Timey-Wimey Tenses: Past-Tenseception

Finding the most efficient order in which to tell a story can be a tricky process. Sometimes, a perfectly linear narrative storyline will suffice—the story begins, progresses through a series of events, and then comes to an end. More often than not, however, your narrative will have important background information: events that happened before the book itself began that are important for understanding the plot. Some stories have only a little background information to be worked into the narrative; other stories are made up of fifty percent or more backstory.

When the characters learn a backstory that they didn’t know, it is usually easy to work into the narrative—the audience learns it in the same manner as the characters. Luke finds out that Darth Vader is his father, he wants to find out how this could be true, he asks Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan tells him (and us) the backstory. Simple as can be. Other times, however, the characters already know their backstories, and your task as an author is to find a smooth way to inform your audience of the information.

The problem that often arises with backstory is one of tense: if your story is already written in past tense, then how do you relate information that is even more past tense?

Because it's timey-wimey and past tense within past tense! Eh? Eh?

Past Perfect Tense

The answer lies on our list of the sixteen different tenses in English. Most stories in past tense employ the “Past Simple” tense (Freja picked up the gun and pointed it at the guard). In order to relate events that happened before the current narrative, you simply need to switch to “Past Perfect” tense—it’s the tense that uses the word “had” a whole lot:

     Freja studied the ramshackle warehouse from the pub across the street. There were no signs of activity around it. But she had visited every other building on the list, and had found nothing. If this wasn’t where the cultists were hiding, then the list was wrong.

Most of that paragraph is written in past simple tense: “Freja studied,” “There were,” and “This wasn’t.” But that third, highlighted sentence is relating events that happened before the rest of the paragraph, so it uses had to drop into past perfect tense—even further in the past than the rest of the story.

Many writers forget the hads, leaving background events in the same tense as the rest of the narrative, like so:

     Freja studied the ramshackle warehouse from the pub across the street. There were no signs of activity around it. But she visited every other building on the list, and found nothing. If this wasn’t where the cultists were hiding, then the list was wrong.

See the problem? Now there’s nothing in that third sentence to indicate that those events happened before the rest of the paragraph—it almost sounds like Freja sat in the pub studying the warehouse, left and visited a bunch of other buildings, and then returned. Readers would probably puzzle out what the writer really meant, but it’s needlessly confusing.

So, you can use “had” in past perfect tense to relate events that happened before the current events of the narrative, but there’s still a problem: all those hads can really clutter up your prose. Past perfect tense can become really tiresome to read and to write if it goes on for more than a paragraph or so. For backstory that would take any longer than that to relate (anything you might call a bona fide flashback), you’ll probably want to use another method to share the information.

Past Perfect Introduction

One method is to use a few passages of hads to introduce your flashback, and then transition back into past simple tense for the rest of the backstory. Then, when you return to the “present” events of the narrative, you mark that transition with the word now or something similar. For example:

     Freja approached the warehouse empty-handed and alone. She had learned that weapons and backup would do her no good when she had gone up against the cult at the apartment complex in Copenhagen. She had been armed with an H&K MP5 rifle and her 9mm pistol, and had brought along two AKS squadrons for the raid.

     The first squadron went into the complex through the front doors while Freja led the second squadron through the rear. They rammed in the doors, forgoing stealth for speed and surprise.

     [More events, etcetera.]

     When her backup pistol jammed as well, Freya was forced to withdraw with the rest of the squadron. It had been an unmitigated disaster.

     This time, Freya was armed with only her wits and the small book of spells that Emil had given her. But with her new understanding of what the cultists were, she knew she could stop them on her own. She walked up to the warehouse door and pulled it open.

See how it works? A few sentences of past perfect tense at the beginning (and one at the end) let readers know that we’re jumping backwards in time. This can still be a little confusing for readers if you’re not careful with it, but it is far more readable than umpteen paragraphs of hads.

Break and Flashback

An even clearer method of relating a flashback is to simply use a line break or chapter break to show your readers that you are switching gears and to then relate your flashback in the same tense as the rest of the story. This method is used quite often by many authors. You can find some professionally-done examples in several books that I can think of off the top of my head:

The Shadow Rising by Robert Jordan (Book four of The Wheel of Time)—this is the method by which Mr. Jordan related the history of the Aiel when Rand went to Rhuidean. Note that he used an in-world method of delivering the flashbacks; that is, these were memories being projected into the mind of the protagonist, and we received them as he did.

The Way of Kings and Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson—the first two books of The Stormlight Archive have both featured entire chapters devoted to the backstory of one of the characters (Kaladin in the first book and Shallan in the second). These chapters are scattered throughout the book, effectively serving as a series of flashbacks.

Holes by Louis Sachar—this book is actually unusually complex compared to most middle-grade stories. The story continually jumps around between the “present day” events of the story to the recent background of individual characters to various historical events that pertain to the narrative. In fact, in this book Mr. Sachar employs every single method of delivering backstory that I’ve outlined in this post. If you want to improve your flashback delivery, go read Holes and pay close attention to his tense usage. In fact, that’s your homework—who doesn’t want to read Holes again, am I right? Go do it.

Punctuation Problems: Proper Parentheses, Part Two

On Punctuation With Parentheses

Parenthetical statements come in two varieties: small statements within a sentence, or longer statements of one or more sentences.

When inserting a parenthetical statement into a sentence, don’t move any of the sentence’s punctuation into the parentheses or adjust the grammar of the sentence to account for the text in the parentheses. You should be able to completely remove the parenthetical statement from the sentence and still have all grammar and punctuation flow correctly:

     Original: While I was speaking with Ludwig, I was also texting my wife.

     Wrong: While I was speaking with Ludwig (my step-father,) I was also texting my wife.

     Right: While I was speaking with Ludwig (my step-father), I was also texting my wife.

     Original: I don’t dislike Ludwig, but I don’t really enjoy his company, either.

     Wrong: I don’t dislike Ludwig (or his children,) but I don’t really enjoy their company, either.

     Right: I don’t dislike Ludwig (or his children), but I don’t really enjoy his company, either.

As a good rule of thumb, if the parenthetical is within a sentence, two things should be true: first, you should not begin the parenthetical with a capital unless it is a word that is normally capitalized (like a name); second, you should never have any punctuation at the end of the statement inside the parentheses. The only exception for this is if the statement is a question or an exclamation, in which case you can end it with a question mark or exclamation point, respectively. Note, however, that the question mark or exclamation point will not end the sentence.

     Wrong: Ludwig is really smart (He is a physicist.) and kind of socially awkward.

     Right: Ludwig is really smart (he is a physicist) and kind of socially awkward.

     Wrong: I don’t really get Ludwig (and probably never will;) he doesn’t really get me either.

     Right: I don’t really get Ludwig (and probably never will); he doesn’t really get me, either.

    

     Right: The other day, Ludwig wore lederhosen (seriously  . . . lederhosen?) to my baseball game.

     Original: But he bought me ice cream afterward, which was nice.

     Wrong: But he bought me ice cream afterward (my favorite!) Which was nice.

     Right: But he bought me ice cream afterward (my favorite!), which was nice.

If, on the other hand, your parenthetical statement is a sentence or more, then simply insert the entire thing into your paragraph as you would any other sentence, only with parentheses around it:

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. (I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year, so that seems like it would be irresponsible.) But my mom really wants me to come.

Note that, as always, the entire parenthetical statement could be removed from the paragraph without a problem:

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. But my mom really wants me to come.

This is why you should make sure that none of the information outside the parentheses refers directly to any of the information inside the parentheses—otherwise, the parenthetical wouldn’t be able to be removed without affecting the flow of information.

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. (I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year, so that seems like it would be irresponsible.) But my mom really wants me to come, so I may need to get permission from my Band Director.

Without the parentheses, that paragraph wouldn’t make sense:

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. But my mom really wants me to come, so I may need to get permission from my Band Director.

In such cases, you’re best off moving more information into the parentheses or getting rid of the parentheses altogether.

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go, but my mom really wants me to come. (I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year, so that seems like it would be irresponsible. I may need to get permission from my Band Director.)

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. (I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year, so that seems like it would be irresponsible.) But my mom really wants me to come (so I may need to get permission from my Band Director).

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go, since I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year—skipping seems like it would be irresponsible. But my mom really wants me to come, so I may need to get permission from my Band Director.

Avoiding Over-Capitalization

A few weeks ago we discussed proper capitalization, and I mentioned that I would discuss the capitalization of words you make up for your story. These could be devices or technologies that you thought up, magical spells or items, or fictional illnesses and conditions. They could be unusual offices in a fictional government, brand names from a science-fiction universe, aspects of an alien culture, or places in another world.

The majority of words that require capitalization are proper nouns—names, titles, and the like; and, in most stories, the majority of made-up words will also be proper nouns. This means that a particularly complex science fiction or fantasy story can often end up with a high density of capitalized words.

Now, many experienced writers and editors advise that you avoid having too many made-up words in your story (I gave you that advice in this post). Unfortunately, one of the easiest and most common methods of avoiding made-up words is to take a common English word and capitalize it to show that it is significant. So instead of calling the council that rules your fictional society the Shoraki, you might call it the Council. Thus, while this method does avoid creating extra made-up words, it doesn’t cut down on the number of capital letters. This can sometimes lead to paragraphs that look like this:

     Thuum reached into the Golden Cask and removed the Sword of Ramunothet, grinning from ear to ear. When he presented this to the Council, everyone would see that he was the greatest of all the Hunters. And best of all, Norrikis would be forced to serve him as his Du’Shan.

     Cradling the sword in the crook of his arm, Thuum turned to leave and paused. Standing in the door to the Temple was a black-shrouded figure—an Ayelet Assassin. The man raised a gloved hand, revealing a Zurasha Gem in his palm. The gem began to glow as the Assassin focused his Mentalis within it.

Yeesh, am I right? That might seem like a deliberately exaggerated example, but it’s not—I have in fact encountered similar paragraphs in the wild.

There are many ways to avoid excessive amounts of capitalization: you can re-word a title or sentence to remove the need for a capitalized word; you can insert more action in order to further space out any capitalized words; or you can just decide that this is your world and these are your made-up words, so you can just not capitalize them if you don’t want to. It’s up to you, after all, to decide whether your made-up words are proper nouns that require capitalization, common nouns that don’t, or once-proper nouns that have reached such a level of ubiquity in the culture that they no longer require capitalization.

Here’s what that example might look like after some toning down:

     Thuum reached into the golden cask and removed the Ramunothet’s sword, grinning from ear to ear. When he presented this to the council, everyone would see that he was the greatest of all the Hunters; and best of all, Norrikis would be forced to serve him as his du’shan.

     Cradling the sword in the crook of his arm, Thuum turned to leave and paused. Standing in the door to the temple was a black-shrouded figure—an Ayelet assassin. The man raised a gloved hand to reveal a Zurasha gem in his palm, which began to glow with focused mentalis.

We’ve gone from twenty-four capital letters to ten. Hopefully, we can all agree that the second example is much more pleasant to look at and feels a little less like an over-done cliché. So keep an eye out for over-capitalization—remember, neither everything of significance in your story nor every word that you make up needs to be capitalized.

This is more or less pertinent to the article, right? Eh, close enough.

Repetitive Sentence Structures

Many writers tend to prefer certain types of sentences over others. It’s not usually a conscious preference. It’s simply a particular format or type of sentence that comes naturally to a writer, one that they tend to use frequently because it is comfortable and instinctive. But it is possible for repeated use of similar sentence formats to make prose dull and repetitive. 

This is similar to the problem covered in this post, only now we're talking sentence structure instead of length. Here’s an example:

     Smiling, Raul opened the door to the house. With a gasp, Yasmin stepped inside, staring at the transformed entryway. Rose petals covered the floor and brilliant glass lanterns hung in rows from the ceiling. Taking her hand, Raul led the way along the rose-petal path.

There are four sentences in this example, and three of them follow a similar format: short opening phrase, comma, and the rest of the sentence. Try reading that out loud; it gets tiring, doesn’t it?

Which four-course meal looks more appetizing?
Sentence structure is like food; variety is usually preferable to repetition.

There is no hard and fast rule as to how much is too much when it comes to repeating sentence formats. Sometimes a paragraph can function just fine with several sentences of a similar style; other times, even just two similar sentences in a row will be too much. But it is safe to say that the more complicated the format of a particular sentence, the longer you should wait before using a similar format again.

The tricky thing about this problem is that it will be different for every writer. The sentence formats that come most naturally to me won’t be the same as the ones that come naturally to you. This makes it a bit harder to spot, since I cannot give you specific structures to look out for.

As is often the case with hard-to-spot problems, your best bet for this one is to gather together some discerning readers and ask them to keep an eye out for this problem. Reading your prose out loud will also make this problem easier to catch.

Once you’ve identified a repetitive passage, it will usually be pretty easy to fix. Here’s an edited version of our example above:

     Smiling, Raul opened the door to the house. Yasmin stepped inside with a gasp, staring at the transformed entryway. Rose petals covered the floor and brilliant glass lanterns hung in rows from the ceiling. Taking her hand, Raul led the way along the rose-petal path.

Simple, right? In this case, we only needed to alter one sentence to make the passage read more smoothly. Remember: repeated sentence structures grow bland and tiresome—try to get in the habit of varying things up regularly.

P.S.

Okay, I was wrong—I remembered one specific type of sentence structure that tends to get repeated frequently which you should look for. 

Be careful to avoid beginning a series of sentences with the same pronoun (or its possessive form). For example:

     Raul dropped to his knees, clutching his stomach. He didn’t know what was causing it, but he suddenly felt like he was going to vomit out entire organs. He crawled slowly into the bathroom. His muscles spasmed with the pain, slowing him. He groaned with the effort of moving. Finally, he reached the toilet. He lifted the lid with shaking hands and positioned his head over the bowl, but nothing came out.

See the problem? That paragraph had seven sentences; four began with the word “he” and one began with an introductory phrase followed by “he” as the subject. Plus, the second sentence was a compound sentence with “he” as the subject of the second portion and the subject of the embedded clause at the end. That’s seven phrases beginning with “he” across seven sentences. Keep an eye out for any series of sentences that all begin with the same pronoun.

Organized Paragraphs and Missing Sentences

Last time, we discussed rogue sentences: lines that should, thematically, reside in a different paragraph than the one in which they’re found. But not all rogue sentences jump to the wrong paragraph. Sometimes, they don’t even get written. They are missing sentences.

Sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters, and even books themselves all serve to divide content up into easily-processed portions. A sentence is a single thought—when reading, we rarely focus on more than one sentence at a time. A paragraph collects sentences which need to be processed together, helping us to easily find the connection between a series of thoughts. And a series of thoughts can easily become a narrative—a small story in its own right. And no matter how short a story is, it is always jarring when it doesn’t come to an end:

You can find the missing panel here.

Just as you can tell when a panel has been left off of a comic strip, your readers will be able to tell when a sentence has been left off of a paragraph:

     Borya knelt on the carpet before his king. As a general, he was not required to press his forehead to the ground as others would in the presence of the monarch, but he would still be forced to wait for his audience to begin. That would not happen until the king’s small army of servants had finished grooming and pampering their corpulent ruler. Young women and girls darted about, straightening the king’s clothing, powdering his face, and buffing his nails. Borya tapped his fingers on his knees impatiently for several minutes before the women began to finish and withdraw.

     The king snapped his pudgy fingers and a young slave boy hurried to his side, bearing a heavy tray loaded with sweets. The boy winced as the king reached for the tray, ducking his head to the side as though he expected the massive hand to descend in a blow rather than to snatch one of the treats. The king picked up a chocolate-covered plum and bit into it, sending purple juices dribbling down his chins. He frowned down at the chocolate and then spat the mouthful into the boy’s face. As the boy blinked the mess from his eyes, the king swatted the tray from his hands, sending the sweets scattering across the carpet before Borya.

     “What is it, general?” the king said at last. Borya stood and approached the throne.

     “The Gorilam has arrived in the harbor, your majesty.”

Do you see were the thought is incomplete? We had an entire paragraph on that slave boy—his approach, his reactions to the king’s movements, and the unfortunate abuse he suffered. Then, the paragraph ends without completing the narrative. What happened to the boy?

Was he forced to crawl along the floor, gathering up the sweets, all while spit and chewed chocolate dripped down his face? Did he immediately dart from the room, leaving the sweets scattered over the floor? Is he still standing there between the king and Borya while they converse? All we need is that one missing sentence to tell us what happened.

To be fair, the boy’s story doesn’t need to be completed in that same paragraph. We could mention the boy’s movements during Borya and the king’s conversation, and use them for further character building. What is important is that we finish the narrative that we began—because the boy was such a prominent focus of the scene, the scene won’t feel complete until his little story has been finished in some manner. It doesn’t matter if the boy leaves or if he’s still there when Borya leaves, as long as his presence is consistently acknowledged or resolved.

The importance of finishing this sort of paragraph-sized narrative is proportional to the amount of focus and activity you’ve given it. Since the boy was the prominent focus of an entire paragraph, he deserves at least a sentence of resolution. If there had been a single sentence about servants with massive palm fronds fanning the king, they wouldn’t have required resolution—they are largely inactive, part of the scenery rather than the narrative.

Just as your readers would be irritated if you left a chapter off the end of the book or a paragraph off the end of the scene, so will they notice if you leave an important sentence off of the end of a paragraph. Every portion of the story will have its own narrative arc, even the smallest—don’t let missing sentences ruin even a part of your work.

Organized Paragraphs and Rogue Sentences

In these two posts, we discussed how to organize paragraphs through subject and dialog. Today, we’ll discuss a common error that crops up in paragraph organization, which I like to call the rogue sentence.

     Quincy’s heart began to race as Maria smiled at him. She waved, and he waved back. Then he froze, uncertain. Had he waved back too quickly? Did he seem overly eager? He needed to calm down and act natural.

     He didn’t want her to leave because he was acting weird. Maria crossed the street, and he did his best not to stare. She was wearing a dark purple sweater with a wide neck that fell down onto her shoulders and a denim skirt that came down to her knees. Her boots were brown and tall, coming up just past mid-calf. Quincy started and lifted his eyes, blushing.

     He hoped that she hadn’t noticed how long he’d just been looking at her legs. Fortunately, Maria seemed focused on the cars that were approaching and not on him. He kept his eyes on her face and smiled as she reached the sidewalk.

If you’ve read my previous posts on paragraph organization, then that example passage should seem wrong. Why? Because of the first and last sentences of the second paragraph. They are rogue sentences, lines that have jumped from the paragraph where they clearly, thematically belong to take up residence in another paragraph. They’re out of place.

Little did you know that you've been training for this for years.

The first paragraph is about Quincy, about how he’s feeling and what he’s thinking; the second paragraph is about Maria’s appearance; and the third paragraph is about Quincy’s efforts not to get caught admiring Maria’s legs. So the sentence, “He didn’t want her to leave because he was acting weird,” clearly belongs in the first paragraph—it’s about Quincy, not Maria’s appearance. Likewise, the sentence, “Quincy started and lifted his eyes, blushing,” has nothing to do with Maria’s appearance. In fact, it is the sentence which introduces the problem discussed in the third paragraph, so that’s where it belongs.

     Quincy’s heart began to race as Maria smiled at him. She waved, and he waved back. Then he froze, uncertain. Had he waved back too quickly? Did he seem overly eager? He needed to calm down and act natural. He didn’t want her to leave because he was acting weird.

     Maria crossed the street, and he did his best not to stare. She was wearing a dark purple sweater with a wide neck that fell down onto her shoulders and a denim skirt that came down to her knees. Her boots were brown and tall, coming up just past mid-calf.

     Quincy started and lifted his eyes, blushing. He hoped that she hadn’t noticed how long he’d just been looking at her legs. Fortunately, Maria seemed focused on the cars that were approaching and not on him. He kept his eyes on her face and smiled as she reached the sidewalk.

See how much better that flows? 

Rogue sentences are quite common in novice fiction. Look through your writing, paragraph by paragraph, and make sure you don’t have any of these where they don’t belong. If you’re having trouble spotting them, ask a friend to read this post and then read your story to find any rogue sentences.

The great thing about rogue sentences is that they’re almost always an easy fix—just move it up or down, and you’re done!

Constructing Proper Paragraphs with Dialog

In this post, I answered the question, “How do I know when to end one paragraph and start a new one?” I also mentioned in that article that we would discuss a few of the rules of paragraphing later. Welcome to later, friends!

There is one simple rule of writing paragraphs that I often see broken by new writers, and it relates to dialog: don’t have the dialog of more than one character in a single paragraph. If a new character begins to speak, make a new paragraph. It’s that simple.

     “Wait, so that story of you protecting the girl was made up?” Dinah asked.

     “Not all of it,” Rachelle replied, hunching her shoulders. “Those men were leering at her, and they could have been about to mistreat her. So I just made sure to walk between her and them. As protection.”

     “So . . . all you did was walk to work?”

Usually, you can connect a character’s actions to their dialog, as with Rachelle hunching her shoulders above. So if you have a character performing actions in the middle of dialog but they’re not speaking, it is often a good idea to give them their own paragraph as well.

     “I didn’t just walk to work! I put myself out there.”

     Dinah shook her head, rubbing her temples.

     “I was protecting the girl,” Rachelle continued. “I was stopping the problem before it could begin.”

     “It’s not a problem until it begins,” Dinah replied. “You protected her from a problem you made up. And now the police are out there looking to arrest a couple of men that didn’t actually commit a crime.”

     Rachelle somehow hunched her shoulders even further and folded her arms in a pose that Dinah could only describe as “petulant.”

The only easy exception to this rule that I can think of is if you are listing a few related bits of dialog in a row:

     Dinah sighed. This was partially her fault. She should have known better than to simply trust Rachelle on this issue. She thought back on the day before. “The way Rachelle sees things and the way things are ain’t usually very similar,” Bank had warned her. “Rachelle always wants to see herself as some sort of paragon instead of just regular folk like the rest of us,” Ginny had said. Why hadn’t she listened?

But that is something to be used sparingly. Most of the time, keep to the simple rule that when a new character begins speaking, a new paragraph should begin.

Overview: Constructing Proper Paragraphs

How do you decide where to break content into paragraphs? This is the most common problem that writers have regarding paragraph construction, whether they’re writing stories, essays, or anything else. Content appropriately divided into paragraphs will be orderly and easy to follow; content poorly divided into paragraphs can be meandering, confusing, jarring, and just all around difficult to read.

Fortunately, the process of organizing paragraphs is similar to the process of organizing anything else. Imagine, for instance, that you have been charged with opening a new library. You’ve been given piles and piles of books and a building full of shelves, and now you have to organize the books so that visitors will easily be able to find what they want. What would you do first?

You’d probably begin sorting the books, wouldn’t you? You’d divide fiction from non-fiction and sort out YA, middle-grade, and children’s books. You might further these sections into genres: fiction would be separated into mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and so on; non-fiction would be separated into travel, cooking, history, etc. The specificity of the categories would be determined by how many books you had in each—the more books in a category, the more likely you would need to divide the category into sub-categories for ease of access.

Once your books were sorted by genre, you could assign each category a section of your library and begin shelving them. But in what order would you shelve them? Almost certainly in alphabetical order by the last name of the primary author, right? It’s the order that will be easiest for people to understand, after all.

Libraries: you don't even have to open a book for lessons on how to write one.

No matter what you ever have to organize, this process will be essentially the same. If your closet is organized, it’s probably by clothing type (shoes, slacks, shirts, dresses, etc.) and sub-type (dress shoes, casual shoes, sports shoes, sandals), with each category organized within the closet by size or color. Are you a visual artist? I’ll bet you’ve got your supplies organized by type (paints, colored pencils, kopecs, etc.) and then color.

Organizing content is essentially the same. Your paragraphs are categories of content divided by subject matter and character, organized in a logical procession such as linear order of actions or an increasingly magnified focus.  Let’s look at an example from “The Chaplain’s Assistant” by Brad Torgerson (about which you can learn more here). I’ve numbered the paragraphs for easy reference.

1.     I was putting fresh oil into clay lamps at the altar when the mantis glided into my foyer. The creature stopped for a moment, his antennae dancing in the air, sensing the few parishioners who sat on my roughly-hewn stone pews. I hadn’t seen a mantis in a long time—the aliens didn’t bother with humans much, now that we were shut safely behind their Wall. Like all the rest of his kind, this mantis’s lower thorax was submerged into the biomechanical “saddle” of his floating mobility disc. Only, this one’s disc didn’t appear to have any apertures for weapons—a true rarity on Purgatory.

2.     Every human head in the building turned towards the visitor, each set of human eyes smoldering with a familiar, tired hate.

3.     “I would speak to the Holy Man,” said the mantis through the speaker box on its disc. Its fearsome, segmented beak had not moved. The disc and all the machines within it were controlled directly by the alien’s brain.

4.     When nobody got up to leave, the mantis began floating up my chapel’s central aisle, the mantis’s disc making a gentle humming sound. “Alone,” said the visitor, his vocoded voice approximating a commanding human tone.

5.     Heads and eyes turned to me. I looked at the mantis, considered my options, then bowed to my flock, who reluctantly began to leave—each worshipper collecting handfuls of beads, crosses, stars, serviceman’s bibles, and various other religious items. They exited without saying a word. What else could they do? The mantes ruled Purgatory as surely as Lucifer ruled Hell.

Each paragraph is divided based on the content it contains. Paragraph one focuses on appearance—primarily the appearance of the mantis, but the author uses this paragraph to supply a bit of description of the chapel and a bit about the history of the setting. Paragraph two moves from description to action, specifically the actions of the congregation. Paragraphs three and four focus on the mantis again—three on its description and four on its actions. Paragraph five focuses on the actions of the protagonist and then the actions that the congregation takes in response.

Now, Mr. Torgerson might not have organized his paragraphs in the same way that you or I would have. For instance, paragraphs three and four could have been combined into one paragraph if he had felt like it, since they both focus on the mantis. Conversely, paragraph five could easily be split into two paragraphs—one covering the actions of the protagonist and one covering the actions of the congregation. There will almost always be several ways to organize the same content.

The specifics of your content organization are generally up to you—just like you can decide whether or not you want your books organized by author or by size and color, you can decide how you want your content to be arranged. What’s important is that the content be divided and organized logically.

There are, however, a few rules and common mistakes regarding paragraphs, which we will cover in future posts.