A Curious Question...

[apollinav]

How do you prefer to organize your chapters?

I ask because my brain is ticking over this.

Chapter 8 of TGC is short. I knew it was short (1,200 words or so) and I didn't care to make it longer, because that would be filling it with fluff. Originally it was merged with the previous 'wedding' chapter, but I separated them. Personally I like my chapters to be organized in 'full and complete thoughts' like one would an essay or dear god, a thesis... (I suck at cliffies for that very reason)

But a keen AFF reviewer challenged my thought process on this. I see her point, it's the same day. And it's good mental chew.

So I pose the eternal question, one that has probably been batted back and forth forevah:

How do you prefer to organize your chapters?

Comments

[scribliz.livejournal.com]

Sorry to burst in on the conversation, but it's such an interesting question I could not resist. (Also, I was incoherent in my actual review of the chapter, and I'm trying to redeem myself.) With chapter organization, I tend to reject arbitrary distinctions, such as word length or whether the events of the chapter take place on a day different from the previous one. To me a new idea or a new phase in the narrative is the signal for a new chapter, and that doesn't always fall neatly into time and space. So your short chapter worked fine for me. It answered the question, "What happened next?" succinctly, which I appreciated -- it was refreshing to see that you didn't feel the need to introduce secondary characters or unrelated vignettes just to make the thing look like a Real, Full-Length Chapter.