If you ask a beginning writer whether or not they know how to use the return key, the answer is likely to be a scoffing, “Of course.”
If you ask an advanced writer this same question, the answer is likely to be a much more somber, “I think I have it, but of course, I still get it wrong sometimes.”
Using the return key and learning how to properly paragraph your work is an advanced writing skill.
Until you as a writer start paying close attention to it, chances are, you don’t know how. I certainly didn’t learn how to use the return key until my sixth or seventh novel. (When I went back in and edited Paper Mage for the Kickstarter, that was one of the most important things that I did—breaking paragraphs up so they were easier to read and made sense.)
Of course, I thought I knew how when I first started writing.
Of course, I was wrong.
I can’t give you all the steps for how to use the return key here. I’m just going to give you some very basic tips. If you want to learn how, start looking at your own work while paying attention to the eventual reader of said work. Controlling your paragraphing is a way of controlling the reader, their breathing, their pacing, and so on.
Do you need your reader to slow down in a section? Do you need your reader to be on the edge of their seat turning pages as fast as they can? Using the return key is one of the tools an advanced writer has to do this.
So this leads to the first tip:
Form Follows Function
Fast-paced sections are short.
Brief.
Quick.
Lead your reader.
Let them chase you.
Down the page.
Then you need to give the reader a breather. Such abrupt paragraphs control how they breathe. So give them a chance to catch their breath, hide with the main character away from the killer.
Then run. Again.
This is the most basic level of learning how to use the return key. Fast and slow. Large dense paragraphs will slow down the reader. Maybe you have a lush description of something that you’d like the reader to fully experience. Or perhaps you’re writing a mystery and you want to hide a clue in a large block of text. And on and on and on.
Learning this little bit will help your writing tremendously.
Very generally, the next tip is:
Don’t Bury Dialog
If you can and it’s appropriate, always start a piece of dialog on a new line. This invites the reader in and makes them part of the conversation. In addition, dialog sparks something in a reader, as they get to “hear” the character better. It’s a pick-me-up. It is another chance for a reader to breathe.
Even if the character is just speaking to themselves, put it on a new line. Your story will flow better once you start doing this.
Pay Attention to Emotional Shifts
So very often I see the emotional shifts that a main character is going through buried in the middle of a paragraph. Don’t do that. Let every emotion be its own line. I believe that beginning writers think that making all those emotional shifts in a single paragraph makes it flow better.
It does not. What it does is bury them. The reader loses all that subtly and shifting resonance.
Make it easier for the reader to follow along. Expose that emotion to the reader. It makes the story so much more powerful. I recently went through a paragraphed a story for a friend. The before version was good, very good. The second version brought tears to my eyes because it was so much stronger, all those emotions out there on the page for me to see.
And that’s it! I hope this helps you with your writing.
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