Allison WyssApr 25, 2023

A client has me thinking about chapters.

Chapters can feel essayistic (coving a topic) or episodic (covering an event). Some writers care most about their length.

I consider their shape & how they make patterns & how the breaks influence a reader's experience.

They're kind of arbitrary like paragraphs--which is fun.

How do you think about chapters?

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Show threadFinnApr 25, 2023
@allisonwyss My current main project is a serial (and, since it's gaslamp Gothic fantasy, it's taking more than a few cues from Victorian serial novels), which means my chapters are essentially episodes - usually 4k-6k words unless we're in the climax of an arc/book, where they often get shorter as the action ramps up.
Show threadAllison WyssApr 25, 2023

@house_of_five

Ok this is really interesting to me. So do your episodes naturally come in at that length?

I think about shape. Many writers think about length. What I want to know is how it works for you when you think about both length and shape.

If it doesn't naturally fit, do you just go with it, or do you wrangle it until it does?

Show threadFinn

@allisonwyss So they tend to come in naturally at around that length - if they don't, I tend to just let it happen (hence the shorter ones in more action-heavy bits of the story) unless a chapter's starting to get very very long, at which point I start looking for where I can put a break/if one of the scenes needs to move to the next chapter.

Worth noting I'm writing multiple-POV, so 'okay, X's scene can be in the next chapter' or 'let's check in with Y next time' is relatively easy sometimes.

Apr 25, 2023 at 6:14pmWeb
Show threadFinnApr 25, 2023
@allisonwyss (I'm also very much discovery-drafting at this point in time, since it's the only way I've found to get the story actually done without going back and rewriting the beginning six times - there's a reason my indexes have a disclaimer at the top saying that the chapters might shift in future edits!)