphs to create a faster pace, and longer paragraphs to slow the work down. It's a good idea to interchange between paragraph lengths, because readers get bored with the same paragraph length being used all the time.

Hopefully this helps. Let me know if you have any more questions.