When Amy heard the stairs creak, she froze in terror.

      There was supposed to be no one else in the old house.

      But then the doorknob started to turn

We have three sentences above, all placed on the page as individual units. While each of these sentences is a complete thought, together they are obviously part of a larger unit of thought (a paragraph), and so should be structured accordingly. They should be placed together as a paragraph, or as part of a longer paragraph.

When Amy heard the stairs creak, she froze in terror. There was supposed to be no one else in the old house. But then the doorknob started to turn.

In this short paragraph, we have a character, a situation, a building of expectation. A girl is in an old empty house, thinks she's alone, but finds to her terror that someone else seems to be there. If we put all these ideas into individual sentences, we indicate that they are not as closely related as they really are. If we put them into a paragraph, we show their true relation to one another.

A paragraph is made up of a group of sentences all related to one particular unit of thought.

So if we write a narrative about a girl going to a deserted old house, we have to divide the essay into paragraphs. Perhaps one paragraph explaining her reason for going:

One dull summer day, Amy Allison grew tired of the dull routine of cleaning her room in the morning, watching soaps in the afternoon, and sitting around the drive-in all evening. She yearned for something different, something exciting. And so, as she walked past the deserted Thompson mansion for the thousandth time in her life, she decided to explore it.

This paragraph introduces us to the character, her life, her reason for doing something different, and the thing she is about to do. As we continue with the narrative, the next paragraph would probably describe her entering the house, looking around, and ending up in an upstairs room. Then, we'd get to the third paragraph where she is frightened by the fact that she is not alone. From there, we can build more paragraphs, perhaps about her hiding or running, or we can conclude in a paragraph, explaining who it was in the house and how she reacted in the confrontation.

The most important thing is to remember that essays are made up of paragraphs, and that paragraphs divide thought for us. If we write the entire essay as one paragraph, we have no breaks for changes in thought or situation. Everything runs together, and we fail to give guideposts to our readers. We also lose much of the power of the essay to evoke thought and feeling. The paragraph breaks help readers understand, and, in this case, also help build suspense.

In general, paragraphs run four to eight sentences long because they are developing ideas. Some paragraphs may be longer, some shorter. But if you find your work is made up of one long paragraph, or a great many short ones, reread what you have written, and ask yourself if the units of thought are adequately divided.

For practice, here is part of a narrative originally divided into three paragraphs. We have purposely run them together. Indicate where you would mark the beginnings of new paragraphs.

Ten women were standing. The preacher began at the front of the room. He moved from person to person. He took each one by the arm. He placed his hand on each one's head and prayed. As he touched them, they would close their eyes, begin to moan or pray, and finally declare that they were healed. As I watched the preacher slowly come closer, I began to wonder why I had ever let my mother talk me into this. Suddenly, the preacher was standing in front of us, and every person in the church was looking. I felt very hot, and sweat ran down my face. I didn't hear a word the preacher said until he was almost finished. "?Father heal this woman's tumor. In Jesus' name, Amen." One minute I was holding my aunt and thinking I was the biggest fool in the world, and the next I was struggling to keep her tremendous bulk from collapsing onto the seats. She had fainted. The preacher and several men from the congregation carried her prostrate body to the open door of the church.

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