Paragraphing, says William Zinsser, is "a subtle but important element in writing nonfiction articles and books--a road map constantly telling your reader how you have organized your ideas" (On Writing Well, 2006). If you're prepared to go beyond conventional formulas for dividing a text into paragraphs, consider these observations by experienced authors, editors, and teachers.
Enlightening Readers
The breaking up into paragraphs and the punctuation have to be done properly but only for the effect on the reader. A set of dead rules is no good. A new paragraph is a wonderful thing. It lets you quietly change the rhythm, and it can be like a flash of lightning that shows the same landscape from a different aspect.
(Isaac Babel, quoted by Konstantin Paustovsky in The Story of a Life: Years of Hope. Pantheon, 1968)
Experimenting
Paragraphing is often taught in English classes with the same sort of false dictums that poisons much of writing instruction. . . . [Encourage] students to experiment with paragraphing in their own essays, looking to see how paragraphing develops their intended rhythm and tone.
(Paul Lee Thomas, Reading, Learning, Teaching Kurt Vonnegut. Peter Lang, 2006)
Following Instinct
A clever man might successfully disguise every element of his style but one--the paragraphing. Diction and syntax may be determined and controlled by rational processes in full consciousness, but paragraphing--the decision whether to take short hops or long ones, whether to hop in the middle of a thought or action or finish it first--that comes from instinct, from the depths of personality.
(Rex Stout, Plot It Yourself. Viking, 1959)