writeworld:

sp00kyjames: sliceofbri: THERE MUST BE A PARAGRAPH BREAK EVERY TIME A NEW CHARACTER SPEAKS THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL NO ONE WANTS TO READ ONE BIG BLOCK OF TEXT JESUS CHRIST REMEMBER TIP TOP OK: Make a paragraph every time that any of these things change! Ti me P lace To pic P erson

The most obvious place to see this in action is a screenplay. Look to see if one of your favourite movies is available in script format on a website like SimplyScripts or Script-o-Rama, and see how words become visuals in an orderly way.

If you treat every paragraph as a changed camera angle, even in an intimate close-up conversation between the same two people in the same scene, you’ll avoid that impenetrablechunkoftextwithnobreaks which isn’t just bad style, it’s also visually off-putting.

Once you’ve put your reader off, it’s very hard to bring them back.

BTW, I know this GIF is Hiccup reacting to Astrid from HTTYD - but with no other point of reference, it also looks like the expression of a guy who’s got to the loo and unzipped in the nick of time. I think it was C. S. Lewis who once wrote, “There are times in every man’s life when the sign GENTS is worthy of celebration in song.”

Just pointing that out. Don’t mind me… :->