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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@allisonwyss I like this: "... to make the chapters feel more shapely."
It's the same for me. All those shapes that fit together like tiling.
For chapters, I have a couple of practical criteria. They need to be short enough that they're comfortable to record. I record my stories one chapter at a time. And I like to end my week's writing at the end of a chapter, so it can be typed up whole. I write the first draft by hand.
It all has to obey the requirements of the story above all, of course.
Ah! I love this.
So the unit is determined by your breath. Sort of.
And also by your working habits.
Are you saying you instinctively know how many syllables each sentence needs to have by sort of feeling out the rhythm of it?
Or are you saying you have found the magical number of syllables that a perfect sentence has and every single sentence now has to have that?
@allisonwyss When I'm writing it I don't necessarily know, but when I read it I can tell if it's got the wrong number. As if someone played a scale on the piano and stopped on the seventh or ninth note. So, yeah, instinctively feeling the rhythm.
I know you're verging into humor here, but every sentence doesn't have to have the same number of syllables, just the right number for that sentence.-)
Oh yeah, it was mostly a joke, but part of me hoped you would shout back "27! the magic number of syllables is 27!" or something because it's fun to think there might actually be a magic number. But also it would be really awkward to have to make every sentence the same length.
But I DO know what you mean about the rhythm and how it can just feel right. Or wrong.
Also is "verging toward humor" a way of saying "I could tell that was a joke; I just didn't think it was funny"? (I am also, here, again, attempting a verge toward humor.)
@allisonwyss Not that it wasn't funny, just that you hadn't committed completely to humor yet. You wanted to go that way but you waited until your next post before letting it out.
27? Is something telling you that it's an odd number?
Nah. It was more like a set up. I was creating a space for you to say the funny thing.
Allison Wyss
Jim Bowering