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An effective lead paragraph is usually either one or two sentences.
Once you get to three or more, it just looks like you don’t know where the Enter key is.”
— Chris Smith
I Googled “best paragraphs in fiction” and discovered that only about five of the more than fourteen million web pages found by Google provided examples of well-written paragraphs. And those five sites were limited to the “greatest opening paragraphs."
Why are numerous sites devoted to Top-10 Movies, Top-10 Fiction Books, and Top-10 NFL players but none for Top-10 Paragraphs?
Maybe paragraphs aren't required. I tried to think of even one story ever written that didn’t use at least one. Alas, I couldn't except for picture books containing no words.
However, a picture is a paragraph because both pictures and paragraphs represent single thoughts. Thus, even picture books use paragraphs.
Copies of copies
The many thousands of sites on the Internet devoted to describing how to write paragraphs all read the same to me as if they were copies of each other. This is disappointing because I bet you already know that paragraphs,
Help organize thoughts.
Break up stories into smaller bites.
Provide white space and visual variety.
Astonishing information.
Instead, I’ve prepared a list of the best paragraphs ever written. I’m certain that better ones exist out there. Let me know about them by emailing me at [email protected] or leaving a comment below.
Top-10 paragraphs
Don Quixote started his quest 415 years ago, and people still talk about him. Today, I'm like Don Quixote and have done what no one else has done. I've assembled a list of the best paragraphs ever.
My list is limited to paragraphs from books written more than a few years ago because it’s not legal to show other authors’ works without their permission, even when I give them credit.
Also, I haven’t included the first paragraph of any novel because this has been done by other sites. I assume you’re interested in writing stories with more than one paragraph.
Without revealing too much about them, I’ll point out that each, to me, is a short story unto itself. Each conjures pages of images and thoughts in my mind, making me want to read them repeatedly.
“Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details: some strong words shall express what I have to say. I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them, and I would not use cruelty. What a pigmy intellect she had, and what giant propensities! How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me! Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste.”
Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte
It could not have been ten seconds, and yet it seemed a long time that their hands were clasped together. He had time to learn every detail of her hand. He explored the long fingers, the shapely nails, the work-hardened palm with its row of callouses, the smooth flesh under the wrist. Merely from feeling it he would have known it by sight. In the same instant it occurred to him that he did not know what colour the girl's eyes were. They were probably brown, but people with dark hair sometimes had blue eyes. To turn his head and look at her would have been inconceivable folly. With hands locked together, invisible among the press of bodies, they stared steadily in front of them, and instead of the eyes of the girl, the eyes of the aged prisoner gazed mournfully at Winston out of nests of hair.
1984
George Orwell
But I did not know how to make my apology. The words that had strung themselves so easily to make a blunder in the drawing room would not come now that I wished the blunder remedied. I stood there below her window, tongue-tied and ashamed. Suddenly I saw her turn and stretch behind her, and then she leant forward once again and threw something at me from the window. It struck me on the cheek and fell to the ground. I stooped to pick it up. It was one of the flowers from her bowl, an autumn crocus.
My Cousin Rachel
Daphne Du Maurier
Books bombarded his shoulder, his arms, his upturned face. A book lit, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering. In the dim, wavering light, a page hung open and it was like a snowy feather, the words delicately painted thereon. In all the rush and fervor, Montage had only an instant to read a line, but it blazed in his mind for the next minute as if stamped there with fiery steel. “Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine.” He dropped the book. Immediately, another fell into his arms.”
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
What they do not comprehend is man’s helplessness. I am weak, small, and of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen. But why is that bad? Isn’t it better that way? Whom the gods notice they destroy. But small...and you will escape the jealousy of the great.
The Man in the High Castle Philip K. Dick
His emotion on entering the room, in seeing her altered looks, and in receiving the pale hand which she immediately held out to him, had risen, in Elinor’s conjecture, from something more than his affection for Marianne, or the consciousness of its being known to others; and she soon discovered in his melancholy eye and varying complexion as he looked at her sister, the probable recurrence of many past scenes of misery to his mind, brought back by that resemblance between Marianne and Eliza already acknowledged, and now strengthened by the hollow eye, the sickly skin, the posture of reclining weakness, and the warm acknowledgment of peculiar obligation.
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austin
He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers. There warn’t no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man’s white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body’s flesh crawl—a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white. As for his clothes—just rags, that was all. He had one ankle resting on t’other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying on the floor—an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
Soon we were hemmed in with trees, which in places arched right over the roadway till we passed as through a tunnel; and again great frowning rocks guarded us boldly on either side. Though we were in shelter, we could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as we swept along. It grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery snow began to fall, so that soon we and all around us were covered with a white blanket. The keen wind still carried the howling of the dogs, though this grew fainter as we went on our way. The baying of the wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though they were closing round on us from every side. I grew dreadfully afraid, and the horses shared my fear. The driver, however, was not in the least disturbed; he kept turning his head to left and right, but I could not see anything through the darkness.
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