Posts tagged chapters
I've written for a year now(ish) and I've come along some great ideas I'd like to form into existence. But I always, always, ALWAYS have one problem. I can't seem to get past the first chapter or...
Is selling individual chapters a valid marketing scheme? Is there anything against it or examples where it worked to sell a whole novel?
I've finally committed to writing my first novel. I've been listening to things like Writing Excuses which encourages first time writers to finish their works, but I'm definitely writing an old dar...
In one of my novels (it's a middle grade fantasy novel) the chapters average around 2,000 words. But the final climactic chapter is currently almost 7,000 words. I am considering splitting it into ...
Context: I’m currently writing a novel that has a built in prologue. I’m unsure if I should use the prologue as the first chapter. It involves the main character being sent away by his parents for ...
I think I've written a pretty good chapter one, but now the question is: where do I go from there? I mean: should I introduce a new POV character? Can I jump ahead in time a little to somewhat af...
I have this duo in my novel, they're always together in chapters. Usually the story alternates between them within their plot, though mostly leaning to one of the characters, as he's one of the MCs...
This is basically a follow-up question I asked here: Scene switching and how to do it? I always considered it normal for a chapter to have between 3000 and 5000 words. And people around here thoug...
I've come up with a good title for my story, but it would also work really well as the title for the first chapter. However, I wonder whether it's at all advisable to do that. Do other stories do t...
My chapters are usually 10 or so pages long, but I've been reading this one book with chapters as small as 2 pages. Does this affect the story progression at all?
I've got another chapter title question. In the first chapter of my story, a significant secondary character is introduced, and I think it makes sense to use the character's name as the chapter ti...
When building a scene at the beginning of a chapter for instance, before character interactions take place, what are the important elements to consider, and how long should the description be, befo...
I've been working on a story for the last 4 years. It's just a personal project now and I've gone really in depth to clean up any plot holes I can readily see (thanks Cinemasins). I think I love th...
I am working with an author, whose approach is to write her text, approximately divided by indicators where she wants the breaks to be, with the idea that later she and I would improve the breaks a...
I've started a writing blog (specifically for research and other information about my novel in progress) with Wordpress and am having a very difficult time with categorization. In other blogs I've...
Ok so, I’m kind of new to writing. I wrote a couple of books in my teens but they were just for fun. I’m now starting to write a book I hope to get published. So, my book starts about a year in th...
By definition, an epilogue is an additional chapter after the end of a book. Also, it literally means "additional word". I can imagine a need for an epilogue in a series of novels when there is a ...
For a submission (to a grant program, competition, agent, or publisher) that asks for sample chapters, which chapters do you choose? For example, a grant program for unfinished works I'm intereste...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_count#In_fiction This Wikipedia page tells you under which classification a fictional work falls under depending on its length, so we have 3 I am most interested...
I know the logic behind volcano openings and why they’re problematic (they set the expectation that that level of action and excitement will continue; they’re a hard act to follow; they make a prom...
Life doesn't happen in chapters — at least, not regular ones. Nor do movies. Homer didn't write in chapters. I can see what their purpose is in children's books ("I'll read to the end of the cha...
I'm writing my first novel and I wanted to try and write around 12-15 chapters about 10k-ish (give or take a thousand or two) words each. The idea behind it being each chapter covers a very large a...
I'm looking for methods of planning chapters for books. I always saw structures and scripting in the macro level, but never in the micro level.
I have 2 characters that I want to have a romantic tension with. The feelings are unrequited. Can I have it so that 1 chapter basically introduces and then ends the conflicting feelings or is thi...
I need a change ~ 80% of the way through my story. At the moment, I'm just throwing my characters into different combinations and seeing if they come up with anything interesting. Two of my charac...
I have a chapter outline for the novel series I'm writing, and I have a few 'blank' chapters where I don't know what to write in them. I need to do something quickly, because I've started writing t...
This is not a question asking if I should add more or less to my chapters in terms of descriptions and so on to make them longer or shorter. It's more about grouping an already written story. I'm ...
Background I've found that at the end of a lot of my chapters, the endings feel quite forced and abrupt. This is because I don't know where to go, I've done what I need to do. For example: Exc...
I, like most writers, have a number of ideas about my current work in progress. I know how some chapters in the story will play out almost precisely (the ending / final chapter, for example) and h...
I was wondering about the use of separating fiction into "parts", similar to chapters but larger and spanning more text and using these to divide up books within a series. If I am unclear, refer to...
