Forum: Author Hangout

Assuming it's written in 3rd-person limited, a typical chapter break is when one or more of the following occurs:

My understanding is those things require a scene change not a chapter break. You can have more than one scene in a chapter.

When to have multiple scenes in a chapter rather than start a new chapter is a different question.

Always? Unless it's a fairly short story.

Always what?

I don't like short chapters in long stories and I am personally against having chapters with only one scene on principle. Very few scenes, unless the individual scene is very long justify being a chapter by themselves.

One or two chapters in a book consisting of one really long scene might be okay.

But if you are making every chapter one scene, with a few exceptions where there are a couple of particularly short scenes, in a novel length book, that would bother me.

I actually prefer short chapters.

As a reader, I personally find short chapters in long stories annoying. Not annoying enough that it would keep me from reading an otherwise good story, but annoying none the less.

But then, outside of erotica, I tend to read science fiction and fantasy stories where there is a lot of world building going on.

But my original advice had to do with when you start a new scene, whether it be a new chapter or not.

And the work in question already has distinct scenes. That's not the kind of advice I was looking for.

Do you want to have it all chronological? That's a good way to write many stories. It's not necessarily the best way to write some.

That's what I'm kind of waffling on. I'm not sure.

I don't want to go into to much detail on the story on the forum.

Generally speaking, chronologically is the typical story, with occasional flashbacks to supply relevant bits from the backstory.

Only sometimes is jumping back and forth in time worthwhile.

Then there's the dual/multiple narrator approach, like with so many NiS stories. Tell the story of the day, then tell it again from someone else's viewpoint. Maybe they notice things the first one didn't, or at least have insight into why things happened that the first didn't.

Generally speaking, chronologically is the typical story, with occasional flashbacks to supply relevant bits from the backstory.

In my case it isn't backstory.

I don't want to go into to much detail on the forum.

However in general:

The MC is into martial arts, but he's also a brain and a social outcast at school. He runs with the nerds and protects them from bullies.

Very early in the story, there is a field trip to a museum towards the end of the school year.

On the MC encounters a very strange artifact which changes him in a very significant way. But he also gets jumped by a group of jocks and nearly killed. He's in a coma for a week and spends most of another week in the hospital after he wakes up.

While he's in the hospital, strange, but good things are happening in his friends lives.

Once the MC gets out of the hospital, he's busy dealing with major changes in his life and reality.

After a week or two the MC gets together with his friends and they are going over the changes in their lives.

Originally I wrote it all from the MC's perspective, but I got to that last scene I described and it just felt too awkward for all of the friends monologue what's happened to them or do a bunch of flash backs, so I went back and wrote the necessary scenes for each of the friends where they would fit in the timeline.

Now I'm wondering if leaving it all chronological and going back and forth between the viewpoints is best or re-arranging it so there are fewer transitions in the viewpoint, but the time goes back and forth.

Have you read the Wheel of Time series? It's not exactly chronological, since the same period of time is covered for each of several different characters. (And not exactly the same amount of time, either.)
So, that's one approach.
There was a series of novels, the Incarnations series (Piers Anthony) that told the story of the same period of time, just from different perspectives with each novel. One of the books was reverse-chronological (the character lived backward in time) but other that that, they went pretty much chronological.

Have you read the Wheel of Time series?

No.

It's not exactly chronological, since the same period of time is covered for each of several different characters. (And not exactly the same amount of time, either.)

I'm waffling between something like this and keeping it more strictly chronological.

There was a series of novels, the Incarnations series (Piers Anthony) that told the story of the same period of time, just from different perspectives with each novel.

I don't think this would work. While the story will end up somewhere in the 600K to 1M word range when its done, the side viewpoints aren't enough for each to be it's own book. Also, there are some interaction points that I don't want to duplicate and the side viewpoints are somewhat important to the central story.

I wasn't suggesting anything, merely giving examples that you may or may not have been aware of that covered different approaches. The idea was to spark your own thought processes to find something.

Still, if you're going with third-person narration, you can easily cover the story mostly chronologically, as long as events don't occur at overlapping times.

Still, if you're going with third-person narration, you can easily cover the story mostly chronologically, as long as events don't occur at overlapping times.

The way it's set up now, there may be some overlap but not more than a matter of hours.