This is a subject I struggle with constantly: how to decide when to start a new chapter, when to separate scenes with a row of asterisks or similar marker, and when just to put in a few blank lines between paragraphs.

Any suggestions? Pointers to rules or advice?

Alex

Not the best person to answer this, because I plan in chapters from the beginning, but I think it goes something like this:

double-line space for a jump-cut in time or space (as opposed to narrating the move from, say, June to October, or London to New York, when you'd perhaps just start a new paragraph)

*** for a switch of narrator, or century, or some other really drastic move you need the reader to be adjust to.

New chapter for the next stage in the big architecture of the story, if that makes sense. (Which of course may well coincide with a jump in time or space.) Say you start with a series of scenes of a crappy life in London - grumpy husband, small trouble with boss, big trouble with boss, news that motorway is being built in back garden, building up to Anne's decision that the only answer is to disappear to Greece. You could make those all be separate chapters, but I think that's a wasted opportunity, because in some ways they all belong together, and there's a bigger break coming. So if you put them all in one chapter, then the new chapter starts with getting on the plane, the peculiar bloke sitting next to her, the hijack, the landing in obscure Bulgarian airport, the discovery of a talent for hostage negotiation, the storming of the airport. Third chapter starts with the approach by SIS, ...

You can also break a chapter on a cliff-hanger, which is resolved at the beginning of the next chapter, but I think that's a bit of a cheap trick, and gets tiresome for the reader.

Emma

<Added>

"You can also break a chapter on a cliff-hanger, which is resolved at the beginning of the next chapter"

Sorry, not very clear. I mean the kind of cliff-hanger where the detective says, 'On the other hand, what if he planned the murder himself?' --- dah dah dah! - and the next chapter starts with 'Everyone stared at him.' I didn't mean the proper kind of cliffhanger where you leave her dangling, and start the next chapter in the mountain rescue control room...

Thanks, Emma, that makes a lot of sense.

My fiction does tend to end up somewhat unplanned in its overall structure, even though I generally know where the story is going. Odd, really, because I approach non-fiction writing in a very different way. Maybe I just wrote more essays than stories, when I was at school.

Alex

Further to Emma's excellent advice, I consider Chapter breaks to be fairly arbitary as I use scenes as a unit of measurement and roughly aim for 2.5 scenes in a chapter, but that can vary depending on natural cut off points at hooks and cliffhangers.

Some authors - eg, of fast paced thrillers - might have one short scene in a chapter, consisting of only a couple of pages. Others start a new chapter whenever they switch narrators.
If you have a lot of description in the chapters you might have long, languid chapters of a dozen pages or so.

Always worth having a look on the bookshelves for novels similar to yours and see how those authors have divided up their books.


- NaomiM

Thanks to you, too, Naomi. I think my confusion was because I'd subconscioucly noticed exactly what you say about different authors using different rules, but hadn't quite pinned down what rules they are playing to.

Alex

different authors using different rules, but hadn't quite pinned down what rules they are playing to.

There are no rules.... MwahHaHaHaHa... *laughs maniacally at casting all aspiring writers adrift on the heaving oceans of Not-Knowing...*

Emma

I keep forgetting... this is an art, and I graduated in a science

Iain Banks one had a two-word chapter. It wasn't even a scene. It was an emotion. Worked brilliantly too!

Think of chapters as punctuation. ie,

comma, semi-colon, full stop, paragraph, double line break, chapter, volume.

I do think it's something you get a feel for though. Some writers don't have any, others have so many that you quickly realise half of the book is blank space between paragraphs (no wonder I get through those James Patterson novels so fast! I thought they were gripping, turns out is was all just a wicked illusion - Derren Brown, eat your heart out!)

My technique is simple. I write about something, think to myself, 'right, that's that done,' and type New Chapter.

Colin M

So the rule is, one makes up the rule?

MwahHaHaHaHa... *laughs maniacally at casting all aspiring writers adrift on the heaving oceans of Not-Knowing...*

- tee hee

tee hee

What kind of maniacal laugh is that?

There's a good thread on chapter length, which is related of course, here:

http://www.writewords.org.uk/forum/108_262483.asp

Emma

Thanks for that, Emma, that was a very interesting discussion. It was the other question I'd been pondering with regard to chapters.

Alex

So the rule is, one makes up the rule?

In a way. You need to give the reader an indication that you are shifting onto a new subject - which is the general rule behind most punctuation. A new clause requires some kind break, a new sentence requires a stronger break. Paragraphs give a visual break between small subjects on a larger theme, so if you change theme, it should feel natural to give the reader a clue. It's a way of drawing a line under something and telling the reader you're moving on. Whether that happens every six hundred words, or every six thousand, or every sixty thousand, is up to you, but novels with smaller chapters are generally easier to consume than those with few, in the same way that a page with lots of paragraph breaks is kinder to the eye than a huge single block of text the fills the entire page.

Colin

I tend to use chapter breaks where I feel that the reader will want to draw breath. I don't tend to use blatant cliff-hangers, but perhaps a mild hook. Sometimes it can work well to leave a tingling sense in the reader's mind so he wants to take a few moments to relish that feeling before carrying on.

The other reason, of course, is if you have more than one story thread or more than one narrator, to switch between them at suitable times.

Emma is the person to listen to - this is just my two pennorth about what I tend to do myself, but I'm not yet published so you may want to ignore me...

Sorry for the scrappy answer... am trying to write NaNo and just stopped for a 2 min breather...

Deb