Have you heard the “Tip Top” trick for knowing when to break paragraphs? Create new paragraphs each time you change – TIme, Place, TOpic, Person.

TIme – Make a new paragraph any time that you are skipping either forward or backward in time.

Place – Make a new paragraph any time that you are moving to a new place. If your piece was a film, this would be a transition. If your piece was a play, this would be a set change.

TOpic – Any new topics, ideas, or subjects need to have their time to shine and grab the reader’s attention. Do this by introducing them in their own paragraph.

Person – When you are writing in an omnipotent point of view and change focus to a different person change paragraphs. When a new person is speaking, new paragraph. When you are introducing a new character then guess what? New paragraph.

I have one I like a little better than that.

Change paragraphs every time you SPIT.

Or, for a catchier/morally questionable option –

SPLIT WHERE YOU SPIT.

S – Speaker

You HAVE to break paragraphs each time a new speaker takes the spotlight, or every time the speaker changes within a dialogue. I know this is a modern rule but it was implemented for clarity. Dante did not follow this rule. I never knew if he or Virgil were speaking in the Divine Comedy. I would punch Dante if I had that power. It’s hard to follow and in modern writings can stall the flow of the text.

P – Place

Please change a paragraph when the focus of your narrative moves to a different place. Place is not just geographical. It can also be emotional or a state of mind, if you care to debate philosophy. This point is nearly identical to the one in TIP TOP. If your piece was a film, a new paragraph would happen every time there was a scene transition. If your piece was a play, a new paragraph would happen every time you struck the stage. When I refer to the emotional place or state of mind, I have found that it can be helpful to really accent and emphasize that change or difference between the two states when you break.

I – Introduce

“Introduce” is kind of my cheater point. If you are introducing a speaker, a place, a state of mind etc you likely already have made the necessary paragraph breaks. Consider this though, I needed a vowel to make my acronym work.

Okay but on a more serious note, I wanted a catch all for introducing new ideas, new plot points, new non-speaking characters, and anything else that you would care to bring into your work in progress. “Introduce” is a fairly good way to emphasize that everything in your writing, if it is worth mentioning, is worth a proper introduction and should be relevant to your work. If you are struggling to give the element its own paragraph, consider if it is really necessary or if there is a way to acknowledge it in an alternate way.

T – Time

This point is the same as the one in TIP TOP. Any time you are moving either forwards or backwards in time, you should be creating a new paragraph. If nothing else, the new paragraph will force your reader to pause which can create enough mental space for you to ease your reader into the alternate time stream.

I used a couple of references to help me lay out the above thoughts.

• https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/paragraphs_and_paragraphing/index.html
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zphc9j6/revision/2

I would love to hear thoughts on the above, or what other writers (regardless of genre) have found helpful in their paragraph splitting journeys!