5 Ways to Write Better Paragraphs (for creative writers)

In the store he grabbed a cart and went to the produce. There he picked up a head of broccoli.

Thanks, 😢I need more paper, 👌 😊

Loved this!!

I would love a video on omniscient POV!

The word “entered” has the same neutral connotation as “walking”, doesn’t it? “He walked inside the store.” “He entered the store.”

💓💖 S.K. is legendary 😂💖💓

<3

You must speak slower ma'am . For non native students' sake.

You can also learn all this by reading books

what a great channel just recently stumbled on it

Thanks

This was so helpful!! Thank you!

Well done, Ellen. You're an excellent teacher - clear & concise, and use useful examples. This is helpful.

When you ask "if you guys want.." the answer is yes. Always yes.

This is excellent 👌 thanks

Thank you so much for this useful information 😊

I am learning so much from your videos! Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us! 🤎

Thank you so much for sharing!

This is who I'd do the paragraphs in question in a vacuum, without any other knowledge on what's happenin (for practice if nothing else). However, it's good to remember that a smart person can get out of situations a wise doesn't even end up in: if you're struggling with a difficult paragraph, the reason might be that you've written yourself in a corner.

He walked into the store, grabbed a cart, and strolled / stumbled / skipped / shuffled (depending on his mood) to the produce. He chose a head of broccoli and placed it into the cart.

Lizzy picked up her bag from under the desk and yanked out the book, knocking off her lunch in the process. She slammed the heavy book on the desk with a loud thud and opened it.
"Where is it?" she muttered, frantically flipping through page after page, for what felt like an eternity. "There!" Lizzy exclaimed finally, clapping her hands togeher.

Bill ran around the corner and stumbled upon his friend, who stood up and leaned against the corner with his hand. The bag was in his other hand. (assuming the bag has been established to be something Bill is chasing after)

Eric looked up at the tall corporate headquarters / housing estate / city block / factory, nothing like it in his little seaside village. Taller than anything he'd seen before, the building had enourmous curved windows and a ominous / inviting / imposing large gold door. The sight made a lump come up in his throat.
"What answers would lie within?" he thought to himself.
He toyed with / grasped / clenched the money in his pocket, unsure if getting in was worth the cost. He'd come so far already, his plan had to work. He had no choice.

This was lovely, thank you so much!

My problem is fast pacing, thanks for your help

Thanks!

I really want to be able to write well in English, thank you for inspiring

That paragraph exercise separating and categorizing the individual concerns of the character was great! Thanks!

Just some thoughts...

That "walked into the store" could most likely be replaced with an "entered the store," which would break up both the repetition of walk and into. If the walking style was supposed to be unremarkable, changing it to shuffling or the like would be a mistake.

However, there could be other details put in for atmosphere. Did the character pick the first available chart, or made some sort of selection? That could be because they were all in pristine shape, or most of them were anything but and getting a clean one with properly function wheels would require some work. Selecting among pristine ones, or just grabbing the first available of semi-broken charts would also tell a bit of the character.

However, if it is just a short paragraph to show that a super-hero character also has to buy groceries or the like, it could probably be condensed quite a bit. So that would depend on the context.

Ellen, you're an amazing teacher, keep up the good work.

The examples you provide alongside your explanations are so helpful, it really makes your content stand out from the rest! Thank you.

Omniscient point of view would be great!

Great teacher

I am almost finished with my manuscript, and a few beta readers and friends, have given me positive feedback, but I'm honest ....I have no clue what nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc, are, and what their purposes are, lol. I have no idea what composition and other words mean when writing a book. But ...with the positive feedback I've got thus far, I must be doing something right, lol.

Is it possible to replace "walked" with "went"?

Lingering, lurking and bellowing

As ever in your great collection of videos this is very very helpful...thank you from UK.

I really have o thank you for your videos, again. I am stuck on the revision of a chapter of my current work for almost three weeks now. I can only pass by sentence by sentence. The structure is fully in place, but I felt that something was off. I couldn't grasp it, thou. After watching the video it became clear to me, that a lot of my issues probably stem from me not getting close enough to my POV-character here (it's the first chapter from his POV, he only had two short scenes before, which aren't good either). I need to have a specific look for that as soon as I get back to work. Thank you so so much for this!

As a roleplayer and story writer, this really helped! Teachers never teach this in class, and they should! I would've never known this if I never came across this video!

Damn. The section on not splitting the paragraph's focus is fantastic 🔥
As someone with awkwardly high reading comprehension, it's always been difficult to understand where I lose readers.
The jumbled paragraph was still easy to ingest on 2x. But when you separated the ideas I felt the prose *relax*.
Despite having a dozen stories professionally published [and attending all sorts of cons and workshops] that was a first, and it'll have a significant impact on my writing.
Thank you; I'm already subscribed, but I'll go prod others to join your community.

This channel is pure gold, your examples are so helpful. Writing "rules" seem so abstract to us amateur writers, but when you dismantled that paragraph, it gave me so much confidence! If I'd come across it in my writing I would have deleted it and rewritten it, but you showed how to restructure it into something pretty damn good! Thank you so much!

Ellen, you are a savior! This video, like all others is super helpful and informative but in the part about the boy looking at the building I'd argue that the paragraph was perfect the way it was. it was understadable, completly coherent and showed that thew boys toughts were all over as he was nervous. It felt more clunky after you restructured it into three parts.

One more tip: Don't use too many short paragraphs. This is coming from me less as a writer and more as a reader; if the paragraphs are too short, their succession gets monotonous and hard for me to read. (Speaking of hard for me to read, you made me realize why I hated reading when I was growing up: those books had too many neutral words!...There was also Dyslexia, but still!)

I love how in each video you caution us to use our own judgement before reeling off tips that would immeasurably improve 90% of the output for 90% of your audience.
Most of us could use a phase where we simply do slavishly apply all the suggestions, but you are taking care that we shouldn't get stuck there.

Is anyone else pulling out their writing as they watch this video?

He stopped, dropped, and rolled to the bananas.

Thank you very much for this. Whenever I watch one of your videos I almost feel like I have to take time to process and assimilate the info which is a sign of what a rich seam of knowledge and wisdom they have. Most underrated booktuber IMO.

This is one of my favourite topics. Thank you for the video.

Have you read Lonesome Dove? Would love to know your thoughts on it.

Head of lettuce 🥬

Crown of broccoli 🥦

You also could have changed the action performed with the cart to 'pushed' because he's no longer simply walking, he's got this cart now and is actively pushing it. The example paragraph with Eric where you broke it down into headings/categories was gold ;-) It's very useful to see the pure analytical approach to fixing jumbled paragraphs.