As a reader, what is your attention span tolerance for the minimum and maximum number of sentences in a paragraph?

Bayleyrockstar

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LMAO. Join the club. I had boxes of vintage paperbacks at my disposal, and availed myself of their virtues. According to all that's holy writ now, it ruined me too.
I know... The lost texts are lost for a reason, I guess... Now people hear about a bookstore and think of old people sitting with a cup of tea, reading the dictionary...

i honestly don't know exactly what this is. I know I must read faster than whatever average there is, just because I heard about it a lot. But then again, I'd run across people that would say "oh, yeah, that's about how long I'd have taken to read that, too." This was in college. Then later on, I learned they were "taught" to speed read. By reading the topic sentence and the conclusion sentence of every paragraph. I didn't know people did that. to me that sounds like "I ran a mile in four minutes... but I use my bicycle for the middle half of the mile".

Yeah, I meant it as I read extremely fast due to starting at a young age. I'll finish proper novels in less than a day if they're good. I know those people you talk about, and that's mainly for reading essays, which I still use. But for enjoyment? I'll take it one sentence at a time. It's why I have a pet peeve with people who write 500-word chapters. Writing is hard, but that's like less than five minutes for me to read and digest.
 
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TinaMigarlo

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Yeah, I meant it as I read extremely fast due to starting at a young age.
hey. paperbacks in first second grade? adults crowding around as you recite the newpaper before kindergarten? I went to gradeschool not knowing everyone didn't do that, LMAO. Kinda cool to meet someone online self reporting the same deal.
I'll finish proper novels in less than a day if they're good.
yeah. I was given a style recommendation to read 'a bullet for cinderella". Started it early morning on a saturday. I don't know what time I quit, but I kept gorging on it, engrossed. By the time I hit a certain point, I was like screw it, 40 odd more pages I got this in the bag? Thenb doing a short 200 page novel in one sitting like that, its like you grok the whole thing at once, sort of. I know I finished it before i went to bed
I know those people you talk about, and that's mainly for reading essays, which I still use. But for enjoyment? I'll take it one sentence at a time.
I guess I *could* train myself to just do first/last sentence of paragraphs, but... why. Maybe its an obsessive thing, but I don't wanna get the itch I missed stuff, lol. I can't skim.
It's why I have a pet peeve with people who write 500-word chapters. Writing is hard, but that's like less than five minutes for me to read and digest.
For me its not just the time factor. I expect a decent writer to sometimes drop that whole paragraph description of something, draw me in. then for some big deal, several paragraphs ogling it, or even several pages, putting it on display. I mean, its a *highlight* of the story? Why shouldn't there be the literary equivalent of spotlights scanning it, women dancing around it, a band playing. Look! Just look at it!

For me, that's what's missing. The... what. Some sort of spectacle that I'm describing. I mean I *know* I can't do the spectacle description when writing that good yet, but... its what I'm shooting for when i think I might be close to it. I feel as if, at least I know what I'm trying to do.

I like when I meet another reader in public. You get that cool little sperg out conversation where you compare books and authors you read. my one buddy called that a "geek fest", and I guess that's an okay description of it. so thanks for the nostalgic geek fest, lol.
 

Bayleyrockstar

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hey. paperbacks in first second grade? adults crowding around as you recite the newpaper before kindergarten? I went to gradeschool not knowing everyone didn't do that, LMAO. Kinda cool to meet someone online self reporting the same deal.
Yeah, I actually started before that, learning to read from pre-2000s videogame instructions, then kindergarten introduced me to novels. By second grade, I started making my own.

yeah. I was given a style recommendation to read 'a bullet for cinderella". Started it early morning on a saturday. I don't know what time I quit, but I kept gorging on it, engrossed. By the time I hit a certain point, I was like screw it, 40 odd more pages I got this in the bag? Thenb doing a short 200 page novel in one sitting like that, its like you grok the whole thing at once, sort of. I know I finished it before i went to bed
Yeah, it's why I got into webnovels. Normal Novels just don't last too long. That and modern books are all over the place in quality since publishers basically made self-publishing the only way to go.

I guess I *could* train myself to just do first/last sentence of paragraphs, but... why. Maybe its an obsessive thing, but I don't wanna get the itch I missed stuff, lol. I can't skim.
I do it for scientific papers. But anything else is terrible. Unless it's a chinese webnovel. You can skip several paragraphs in some of those and still be on the same action.

For me its not just the time factor. I expect a decent writer to sometimes drop that whole paragraph description of something, draw me in. then for some big deal, several paragraphs ogling it, or even several pages, putting it on display. I mean, its a *highlight* of the story? Why shouldn't there be the literary equivalent of spotlights scanning it, women dancing around it, a band playing. Look! Just look at it!

For me, that's what's missing. The... what. Some sort of spectacle that I'm describing. I mean I *know* I can't do the spectacle description when writing that good yet, but... its what I'm shooting for when i think I might be close to it. I feel as if, at least I know what I'm trying to do.
Yeah, not a lot you can do with 500 words.

I like when I meet another reader in public. You get that cool little sperg out conversation where you compare books and authors you read. my one buddy called that a "geek fest", and I guess that's an okay description of it. so thanks for the nostalgic geek fest, lol.

Absolutely. Geek Fest is what it's called. Based on a Geek being someone with a very specific hobby. In this case, reading. I'm particularly a fan of fantasy since that's what I started reading at a young age. And what I write most of the time these days.
 

CharlesEBrown

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I had no desire to read going into kindergarten. By the time I started first grade, I was reading at least at a third-grade level, and my teacher told my parents "It was an experience having Charles when we did the unit on dinosaurs. He kept correcting my pronunciation - and the two times he was wrong, we both were."
 

TinaMigarlo

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I had no desire to read going into kindergarten. By the time I started first grade, I was reading at least at a third-grade level, and my teacher told my parents "It was an experience having Charles when we did the unit on dinosaurs. He kept correcting my pronunciation - and the two times he was wrong, we both were."
dinosaurs, ha. *guilty*.

@Bayleyrockstar
it just dawned on me that my funny "reading early" jokes and stories, well, there's going to be a bunch of us here did that.
maybe a thread on that would be popular, that would be fun.
thanks !
 

Bayleyrockstar

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it just dawned on me that my funny "reading early" jokes and stories, well, there's going to be a bunch of us here did that.
maybe a thread on that would be popular, that would be fun.
thanks !
well, if there's anyone to share the fact that I wrote an entire 8 part story, in class, in the second grade, and had our teacher read it out loud.

well, thankfully I'm out of shamosterone.
 
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