Views: 1670 How to Write a Good Paragraph for a Story
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Greetings fellow MobaFirites! This blog will be about how to write a good paragraph for your novel, or story. We've all had those days when "Harry hit Jennifer", and when you read back over it you think to yourself, "Wow, that was written so badly, wth was I smoking". I know sometimes I read an old paragraph and go all OCD with my need to "fix" it up. So I thought I'd share with you all my tips and tricks to writing a good paragraph :)
First you want to start off with an idea. For the sake of this blog, say you're writing about a young man of noble blood (but he doesn't know it!) and the genre is fantasy. He's currently in a duel with his arch nemesis, who is also noble born (and PLOT TWIST, they're brothers!!!) and slightly better at swordplay.
Good guy: Radyr Movelique
Bad guy: Jawn Harkson
So at the moment, you've got something like:
Radyr stabbed Jawn in the leg.
It's okay, we can work with this, it's fixable, I swear.
We need to look at this sentence and see what we can do to "liven" it up. Firstly, we have read that Radyr stabbed Jawn - but how? Did he slash downwards? Did he swing his sword from the side to catch Jawn unaware? Where was Jawn stabbed in the leg? The thigh? The calf? Is it feasible to stab someone in the shin from the position of standing up? What could have happened to cause Jawn to miss blocking Radyr's sword? Was the wound large? Did bleed? Did it *ooze* blood?
Okay, that's more than one thing - just by asking ourselves questions about what happened and why it happened we've already got enough material to extend that six word sentence into a full blown, 2-5 sentence paragraph.
Let's "brainstorm" what had happened during the fight:
- Radyr had to have done something in order to surprise or distract Jawn
- Jawn could possibly be disarmed, or on the ground
- We don't want the wound to be too serious - so it should only be a shallow puncture. What causes a shallow puncture? Did Radyr try to stop himself from stabbing Jawn? Maybe Radyr was just as surprised as Jawn was, when Radyr was allowed to stab his enemy.
- Jawn could possibly be disarmed, or on the ground
- We don't want the wound to be too serious - so it should only be a shallow puncture. What causes a shallow puncture? Did Radyr try to stop himself from stabbing Jawn? Maybe Radyr was just as surprised as Jawn was, when Radyr was allowed to stab his enemy.
Now that we have figure out most of the kinks, let's put it all together:
Good, good! That's already so much better! Before I wrap up this lesson, I'd like to mention two more things (I'll probably go more into detail on these in another blog if requested):
1) I used Radyr's name 5 times, and Jawn's 6 times. In a single paragraph. This is bad. They are both male, so I can't use "he", "him" to describe actions, as people may get confused. The easiest way to deal with this is to refer to the characters by their professions, status, quirks, demographic, etc. As we know Jawn is a noble, I could call him a noble somewhere, and we know I am referring to Jawn. Radyr is not a noble, so any other description I use that is opposite, or very different from "noble" will be pertaining to Radyr.
2) Descriptive words. It was hard for me to "pull back" and not add in the descriptive words I normally add when I write. However, I notice a lot of people writing stories without descriptive words. The above paragraph could be so much more *vivid* if I added in some words like "desperate", "sand", "glint", "blade", "wooden" etc etc. Adding in a few descriptions ALWAYS makes the paragraph better.
2) Descriptive words. It was hard for me to "pull back" and not add in the descriptive words I normally add when I write. However, I notice a lot of people writing stories without descriptive words. The above paragraph could be so much more *vivid* if I added in some words like "desperate", "sand", "glint", "blade", "wooden" etc etc. Adding in a few descriptions ALWAYS makes the paragraph better.
Without further ado, here's my "finished" per se product:
Radyr grunted as he rolled across the cushioning sand to the side of the training arena. Jawn's sword whistled past, missing his un-helmeted head by inches. The noble stumbled, having over-extended in his desperate attempt to mark his rival with First Blood. Not missing a beat, Radyr scrambled to his feet, and taking advantage of Jawn's poor balance, shoved him sideways with the edge of his wooden shield. Jawn tumbled to the ground heavily and was too dazed by the blunt trauma to raise his shield in time to block the kitchen hand's incoming thrust. Radyr, noticing the speed of his sword exceeded the speed of his enemy's shield, tried to pull back, to diminish the power of his attack. The blunt training sword swung wide, glancing off Jawn's thigh, tearing through cloth and battering against flesh.
Well, there you have it :) Hope this helps ^^
- jhoijhoi <3
Wayne: Awesome :P I'd follow your stories, I'm a fan of fanfiction :P
I was considering using my blog to write LoL-related stories (call it fanfiction, if you like) and now I ran into this :O
Guess I might as well give it a shot now :P
That being said I hope people do get better at writing, I've read a couple entries where I really had NO freakin clue what they were talking about.
Thought: Might be neat to follow a single persons story and see if they improve over time. I might just try that now...