Well, the exciting thing in my neck of the woods this morning? I FINISHED MY BOOK!!!
Holy moly, I'm so beyond ecstatic I can't even tell ya :D Although by "done" I mean I need to read through it once more, send it out to a few people, and then incorporate whatever last minute edits they give me, but still....DONE :D
Now, when I write and edit, I do it by scene, not chapter. I find it easier to rewrite and rearrange that way. So when I finished last night, I went back through and pieced everything together into one file and assigned chapter numbers. Most of the scenes end up being their own chapters, but there were several I combined.
I ran into a few that I just didn't know what to do with. I had broken them where I did because I liked the cliffhanger that was created. But leaving them left me with several very short chapters. For the most part, I don't worry about chapter length...I try to keep them around 10 pages a piece but if they go longer or shorter (even very much shorter) I don't sweat it too much.
However, there were a couple where the only reason I had cut them was for the cliffhanger...and having a two page chapter just so I could have a specific cliffhanger didn't seem like a good enough reason to have that short of a chapter in a couple instances.
So it got me curious. How do you decided when to add a chapter break? There are the obvious reasons, of course - POV change, different scene/setting/situation, etc. But aside from that, if you are in the same scene, the same setting, the same POV, how do you decided when it would be good to stick a chapter break in?
Holy moly, I'm so beyond ecstatic I can't even tell ya :D Although by "done" I mean I need to read through it once more, send it out to a few people, and then incorporate whatever last minute edits they give me, but still....DONE :D
Now, when I write and edit, I do it by scene, not chapter. I find it easier to rewrite and rearrange that way. So when I finished last night, I went back through and pieced everything together into one file and assigned chapter numbers. Most of the scenes end up being their own chapters, but there were several I combined.
I ran into a few that I just didn't know what to do with. I had broken them where I did because I liked the cliffhanger that was created. But leaving them left me with several very short chapters. For the most part, I don't worry about chapter length...I try to keep them around 10 pages a piece but if they go longer or shorter (even very much shorter) I don't sweat it too much.
However, there were a couple where the only reason I had cut them was for the cliffhanger...and having a two page chapter just so I could have a specific cliffhanger didn't seem like a good enough reason to have that short of a chapter in a couple instances.
So it got me curious. How do you decided when to add a chapter break? There are the obvious reasons, of course - POV change, different scene/setting/situation, etc. But aside from that, if you are in the same scene, the same setting, the same POV, how do you decided when it would be good to stick a chapter break in?
Post Title
→When to Break It
Post URL
→https://shortemohaircuts2011.blogspot.com/2011/05/when-to-break-it.html
Visit short emo haircuts for Daily Updated Wedding Dresses Collection
