I’m tempted by long paragraphs and long sentences too. The technique I use is to think about structural variety more than about simply shortening the sentences and paragraphs. If I have two long, rambling sentences right next to each other, one of them needs to be cut or split, but it can be whichever will tolerate this adjustment better.
How to address the one idea per paragraph and one paragraph per idea thing depends on the overall format of your piece. If it’s fairly linear, you just break up the paragraphs if they’re too long; your reader will still go in order. If it’s in chunks instead of a neat flow from one thing to the next, then you can use other techniques than line breaks to section off each idea—horizontal rules, section headings, etc.
I’m tempted by long paragraphs and long sentences too. The technique I use is to think about structural variety more than about simply shortening the sentences and paragraphs. If I have two long, rambling sentences right next to each other, one of them needs to be cut or split, but it can be whichever will tolerate this adjustment better.
How to address the one idea per paragraph and one paragraph per idea thing depends on the overall format of your piece. If it’s fairly linear, you just break up the paragraphs if they’re too long; your reader will still go in order. If it’s in chunks instead of a neat flow from one thing to the next, then you can use other techniques than line breaks to section off each idea—horizontal rules, section headings, etc.