Prose checks › Paragraph length Pro
Prose check: paragraph lengthGive the reader some air.
Long paragraphs are normal in novels. Walls of text aren’t. Falcontext only flags the very longest, with a paragraph length over 250 words.
In Falcontext’s Edit tab, Paragraph length is one part of Sentence and paragraph length, with sentence rhythm. Each part has its own light, and the worst sets the check’s.
Why a paragraph length of 250 words?
Advice for web pages says 150. But in published novels a paragraph over 150 words is ordinary: 4.3% of paragraphs in the middle book I measured.
Only about one paragraph in 100 runs over 253 words. So 250 marks the real walls.
How many walls do novels have?
In the middle book of the 38, 0.3% of paragraphs ran over 250 words. Three in four stayed at 1.3% or under. The most: 10.4%.
Where these numbers come from.
How Falcontext checks paragraph length
Guidelines, not rules. A wall of text can be the effect you want. You’ll just know it’s there.
- Finds
- Paragraphs over 250 words, each one marked in your text.
- Traffic light
- Up to 2% of paragraphs
- Up to 4%
- More than 4%
Where to break one
- Where the focus shifts: a new thing seen, a new thought.
- Where time jumps, even a little.
- Before the line you want to land hardest. Give it its own paragraph.
Paragraph length is part of the line edit, which starts in pass 3 of the guide, sentences, once the scenes are in place.
Long paragraphs: love them or break them up?
Questions about paragraph length.
How long is too long for a paragraph in a novel?
Falcontext flags paragraphs over 250 words. Only about one in 100 paragraphs in published novels runs that long.
Why not 150 words, like other tools?
That line comes from writing for web pages. In novels a paragraph of 150 words is ordinary, so it would flag half your book.
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