Mixing dialogue and action in the same paragraph?

I know you can add dialogue to the same paragraph as an action to show who's talking, but what happens when a character is making a speech and it's broken up by actions (hand movements, looking at other characters, etc)?

• Do I start a new paragraph for each action he does, even though he just continues talking?
• Do I start a new paragraph when he resumes talking?

For example, if I have two paragraphs of text, and between them is a sentence of an action, where precisely do I use paragraph breaks?

If I get rid of all the paragraph breaks, it just turns into a wall of text, but without them, I'm worried it will look needlessly broken up and chaotic.

posted over 9 years ago

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Mack‭

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