269 Stone Circle – Moon, by Betsy James

Molecules and Metaphor:

Betsy James
On Writing and Teaching Speculative Fiction

On Paragraph Breaks

Language is music. Read your writing aloud!

Words themselves have rhythm. In the overall story arc or shape, listen for the rhythm of the telling, and of the plot itself, as it moves through time.

Listen. Tune your ear.

Your first draft may have an oddly bland or plodding feel, as though you had simply kept reporting what happened until a paragraph seemed long enough, then snipped it off and began another. (This is what a friend of mine claimed about French films: that they were all filmed at once and simply cut into lengths.) (He didn’t like French films.)

Using paragraphs is like shifting your camera angle. Instead of just adding shift after shift into one continuous block, show us, by these shifts of weight and angle, the rhythm and energy of the story’s progress.

Listen. Use paragraph breaks to catch the inherent music/rhythm of the uneven, beloved progress of the dance of life.

Betsy James is the author-illustrator of more than twenty books. Her novel, Roadsouls, was finalist for the 2017 World Fantasy Award, and her latest speculative fiction, Practicing to Be Lightning, will publish in 2026. She lives in Albuquerque, NM, where she writes, paints, teaches, and hikes in the wilderness. Find her at www.betsyjames.com