Activity

Hello Parimis! Apologies for not being around for a while, I’ve been out of the country and when I got back I found out that my mother was in hospital, so that shook things up a little. (She’s fine now, just had a moment or two that had everyone panicked.) But yes, I’m afraid that has meant I’ve been somewhat neglectant of you guys, and that is not what you signed up for.

Anyways. Today I have a lesson written, and hopefully it’s fairly decent!

One of the questions I’ve been asked a few times over the years is, ‘how do you know what you need in a chapter and how to start and end it?’ All of this is essential to writing an engaging chapter that makes the readers want to keep on reading.

Have you ever been reading, ‘just one more chapter’ and then that chapter ends so painfully that you have to read the next one? Yup. That’s what we are wanting to do. We need to leave the readers desperate for more.

There’s a solution that seems pretty obvious, to cut off mid scene. But that doesn’t work. That’s not a logical chapter split. You still need a chapter to end in a logical manner, and that instantly removes this option in a typical situation.

1. A few things to keep in mind when writing your chapters is that they have these key things in mind:
   Every chapter has to have a goal for the character. Each one of your chapters needs to be pushing the character in it along with the story and helping them grow and change in relation to the plot and all of the things around them.
2. Chapters need to start with an engaging first line. “The house was delicately perched in the snow fields” is unlikely to pass as an engaging first sentence. We want the readers to see the first line and want to keep reading that next chapter to find out more.
3. The last line can’t be a midpoint in an action sequence unless the entire sequence is about to be interrupted by a narrator injection. You can’t just end with someone swinging a sword down at the main character’s neck then swap chapter to where he dodges the sword. You can, however, swap to a chapter when someone else walks into the room where the narrator is telling their story and he stands up and gets them their meal and deals with a few rumours, then return to the story. Don’t over use this though.
4. Ending on a dramatic reveal is good, but again, don’t overuse it. All very well to have someone work something out at the end of a chapter and then go on to explain it and play out the results in the next one, but if you do that every three chapters, it will wear thin.
5. Don’t POV swap too regularly. You need the readers to sink into that narrator voice, and it’s hard to build that connection if you swap every chapter. Give two or three from different POvs at a time.

Hopefully, that will be a helpful little guide and you’ll all be able to sort out those chapters.

Any questions regarding chapters? Ask them now!

@wishingwell13
@cassie-hartfinh
@esjohnson
@coggleton
@julia
@evelyn
@silverclaw-bonnetfolly
@ariella-newheart
@sarah-vdh
@steward-of-the-pen
@e-jo3
@consciousdreamer
@wonderland7
@emily-d
@rebecca-w
@writerforever
@writercatherine
@thewanderingtypewriter
@jade
@taylorclogston
@kaladinstormblessed