I made 8 paper pieced tulips last weekend. I drew the tulip out on graph paper. I sewed the graph paper to a stack of phone book pages, all the way around, using a large stitch. Then I stitched all the sewing lines, including the border, without thread. Take the pages apart, used those pages for pp. As they were pre-perfed, paper tore out very easily. Next time, I will use a longer stitch on the perfing (I used 12, so will try 8-old machine, that is stitches per inch), as they became fragile too quickly. Also, I will preperf stitch past the pattern lines, so when I flip it over to stitch, I can see where to stop & start better.

I made first one, then the other 7 assembly line, stitching the same section over & over.

If the paper isn't coming out, I use a q tip dipped in water on the stitching lines only. I use my serger tweezers, as it has a long grabbing tip, so I lay that along the stitching, and have about 3/8" paper to pull on at once.

Definitely use smaller stitches.
What I have done in the past when something is persnickety, is to hold a ruler ON the seamline and run the back of a seam ripper (the dull side) along the ruler to score the seam line a little more. If possible, rip the paper along the ruler.
I also find that spritzing the stubborn bits with a little water (small spray bottle) helps. It makes the removal a little bit messier but still better than leaving the paper on.

There is no right or wrong way. Just see what works for you.

Setting the stitch length at 1.5 was all I needed to do. Thanks for all the advice. Once I made the correction, everything went beautifully. Just finished the 60x60" quilt for my son.

I really enjoyed doing the paper piecing. it was so nice not to have to worry about exact measurements.