Question:
How Much Sentences Should There Be in a Paragraph?
Edwin
2015-09-06 01:46:38 UTC
I'm writing a novel and I keep re-editing my first chapter since the paragraphs are too long, which in my opinion, makes the reader not attracted to my story. But I also don't want my paragraphs to be too short as well.

In your opinion, how many sentences should there be in an average paragraph of a novel?
Seven answers:
Steven J Pemberton
2015-09-06 03:02:19 UTC
As many or as few as you need to get your point across. I've sometimes looked at a paragraph and thought, "That's too big, I'll break it up," but I've never counted the sentences. One long sentence could occupy as much space on the page as five short sentences.



By the way, don't keep editing that one chapter. That's a recipe for never finishing. Finish a draft of the whole book, then start editing. Anything in a story isn't good or bad in itself, only in the context of the story as a whole. Until you have the whole story, or something at least vaguely like it, you don't know what context anything exists in. You might decide to cut the first chapter, because you started the story in the wrong place. If you'd polished every sentence until it shone, you'd be reluctant to cut it, even though you'd make the story better, because that would represent a lot of wasted time.



EDIT: In a fit of boredom, I wrote a quick and dirty program to count the sentences and paragraphs in my books, then divided one by the other to get an average. It comes out at between 3.5 and 4 sentences per paragraph. But don't feel that you have to make them all the same length. To my way of thinking, that would make for a boring read, more so than having some long ones and some short ones.
Ferdous
2015-09-06 02:09:00 UTC
10
Elaine M
2015-09-06 09:01:10 UTC
There is no average. But then again nobody wants to read huge blocks of text. The paragraph holds one idea, when you move on to another, you start another paragraph.
(O).O phantom
2015-09-07 00:05:40 UTC
It takes three to make it a paragraph, around five is usally when you need to start breaking them into multiple paragraphs.
?
2015-09-06 02:06:49 UTC
Enough to furnish the image you want to bring forth. Could be one line to 50 lines but an editor might say, "Big paragraphs give to much information when two words may say the same thing........
?
2015-09-06 01:51:03 UTC
As long as it is not run-on or incomplete sentence, you can have as much as you want. However, if it's professional writing, the shortest, the better.
343 Guilty Spark
2015-09-06 01:47:46 UTC
4-6 at best.


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