The paragraph that refused to break

 


Experimental Short Story Series #23
Title: "The Paragraph That Refused to Break"
*By Faraz Parvez (Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, former faculty member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

Introduction: When Paragraphs Become Prisons

What if language forgot to exhale?

This 23rd story in our 60-part experimental series explores a haunting literary form: the single-paragraph narrative that never stops. No breaks. No breaths. Just a stretch of relentless text that mirrors obsession, anxiety, and the illusion of control. In this experiment, structure is suffocation—and freedom, an unreachable margin.

Short Story: The Paragraph That Refused to Break

I began with a simple thought: keep writing. Just one paragraph, unbroken, unbent. They said it couldn’t be done, that the mind would rebel, demand indentation, a breath, a place to rest—but I pressed forward. Words lined up like soldiers in a column, disciplined, orderly, never once asking for release. The story was about a man—me, maybe—who couldn’t afford a pause. Every time he paused, he remembered things: a mistake, a funeral, a daughter whose silence grew louder than her laughter. So he ran from punctuation like it was a trigger. He wrote through meals, past sunrise, past the echo of his own name. One paragraph. No breaks. He convinced himself this was clarity, focus, achievement. But the truth came out in the corners of his eyes—in the places grammar used to live. He no longer knew what a stanza felt like, or the kindness of a full stop. Friends stopped reading him. Editors called his work a “spiral,” a “monologue that never lands.” He stopped answering the phone. Stopped using scissors. Because what if he made a cut? What if something bled? He built a wall of words so smooth no one could climb in—and he, not out. One day, the paragraph turned on him. The sentences grew too long, the verbs refused to agree, and nouns stared back like strangers. He tried to end it. He typed a period. But it wouldn’t appear. So he kept typing, each sentence like a thread in a cocoon, a loop, a lifeline he couldn’t release. Somewhere deep inside, he knew he wasn’t writing anymore. He was being written.

Reflection: The Shape of Obsession

This story is about more than text. It is about the tyranny of perfection—the myth that creativity must be tidy, linear, complete. In avoiding breaks, the narrator also avoids truth. There is a fear in stopping, in confronting what lies between the lines.

The unbroken paragraph becomes a metaphor for many things: burnout, compulsion, emotional repression, and the suffocation of artistic pressure.

In experimental fiction, we believe the form is the message. This story dares to ask: What happens when a writer mistakes structure for safety?

Closing: Breathing Between the Lines

As we continue our journey through 60 experimental stories, The Paragraph That Refused to Break stands as a testament to the risks of restraint. In a world overflowing with noise, sometimes silence—space—becomes the bravest punctuation.

Join us tomorrow for Experimental Short Story #24, where storytelling may shapeshift again—into erasure, mirror prose, or a tale that rewrites itself.

Bookmark our blog: farazparvez1.blogspot.com
Because not all paragraphs want to end. Some just hold their breath forever.


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