Hello, writers. I have a nasty habit that probably most authors have. If I see one of my own books sitting around with a bookmark in it, I open it to find out where exactly the story was so darn putdownable.
You don’t want your book to be putdownable. You want it to be unputdownable. You’ve probably had the experience of staying up till two a.m reading a book even though you had to get up early the next day. You don’t like getting by on three hours’ sleep, but you can’t put the thing down.
You probably didn’t say afterward “I’m never reading another book by that author! He kept me up too late.”
We talked a little last week, in the comments, about chapter endings. The more I write, the more I realize the importance of chapter breaks in drawing the reader forward. No longer do chapters end with “And she went straight to sleep, just like you.” Nowadays it’s probably a better idea to have at least half your chapters end with cliffhangers or scene-questions. The villain appears. Chapter break. They realize there’s no way out. Chapter break. It becomes clear that everything Goodwife Thankful Goodheart has been telling the protagonist is a lie. Chapter break. The vile rival for Lord Richdude’s affections is seen leaving the ballroom on his arm. (Not literally on his arm.) Chapter break.
With my current manuscript, I’m writing with no chapters, a la Pratchett. On a later revision, I’ll go through and break it into chapters (not a la Pratchett), trying to hit the highest-tension scenes with a chapter break wherever it makes sense to do so.
I used to draft my manuscripts in chapters, but the problem was that the chapters tended to end when the action was completed. After all, it’s natural for a writer to think “in this next bit, the pirate catches them and locks them in the hold but they chew through the hull of the ship with their teeth, swimming to safety as the pirate ship sinks.”
Okay as a unit of action, but it ends with your protagonists safe and sound. Your reader can go to sleep. Good for him/her as a productive worker but bad for him/her as a satisfied reader. You have to be cruel to be kind. Instead, end the chapter when they get thrown into the hold or when the pirate catches them or when they realize the hold contains a bomb with a lit fuse.
By the way, writers sometimes wonder how long a chapter should be. Doesn’t matter. It’s not the length of the chapter, it’s what you do with it. Nobody ever notices how long your chapters are. I think I read 20 Terry Pratchett books without noticing there were no chapters, and then someone else pointed it out. If all of your chapters are nine pages long except one that is 30, you might want to split that one into three chapters for your own satisfaction. But no one else will notice.
Tonight’s challenge: End a chapter. The chapter, which you don’t have to write, was about one of the things listed below. Your mission is to end on a cliffhanger or a scene-question. Try to limit yourself to 100 words.
Here’s a choice of what the chapter was about:
1. Belinda went to the ball and danced the quadrille (whatever the hell that is) twice with the Duke of Buckwinchestercester. (Pronounced “Buster”.) She wore her spring green muslin gown with the blue fichu and looked vastly fetching.
2. Maria, a former CIA agent, is completely immobilized in a hospital bed when someone tries to crawl through the window. Fortunately, a technician comes around just then to take her vital signs.
3. A callow youth and his/her stout companion have gone into the Eternal Swamp of Togwogmagog, obtained the prophecy from the fabled Least Grebe, and are finally on their way out.
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