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Styles

When writing stories, I do prefer fairly short paragraphs. I find that long paragraphs are more difficult to read, and the reader sometimes loses interest when confronted with one long paragraph after another. I also am partial to shorter sentences rather than long complex sentences.

For dialogue, my preference is to limit it by using narrative to describe what is going on rather than stilted or artificial discussions between people.
 
As a reader, I tend to get annoyed by paragraphs that are too short. Granted, too short is still better than too long. But given the choice, I'd rather not see a bunch of 2 line paragraphs filling a page. Especially if the story is short overall. Flesh things out a bit. Add some detail, elaborate, expand. Thats the difference between saying what happened & telling a story.

Similar with sentences. Too many sentences that are too short make it feel like the writer is trying to force tension. Generate artificial drama. Fake intensity. Thing. If its done sparingly, it can be effective. But doing it too many times in one story just makes me roll my eyes. Like the author is unable of doing that on their own through normal writing so they rely on that as a trick.

With dialogue, like geraldg I don't want unnatural conversations that take place only to inform the reader of something (instead of informing the character). But in a 1st person story, it can be unavoidable. The reader can only experience what the narrator has experienced. And so the narrator needs to have other characters tell them certain things. In which case, I prefer it to be part of a dialogue than a monologue. Even bad dialogue is usually better than good monologue.

One other pet peeve of mine is excessive 'special' punctuation. Multiple exclamation marks and 7 dot ellipses come to mind immediately. I guess super drawn out moaned words would fall into this category too. And they often all appear together too. Like the other stuff, a bit is OK. For example, 'yes .... oohh GOD!' is perfectly fine by me. Just don't fill the sex bits with 'yeeeessssssssssssss . . . . . . . . . . . ooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh GAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' There are better ways to pad out the length of a sex scene, like actually describing whats happening. If you can't think of anything, go through the whole 'who, what, when, where, why, & how'. Not all of them are going to be relevant. But if it can be worked in, in a way that makes sense to the story? Go for it.
 
When writing stories, I do prefer fairly short paragraphs. I find that long paragraphs are more difficult to read, and the reader sometimes loses interest when confronted with one long paragraph after another. I also am partial to shorter sentences rather than long complex sentences.

For dialogue, my preference is to limit it by using narrative to describe what is going on rather than stilted or artificial discussions between people.
Correct. Check out my many stories and you will see short paragraphs and many lines standing alone. On occasion I have taken someone else's story ( I always say so and give credit) and cut down loooooong paragraphs into short ones and made the story more readable. When I do that I usually also enhance and add to the text. I've never had another writer complain when I do that though admittedly they often do not know since I brought it over from another site. Most of my stories though are original and first person.
 
Paragraphs.
I start a new paragraph whenever the POV (point of view) changes. Often, I will name the character in the first sentence we see the world through his or her eyes. This way I can use "he" or "she" rather than repeating their names over and over again. When the topic shifts to someone else's actions or thoughts, a new paragraph starts. True, I try to avoid paragraphs too long. A long paragraph not only looks boring but likely meander's into boredom. Paragraphs are also good breaks to signal a jump in time, e.g. a character walks into a different room. The POV remains the same but the scene changes. A rule of thumb I use within a paragraph is "he" and "she" applies to the same character within the paragraph (unless its obviously not). I try to avoid exceptions as much as I can.

Exceptions for short paragraphs include dialog going back and forth or being melodramatic by toying with the reader's pace and playing with time. Too many short paragraphs make the story unreadable quickly and probably a tell that the writing itself may be erratic and incoherent.

Anyhow, that's what I try. Making the text "readable" often means arranging the story to make it look so.
 
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