Hey, folks, how are you doing? This fic isn't really a fanfiction, just a half-rant and half-fic and a quarter-test. Anyway, you guys didn't click this to listen to my rambling, so on with the show!
Hope sighed as his English teacher continued on with the grammar lesson. It was tempting to take a nap, but his grades were already on the brink of failure.
Mr. Greenshaw continued on, oblivious to his student's angsting. "Many things about writing are subjective. This is NOT." He suddenly rapped his pointer on the desk, making most of the class jump in their seats. "Mr. Esthiem! Perhaps you can tell us about why paragraphs are divided as they are."
"Uh," Hope stuttered. He wracked his brain, trying to remember something. Some acronym...OPOI? "One paragraph, one idea?"
Hope had a sudden craving for ice cream, and had no idea why.
"CORRECT!" Mr. Greenshaw roared. "Never forget; new speaker, new paragraph!"
He continued like he hadn't violated most of Palumpolum Academy of the Arts' rules about teacher conduct. "The length of the paragraph can vary, and it depends on the writer's own style, as well as the pacing of the story. Very few stories contain consistent pacing. Sometimes, in a heavy bit of exposition, the paragraph's flow slows down. The paragraphs become multi-claused and long. The transitions between sentences are changed, and therefore the reader's perception and feelings are changed.
"However, the opposite effect can also be used."
Hope suddenly had an ominous feeling. Something was different.
There was a sense of tension.
Some uneasiness.
Something terrible was coming.
Someone's phone rang.
"DETENTION!" Mr. Greenshaw never missed a chance to take a student's phone. "Mr. Frederick, please see me after class." He snatched the phone from the guilty offender's hands and stored it in his pocket.
"As you can see," said Mr. Greenshaw, "the simple act of making one's sentences and paragraphs shorter can create an urgency not present in more long-winded writing, and more long-winded writing can be relaxing in a way that tiny sentences just can't. You can use these simple techniques to great effect in pacing different scenes in your writing appropriately – choppy writing with few transitions is good for an action scene or a tense situation, whereas slower sentences full of clauses and commas are great for description, introspection, exposition and downtime between high-intensity scenes.
He turned his burning eyes to the class, and they trembled in their seats.
"New writers," he spat, "have a habit of clumping all their text together into one or two large paragraphs." He stared in open disgust at Hope.
Hope flushed and sank a bit lower in his seat. So what if he like writing fanfiction in class? It was only two times!
"A paragraph's purpose is to enhance readability. Technically, a paragraph can be of any length, but its usually better to make a new paragraph if it goes longer than seven or eight sentences. If your work's not readable, no one is going to read it." He paused to sip from a bottle of water.
"A single sentence can also be its own paragraph."
Mr. Greenshaw glared at the assembled students. "Remember, kiddies, its almost always better to have too little paragraphs than too many. If you learn only one thing today, make it that!"
"Class DISMISSED! Tomorrow's topic! Point of view!"
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