A Dash of Style (18 page)

In Ellen Cooney's novel
Gun Ball Hill
the short paragraphs help accelerate the pace at appropriate moments:

"The English have a genius for prisons," he would tell her.

They took him at 4:00 in the afternoon. A summer day. August 19.

Note also her use of the period, how the short sentences mimic the short paragraphs, each hammering home a point of significance, each further bringing to life the kidnapping.

Raymond Carver, on the other hand, manages to slow the pace with his short paragraphs in his story "Collectors":

I was out of work. But any day I expected to hear from up north. I lay on the sofa and listened to the rain. Now and then I'd lift up and look through the curtain for the mailman.

There was no one on the street, nothing.

Although the paragraphs (and sentences) are short, the pace slows to a crawl. As each point is hammered home, we feel time passing, and nothing happening. Then a new paragraph comes, and still nothing is happening. We are made to feel as the narrator feels.

• The paragraph break is the ultimate balancer. It blocks off a certain size of text, and in doing so wields great power over consistency. For example, a paragraph break can create a one-line paragraph, or a three-page paragraph. If such a paragraph (whether one line or three pages) is thematically encapsulated, then technically the paragraph break fulfills its function. But consistency must be taken into account. One should not have paragraph lengths varying wildly throughout a text. The experience will be too jarring on readers, and they won't be able to settle in.

Thus when inserting a paragraph break, you must also take into account the paragraph breaks that preceded it and those that will follow. The paragraph break, by its nature, is entirely about context (which is why in this chapter we will discuss it here instead of in a separate "context" section). In most cases, you want to set the style by striving for an overall consistency. If your paragraphs average seven sentences, for example, stay as close to that as possible, plus or minus two sentences. This will help establish an overall pace for your book, will help the reader settle in and focus on the content. It will also put you in a position to be able to alert the reader to something important when the time comes.

• Which brings us to breaking with consistency. Once you've offered a general consistency, you can—and should —break the rules, varying paragraph length when the content calls for it. If your work is filled with seven-sentence paragraphs and a one-line paragraph appears, it will hit the reader like a punch; the content in that one-line paragraph will be thrust into the limelight. It's a way of hammering home a point, of indicating extreme significance. Breaking with paragraph length is particularly effective in beginnings and endings, whether of sections, chapters, or the entire book. It can help add a dramatic touch, a feeling of breaking with style, which beginnings and endings often demand.

Here's an exemplary example from Brian Ascalon's Roley novel
American Son:

Tomas is the son who helps pay the mortgage by selling attack dogs to rich people and celebrities. He is the son who causes her embarrassment by showing up at family parties with his muscles covered in gangster tattoos and his head shaved down to stubble and his eyes bloodshot from pot. He is really half white, half Filipino but dresses like a Mexican, and it troubles our mother that he does this. She cannot understand why if he wants to be something he is not he does not at least try to look white. He is also the son who says that if any girlfriend criticized our mother or treated her wrong he would knock the bitch across the house.

I am the son who is quiet and no trouble, and I help our mother with chores around the house.

By the paragraph break placement alone, we can feel the contrast between the two brothers. The contrast between the two paragraphs is terrific, with the short paragraph truly standing out, hammering home the point that these two brothers couldn't be any more different.

Louise Erdrich uses the paragraph break to great effect in her story "Matchimanito":

I guided the last buffalo hunt. I saw the last bear shot. I trapped the last beaver with a pelt of more than two years' growth. I spoke aloud the words of the government treaty and refused to sign the settlement papers that would take away our woods and lake. I axed the last birch that was older than I, and I saved the last of the Pillager family.

Fleur.

We found her on a cold afternoon in late winter, out in her family's cabin near Matchimanito Lake, where my companion, Edgar Pukwan, of the tribal police, was afraid to go.

Fleur. It is a bold, one-word paragraph, sandwiched between two longer paragraphs; you don't get more conspicuous punctuation than that. And it works. Erdrich signals to us that someone new is on the scene, someone of great significance.

"Short paragraphs put air around what you write and make it look inviting, whereas one long chunk of type can discourage the reader from even starting to read."

—William Zinsser

HOW TO USE SECTION BREAKS

When considering whether to use a section break, the first thing you must realize is that every time you use one, you give the reader a chance to put your book down. The section break carries nearly the power of a chapter break and also has nearly the visual appeal of one: it creates a nice, too-convenient place for a reader to rest. So first ask yourself if you truly need it. Can the chapter live without it? If you decide you do need a significant break, then ask yourself if you shouldn't use a chapter break instead. You must have an excellent justification for why these sections must fall under one chapter, instead of being chapters in and of themselves.

If you pass the test of these two questions, then you are ready to use the section break. Sometimes it will be necessary. If so, let's explore some ways to use it:

• Section breaks can indicate a passing of time. While this is more traditionally indicated by a chapter break, there certainly are instances within a chapter where time can pass. For example, you

might be dealing with a small amount of time (say, one hour), in which case a section break could be more appropriate than a full-fledged chapter break. Or if your work spans a ten-year period, and each chapter covers one year, and you want to indicate the passing of only a few months, then a section break would be appropriate.

• Section breaks can indicate a change of setting. There might be an instance when you need to change settings within the same chapter; perhaps, for instance, a setting change is a minor one (like going elsewhere within the same town) and thus you'd want a less substantial break. In general, drastic setting changes are better indicated by chapter breaks, particularly if they are coupled with time or viewpoint transitions. What's important is consistency: you don't want to use section breaks to indicate setting changes in one chapter, yet use chapter breaks for the same purpose in subsequent chapters. Whichever route you choose, stick to the course.

• Section breaks can indicate a change in viewpoint. In general, changes in viewpoint should be reserved for chapter breaks; this is among the most substantial of breaks, and readers need time and space to realize they are inside another character's head. The last thing you want to do is switch perspectives within one chapter and have the reader read on, thinking he's still in the original character's point of view; when he finally figures it out, he will have to go back and reread the material, and will be frustrated.

That said, there are rare instances when you might prefer to switch viewpoints within the same chapter. For example, if you have created an ensemble cast and have decided to give each character equal weight and switch viewpoints frequently between them; or if you're dealing with a romance and two characters share equal weight, and you alternate between their viewpoints throughout the work. In such a case, you might alternate viewpoint chapter by chapter, but in the final chapter, when the pace accelerates and they come together, alternate their viewpoints within the very same chapter, in which case you'd use a section break. Even then it would be debatable. If you go this route, it must be justified, and pains must be taken to immediately let readers know that they are in the midst of another viewpoint.

• To indicate transitions where none are indicated. Sometimes you encounter a work where a major transition occurs within a chapter and yet there is nothing to delineate it at all. This will confuse the reader, as he won't realize there has been a change of time, setting, or viewpoint (or some other significant change) until it's too late. He will then have to go back and reread. If a major transition must occur within a chapter, there should usually be a section break. Without it, you leave your work open to confusion.

• Section breaks can offer readers a rest within a long chapter. But keep in mind that needing a rest is not reason enough for a section break. Section breaks should only be used to offer a rest if they
also
meet the criteria of a significant transition. Breaks can't just come for the sake of it—otherwise, readers will pick up exactly where they left off, and wonder why there was a break at all. It devalues the break, and readers won't take it seriously the next time it appears.

If you do end up using a section break, remember that every time you do you create new beginnings and endings. The power of these moments must be taken seriously. Don't use one unless you're prepared to conclude the previous section with a strong hook and begin the new one with an equally strong one. More important, make sure you build to that hook well in advance, and don't just tack it on. Hooks must always be organic to the material, and the best ones take several pages to build.

Let's look at section breaks in literature. Tim O'Brien used it masterfully in his story "The Things They Carried":

With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.

They were called legs or grunts.

With his punctuation, O'Brien shows us how commonplace death was in Vietnam. In the section's final sentence, discussing common items used by the soldiers, he mentions the poncho, and offhandedly mentions that it can be used to carry away a dead body—as if carrying away a dead body is a routine event. Then he offers a section break, and changes the topic, switching again to something commonplace and reinforcing the idea that a dead body is not worth discussing.

Paul Cody offers one of the most inventive uses of the section break I've seen in the opening of his novel
Compline:

1:00 a.m. Monday, January 6.

Ann left earlier in the evening for Knoxville, where her sister died on Saturday, around 10:00 a.m. After two years with cancer, then a stroke.

Ray is awake, sitting in the dark, sipping wine from a twelve-ounce tumbler.

Outside, the temperature is below zero, and may go down to ten below.

The sky is mostly deep black, with a few scudding clouds. In the backyard, on the other side of the window, a bright half-moon casts the shadows of bare branches on the snow blanketed on the ground.

Ray is staying behind in upstate New York with Eammon and Quentin, their sons, who are ten and seven. The four of them, Ray, Ann, Eammon and Quentin, went to East Tennessee only two weeks ago, when Martha, who had been sick so long, had a massive stroke. They flew down three days before Christmas.

In another author's hands this could be too stylistic, but Cody pulls it off. He begins his novel by hammering home intense images, each a snapshot, a fragment of a scene, pulling us deeper into a dark world. The pauses offered by a section break normally give us a chance to pull away from something dark, to take a break and start something new; but here, Cody shows us that there is no getting away, that even when we take a rest, we will come back to unremitting bleakness.

DANGER OF OVERUSE AND MISUSE OF PARAGRAPH BREAKS

• Overuse. Short paragraphs work well in newspaper and magazine writing, but they are not for the world of books (indeed this problem often plagues journalists-turned-authors). When a reader settles in for three hundred or more pages he expects a consistent pace, and paragraphs define that pace. Readers who turn to books look forward to stretching their attention capacity to absorb seven-sentence paragraphs (or more), and often want to be more mentally challenged than when reading a newspaper article. When paragraph breaks are overused, it creates consistently short paragraphs, which creates a jarring reading experience.

Just as short sentences make for choppy reading, so do short paragraphs. Paragraphs might be conceptualized to be too short to begin with. There is nothing wrong with a short paragraph on occasion, or even a series of them at some pivotal point in the work, but if the work consistently employs short paragraphs, it will be problematic.

• Paragraphs might be too short because they break prematurely, before the direction has a chance to conclude itself. If so, they can usually be fixed by merely moving the break, placing it later, by combining material from the following paragraph. This will fix the symptom, but will not solve the bigger issue: your thought process. Lucid paragraphs, even more than lucid sentences, are the mark of attention span: it takes talent to hold a complex idea in your head during the course of several sentences, to make a paragraph feel like one long thought. Writers with a short attention span will have difficulty in this regard, but even writers with the greatest span will at some point get tired and slip, and end up concluding a paragraph slightly too soon or too late. If so, it indicates you are not thinking as clearly as you should, not conceptualizing paragraphs as a single unit. This means you will also inevitably begin a paragraph on a bad note, since you are beginning with remnant material. Such a work will feel chaotic and will eventually lead a reader to put a work down.