Other Forms of Partitioning a Novel [closed]
Closed by System on Nov 4, 2017 at 16:13
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I'm asking this because I haven't yet come across a similar discussion on the internet or anywhere else.
My design scheme for my debut novel is to title major sections within the chapters. These are different from the general scene breaks or section breaks of the novel.
I don't want to convert these sections into mini chapters and neither do I want to divide the book into parts. Just titled chapters and titled chapter sections.
It goes something like this:
CHAPTER ONE - DAY ONE blah blah blah
The Story
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
The Moral of the Story
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
CHAPTER TWO
Story continuation
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy red dog
More story
The five boxing wizards jump quickly
Thank you for any answers that can be of help.
Roger
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1 answer
Unless your novel is intended for the 6-9 age bracket, explicitly telling the reader the "moral of the story" is a terrible idea.
Readers of novels are not reading to be educated by your wisdom, they are reading to be entertained. If they detect you are preaching to them (telling them how they should act, what they should believe in, what is right or wrong, how to vote on gun control) chances are they will put down your book: That is not entertaining, even if they agree with it.
If your story conveys a moral that is fine, but the moral should be implied by you and inferred by them based on what happens to your characters.
For example, a moral of much fiction is that "crime won't pay", but you don't see movies ending with the printed message on the screen "Now look kids, all the bad guys died and only a few of the good guys died."
Also, separating "Chapter One - Day One" from "The Story" makes no sense. I don't understand what you intend to write under the "Chapter" heading that is not story. If you are intending to "educate" the reader, that is more preaching, and if you are "setting up" the story, that is something done in the story.
I suggest you visit a bookstore, for free, and read the first few pages of some actual novels that got published. I don't think you will find anything remotely like this structure in any of them.
The structure is typically just "Chapter 1", "Chapter 2", ... "Chapter xx".
Unless you have a compelling reason to stray from that, 100% of your novel should be STORY and nothing else. No moralizing, and no "author's explanation" or notes.
Reserve your creativity for the story and words on the page, not the format of the story. Your best chance of selling something is to stick with what nearly 100% of published authors are doing, if you cannot find an example of a best-seller doing what you want to do, then just don't do it.
The library (college or public) or the bookstore will let you look through newly published fiction and take notes, at a used bookstore you can find best-selling paperback novels for 50 cents and write notes in the pages if you want, to help you figure out the structure. Highlight them. Put those sticky page-markers in one. Cut pages out of it as good examples of what you hope to accomplish.
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