Can another author explain to me why so many stories don't use paragraphs?

[Tyranomaster]

My honest answer:

Because most writers are beginners on webnovel sites and their experience comes from other half-assed works on those sites and not from actual books. As a result, "bad" examples get reproduced and become the norm, causing the "old-school" type of storytelling to be looked upon as if that was the issue.

It is a point that actually grinds my gears, because people began complaining about "long paragraphs" but in a different topic start praising works in literature examples, that had 3x the length of the paragraphs they complained about.

Tl;dr

I stopped caring about feedback because of it. I just write in my own style because whatever anyone is saying, it works and filters out the zoomer crowd.

Muh learned ADHD. I swear, some aspects of zoomer behavior is just as bad as boomers.

 

[A_the_king_of_all]

ig personal choices, mainly because i think people got used to texting so it happened naturally as opposed to emails which are in a paragraph format

 

[ph03nix]

Most authors on scribblehub might have been newbies and non-native speakers of english. They must have intended to type on their phones and not on laptops. Also some of them might be using AI paraphrasers for lexical-gravitude-level-shit development of storyline. So many plotholes left to explore at this point.

 

[l8rose]

I will admit that I have short paragraphs but I was taught that you should create a new paragraph if the "subject" of the paragraph changes. If the content moves away from what I started the paragraph with then I create a new paragraph.

Of course, this highlights that I really need to be more descriptive in my writing but that's a whole other issue.

I also use short paragraphs for dramatic reasons. Sometimes, even just a three word paragraph.

Honestly its a grab bag, you'll never know what you're gonna get.

 

[Amelia-chan]

Lately, I've been seeing a huge influx in stories where every single sentence is a new line. No paragraphs, and usually no dialog tags. Is it just that even native speakers are getting worse at English? Like, as someone in the education system, I know that basically every student (save those who were already good students) who was in middle and high school during covid is a year behind thanks to really dumb administrative decisions, but is that really the crux of it? I know that a lot of Japanese Webnovels in the original Japanese is written in that way. So is it that direct translation from native tongue is causing this? Is it that there are multiple factors coming together that is the issue?

I'm just generally confounded by it, because it doesn't actually make reading easier, at least, not as a native speaker. My brain is kind of wired to pause at paragraphs, or if I daydream while I read, I go back to search for the most recent paragraph I remember, which makes back searching easier. When I see every sentence is a new line, I usually end up dropping before even trying to read the story.

What's your verdict, other authors?

I think a lot of people on scribblehub and internet novel places just aren’t native English speakers.

 

[Kalliel]

Because there are people like me who can't read a long paragraph without feeling sore in my eyes.

 

[Tyranomaster]

Because there are people like me who can't read a long paragraph without feeling sore in my eyes.

I'm a bit confused. If the word count is the same, then a long paragraph should cause less eye strain, not more, as your eyes should need to go back and forth less often. Each new line, your eyes have to move across the whole screen. Am I missing something?

 

[Alski]

I'm a bit confused. If the word count is the same, then a long paragraph should cause less eye strain, not more, as your eyes should need to go back and forth less often. Each new line, your eyes have to move across the whole screen. Am I missing something?

Zoomer ADHD brain. It doesnt work like a regular brain.

 

[Tyranomaster]

Zoomer ADHD brain. It doesnt work like a regular brain.

I see, psychosomatic strain that is probably self-induced by habit forming behaviors.

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

They seem to not put effort into setting anything up. That requires at least some amount of descriptors. It's like they think that they can jot down a partial stream-of-thought and not get called out on it.

These guys can't have floating heads talking to one another, exist in blank rooms, exist past the space-time continuum where nothing exists, where they have no agency to even breath let alone feel something.

 

[Cookiez_N_Potionz]

I'm sorry, what do you mean?

Descriptions are key.

Do these people just write plain dialogue?

 

[Tyranomaster]

I'm sorry, what do you mean?

Descriptions are key.

Do these people just write plain dialogue?

Every descriptive sentence is it's own line. There is no delineation between one sentence to another. So sure, sometimes they describe things, but there is no paragraph organization. It's almost like writing poetry, but it isn't because it's longer than even ancient epics... Example off the top of my head for what I mean:

The sky was a pale blue that day.

Fitting for how they felt.

Sad.

James walked out of his house.

Like he had every day before that.

Despite everything, that was still the same.

It's like that, but for chapter after chapter.

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

Sentences can look like paragraphs on tiny phone screens. When I started writing on phone and then saw it on desktop i realized the difference.

 

[Cookiez_N_Potionz]

Sentences can look like paragraphs on tiny phone screens. When I started writing on phone and then saw it on desktop i realized the difference.

You know what I always write on my phone and only use my laptop for work. Maybe I should check if this is a poblem for me too

 

[Mystic_Grasshopper]

Considering some advice given on the site it's not that surprising it's become overly common.
- Write short chapters (1k-2.5k words)
- Simple paragraphs (five sentences in one is rare.)
- "Said" is invisible so removing it can save words, some people use a hybrid of skipping it when they think it's reasonable.

I don't know if I'd attribute anything to education as much as gradual enshittification of copied styles. Maybe the trending stories having some of the elements you describe are poorly copied by someone that doesn't understand why it was written that way. That's if I assumed the writing like it was all bad.

Ironically the better version of this style is to appeal to skim readers by being short enough for you to read word to word rather than getting drowned out by excessive text. Claiming it's because of zoomer brain is ironically a boomer thing to say.

Upon further research this is such an old topic that people have talked about it ad nauseum saying it's either to save time or to be more engaging for the audience(One of the oldest articles/blogposts I found was from 2011, 14 years ago). The book thief itself is filled with combinations of single sentence paragraphs with a couple of longer paragraphs sprinkled in from page to page.

 

[Clo]

Concerning paragraph length, I personally view ScribbleHub on desktop with the narrowest width, in order to have a similar view from my users on mobile.

Making your "paragraphs" less than one screen long on mobile is actually helpful for that readerbase. It does mean you lose the chunky paragraphs you'd expect to see in classic novels.

For the absence of "said", I can only speak for myself, but I try not to use them very often because of He Who Fights With Monsters using it so much. In reading, it's invisible. In audiobook format? It's grating.

So if I can use action to tag the speaker, or if I can avoid it entirely and let context or voice determine the speaker? Then that's what I do.

I suppose it's a pendulum swing effect, in my case.

 

[Valmond]

To answer. The standard five lines was reduced to 2 to 3. Because of mobile format, five lines on mobile turns into a massive wall of text.

It becomes easier to lose your place, let alone it makes it more difficult to stop and continue.

As such, 2 to 3 lines became the standard for web because most people read on their phones.

Five plus lines are harder to hold attention.

If you type on a computer, there is a lot more space. Same with if you do it on an iPad. However, when translated to mobile.

Two lines or three lines would equal about 4 to 5 lines.

 

[Deleted member 206441]

If I post any of my works online id probably rewrite it in a short form format so its easier for mobile readers.

If I ever write a WN format first and decide to publish it in to physical books, I'd rewrite it with a different pace and longer paragraphs.

 

[Golden_Hyde]

Clicking into a chapter and seeing your entire phone screen be filled with a wall of text is a massive deterrant for most readers.

I can't help to highlight that how true this is. And I had to admit that it's getting harder to focus on one single paragraph when reading without suddenly committing doomscrolling, though I was mostly tried to identify whether the author tries to be edgy at first with dropping F-bombs wholesale before me dropping that story right away.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Sounds like they're trying to write a script for a manga (etc.) but don't know how to write scripts.

Seriously - I've seen some of the older scripts from Marvel Comics even, and, aside from "dialogue tags" that are just a character name and a hyphen, they look like one sentence paragraphs throughout.