Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

Stupid Boy and Chapters

PotomacBob 🚫

I'm re-reading Stupid Boy.
It raises the question - What is the purpose of a chapter.
The chapters in Stupid Boy are labeled as to dates - which I find help me to keep up with when things happened. Each chapter has several dates. As far as I can tell they are in chronological order - that is there are no flashbacks that I've noticed.
Each chapter also seems to be several SOL pages long.
If there is an organizing theme - i.e., X number of days per chapter, or X number of pages per chapter - I haven't noticed it.
This is NOT a complaint about the story, nor about how it's organized. It's not a complaint about flow of the story. It is curiosity about a chapter. The chapter length of Stupid Boy does not interfere with enjoying the story. It just raises the question of what a chapter is supposed to be - if anything.
Is it anything more than the author just deciding: "I think I'll stop here and start a new chapter"?

Replies: Dominions Son Ernest Bywater

Dominions Son 🚫

@PotomacBob

It's complicated and will vary by author and the genre and nature of the story.

For authors here who are posting never-ending serials which they post as they write, it is probably one of length, time(real world not story), story time, or arbitrary.

Length is obvious.

Time: They want to post on a specific schedule and post what every they have written up to the next posting date.

Story time is probably what gets used most for "day in the life" style stories.

Arbitrary = This is a good spot to stop and post what I have written so far.

For those who only post complete stories, a lot will depend on how they write.

Some authors here have expressed a preference for "episodic" chapters, where beyond just advancing the over all plot, each chapter has it's own plot and comes to it's own resolution of the chapter plot.

I would think that takes a lot more up front planning of the whole story before you even start writing.

For those who only post complete stories but don't do that much up front planning it's probably mostly fairly arbitrary.

Personally, I've played with the idea of just writing the story and figuring out where the chapter breaks fit after the story itself is finished. I haven't finished a story that way so I have no idea yet how well it will work.

Replies: richardshagrin Grey Wolf

richardshagrin 🚫

@Dominions Son

chapter

"Who invented chapters?
Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro is often given credit for first dividing the Latin Vulgate into chapters in the real sense, but it is the arrangement of his contemporary and fellow cardinal Stephen Langton who in 1205 created the chapter divisions which are used today."

There are religious organizations that are called chapters.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@richardshagrin

Ginning Dick->Short Pier->Long Walk.

Grey Wolf 🚫

@Dominions Son

My chapter breaks are aimed at about 4000 words, give or take. The low for my first book is currently just under 1900, the high up around 6000. I say currently because we're still editing and numbers will likely change.

I started at much closer to 10k, then backed off. The length I have is usually enough room. I'm writing a first-person day-by-day story (structurally very much along the lines of Stupid Boy or AWLL); a chapter is usually one to several days, often with scene splits. Much of the time there's enough room for the chapter to have a theme.

A few busy days take multiple chapters; that's ok. I'd rather do that than have the very long chapters I had before. Even my busy days so far have had scene breaks that work for chapter boundaries.

My goals for chapters are 1) to encompass a useful amount of time and 2) to give the reader a natural stopping point that's not a long slog away.

I try to have somewhat interesting/descriptive chapter names, which I write after writing the chapter unless I know going in that the chapter has a specific purpose. Often I have only a vague idea of what the chapter is going to do until the characters tell me. Clearly, I'm not one of those who does all that much up-front planning. I've tried; my characters usually tell me that I planned it wrong.

ystokes 🚫

The thing I noticed about the story is a chapter = a week in the life.

REP 🚫
Updated:

For me it is chapter length (normally between 8K and 12K words) with appropriate breaks between scenes.

In a few very long scenes that would place the break over 15K, I break within the scene at an appropriate place. Since I complete the story before posting, I will first try to move the initial text to the prior chapter in an attempt to balance the chapter lengths and to prevent the need to split a scene across 2 chapters.

edited to correct length values

Ernest Bywater 🚫

@PotomacBob

It raises the question - What is the purpose of a chapter.

Many years ago, I think it was shortly before the Jurasic Period started - not sure, I was told that chapters are used to break the story into sections which are closely linked in some way. The level of relevance and the way the story is broken down is up to the writer and it usually improves in quality with practice, but not always. It's similar to how paragraphs are linked and split up when you write them.

Now, having said that about writing, we now move onto what a chapter is on SoL. I include a Table of Contents with my stories as I write the stories using the above way of breaking a story into chapters and sub-chapters, but then I combine them together and cut them up into slices to suit Sol with my aim being around 8,000 word in each slice, but some times more or less to have the cuts for SoL match the real chapter / sub-chapter cuts. This is to provide the readers with a reasonable read in each slice and some real chapters can be as low as 100 words so I group more iwht it when that happens.

Replies: richardshagrin

richardshagrin 🚫

@Ernest Bywater

I combine them together and cut them up into slices

So its a piece of cake.

Replies: Ernest Bywater

Ernest Bywater 🚫

@richardshagrin

So its a piece of cake.

More of a flan or a pizza, depending on how thick and spiced it is.

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Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

Stupid Boy and Chapters

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