Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Chapters?

As my critique partners (who are so FREAKING awesome!) go through my chapters and tell me what rocks and what sucks I've been wondering. Do I really need to break up my novel into chapters? I've read plenty of books that are just broken up into sections by page breaks or what would apply in my case a word (before/after etc). This thought came about as I was looking at my novel (which has a needs to be finished/prepped date in less than 50 days not that I'm counting) and the issues that have been causing me to have well...issues with my writing flow/process. Then it hit me.

The chapter breaks.

My story flow was designed to be Kali's story split in the way she sees it, before and after. Originally this split up chapter by chapter. But last Thursday I re-punched out what I have lovingly dubbed my "chapter 5" which had been a 'before' scene that I'd seriously been struggling with. (I'm going to say this right now, thank you outline that I spent hours on I owe you). And though it is only a page long I'm LOVING it. Aaron over at blogger girls (one of my AWESOME crit. partners mentioned above) told me it was her favorite chapter so far, which made me so very happy. Anywho I've decided on disregarding chapters for now, and just use page breaks (like this: *****) to separate everything oh and of course my before/after.

So that's it, I've got a trip coming up (can you say colleges?) and therefore my blogging hiatus will continue however before I leave tonight I'm going to pop over to as many blogs as I can and catch up with whats been going on.

Oh and I got a dress.

9 comments:

Anne Gallagher said...

First, you need to show us a picture of the dress.

Second, my current WIP has no chapters, I broke it up into acts, currently I'm using 5. I don't know what it will look like when it's finished but that's how I'm writing it.

It's your book, you can write it however you want.

Hayley Lovell said...

Piedmont- I would show you a picture of the dress but then FCB might see it. So you'll have to wait until I post the pictures on here. And I know I can write it however I want but my CDO is like an excuse for procrastination. And now that I've posted about my organization I'll trust you guys to hold me to it and not take any BS about how it's stressing me out.

BK Mattingly said...

I wouldn't worry about the chapters. Like you, I've read books where there were only breaks between chunks of story and others when the book was broken up into parts (as in part 1, part 2, etc.). Yay! You found a dress!

Hayley Lovell said...

Bethany- Thanks and I'm still looking (for fun trying on dresses is SO much fun!) with my friends and stuff and I'm so glad I'm not the only one who has read books like that. ^_^

- said...

it's really surreal that you bought a prom dress the same week i bought a wedding dress! we're 5 years apart but it makes me feel so old!!! :( haha

storyqueen said...

Sometimes I don't write in chapters at all, but then I add the chapter breaks later.

And about the dress...color??? long or short? Simple? Wild?

Shelley

Hayley Lovell said...

Emery- You're not old at all! My cousins getting married in September and he's going to be thirty the day after his wedding!

Shelly-I've actually thought about doing that, but sometimes I'm really disorganized. As for color, it's a deep purple, and its long, and simple. Oh and strapless. Which for me is a little wild.

Unknown said...

Hmm I don't think you *have* to break it up into chapters. Actually, I'm a big fan of non-standard story telling, as in the books Liar and Looking For Alaska (which also does a before/after thing. Instead of chapters, there's breaks with titles like 184 days before or 5 days after).

I think whatever works for the story works! Just structure it in a way that works best!

Hayley Lovell said...

Kat- That's exactly how I see it! Though I may have to go through and design a time line like you did with the tempest, which may stress me out a little.