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All in!

jrblackburnsmith

Image: Poppy searching for her favorite toy.


Poppy is a four-and-a-half-year-old Boston Terrier. She was the runt of her litter and is still small today. But Poppy is dedicated. When she wants something, she goes all in. When she is looking for her favorite toy of the moment, Poppy will climb right into the toy bucket to find what she wants. She will throw unwanted toys all around the pail while she digs through the bucket to find what she is looking for. If you are cynical, you think that means she has too many toys. If you admire perseverance, you celebrate her dedication and commitment to achieving her goals.


What, you might ask, does this have to do with writing? I could certainly talk about the dedication to the practice of writing that is required as a writer, but that's not where I'm headed. I was actually thinking about the length of chapters, and what that means for a narrative. In the last few years, I've read a number of books with very short chapters, averaging three to five pages. As a reader, I find it annoying; as a writer I find it really annoying. Chapters are essential to storytelling. For me, they convey a change of focus, a break in time, a new point of view, the end of a vignette. A short chapter can be a devastating effect, situating in a string of longer chapters. I feel like all of that is lost when I read a work with fifty chapters that are each five pages long. I want evidence that the author is all in, not just dipping their toes into the deep end.


I once read an essay on writing good chapters that essentially said not to worry about chapters until you finish the work and then you can break the book into chapters to achieve the pacing you would like. The main idea was that readers commit to 'read just one more' chapter, so as a writer I was supposed to think about what was reasonable. I found the advice less than helpful. Knowing I will revise a work three or four (or fifteen!) times, I need to be able to work in chapters or I am overwhelmed. More importantly, because I write without an outline or pre-plotted narrative, I know that when I 'find' the narrative, I may end up moving chapters around. I always start with Chapter One, but odds are against Chapter One being the beginning of the novel by the time it is finished. Odds are probably against Chapter One ending up anywhere in the novel. I write a lot of narrative that turns out to be back story - things that are important for me to know but that may never cross before the readers eyes.


When I'm revising a novel, I spend quite a bit of time working to standardize the length of my chapters. If I'm averaging 12 pages a chapter and suddenly, I have one that's 20 pages, I have work to do. Is it really two chapters? Or do I need to cut 40% of what I've written in this chapter? the worst thing of all is when I end up with a chapter that feels too short, or too long, but there is not an easy way to bring it in alignment with the rest of the work. I'm guessing the reader does not really notice, but it haunts me. Writer's Note: Haunts is another great word that is probably overused every October (Can you really overuse haunts?) but is definitely not getting the reps it deserves the rest of the year.


Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. If you go to readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway you can sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!

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@202 by Jefferson R. Blackburn-Smith

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