Posted on 03/23/2007 11:44:31 AM PDT by Eleutheria5
Squarebarb:
There were some of us including GOPpoet who were thinking of starting a writer's thread here on FR. There's a horse thread, a football thread, a Hobbit Hole thread, so why not a thread for us writers?
And mainly sticking to fiction otherwise the discussion tends toward politicsa iinstead of the craft of writing.
Okay Eleutheria5, YOU start the thread."
Eleutheria5:
On it. Could use some help from someone who knows how to do HTTP and other techy stuff, though. Tried to learn, but drat that right hemisphere dominance we creative folks have. I've actually been running a board on the aol writers' club since 1996 called Conservative Writers' Club. Mostly it simply fights flame wars with liberal writers, though, and all the conservative contributors, including me, burn out. It'd be great to get away from that and just swap ideas with people who DON'T wish every one of us a flaming death.
(Excerpt) Read more at freerepublic.com ...
Your 'cliffhanger.'
I follow an outline and keep chapters to a minimum, but break now and then within a chapter at a change of something fundamental. If you like Proust, which I gather you are not used to yet, chapters will tend to be entire novels in themselves and it is all first person in one character. If you like C P Snow each shapter will be a definite scene with particular characters doing one specific thing and one character traipsing through the whole thing. If you like somewhat popular novelists such as Graham Greene there will be chapters but they are often irrelevant since he tells a story from beginning to end.
Breaks are up to the author and can be for any purpose but should be consistent: change of characters, change of scene, change of day, change of something.
Not all chapters end in cliff hangers though. Or should they?
In reality, an author can end a chapter anywhere they want. Just hit page break and move on. The author I'm reading right now seems has maybe 5 in her 600 page novel.
And as we structure our novels... are there unwritten rules or hidden roadmaps? Any hints on what would make a great chapter that does not end with the "cliffhanger."
For me, the cliffhanger is the easiest to write. But, the others... a little tougher.
I am really just trying to start a "writing" conversation in hopes the thread and club does not die.
I do find an 81 page chapter extraordinary though and thought it might be a good subject to get some writing tips.
If the tip is just hit page break when you feel you have written enough - then perhaps I should be more selective in the next topic I chose. :>)
If you are an active musician, especially jazz, there are analogies for you between a piece of music and a piece of creative writing. I will be happy to explain a little if you like.
As a writer of plays and musicals... I actually know how to end a chapter just like I know when to end a scene.
I am just trying to stir up conversation and maybe learn something new that will improve my writing. (The whole chapter thing came from enduring an 81 page chapter last night. Really?? 81 pages... chapter two - 90 pages. Really?)
So, please I would love to hear your analogy. I am hoping I am not the only one who will be helped by it.
No, they shouldn't. Many don't.
If there are any rules no one has told me.
A town meeting perhaps where residents gather and voice concern about the murder of another child. It's no longer a random murder and they have on their hands in their small quiet town, a child serial killer. Is it one of their own doing it, or someone they are not aware of. Several characters are introduced, some are kept and some are discarded and new ones brought in during the meeting.
Not a cliffhanger.
Now we return to the discovery in the woods.
You are right. Chapters know when to end themselves. Cliffhanger or no.
Yes they do. :-)
Well, my attempts to stir up a conversation did not work.
Tempo, rhythm, pitch, harmony, instruments, melody, timbre, scale (96 kinds of 7-note scales for starters), mood, phrasing, mode, intensity, smooth, staccato, etc. In writing there are also variables, probably more kinds than in music. After all, there are only 12 notes, but 26 letters. What are the varibles in writing?
Language, font, grammar, strophe, rhythm, periods, character, scene, and your chapter, as well as breaks, paragraphs, conversation, situation, genre, narrative, description, purpose, footnotes, endnotes, etc. We expect change in writing or we wouldn't read far. It was highly amusing to find the German general speaking in pre-war Black Letter font in one of Umberto Eco's recent novels. Generally the situation, motif, is resolved very near the end, which is how you know you have reached the end. The reader will know if he has something by the end of the first page. Finis right there like a 3-minute pop tune if he finds it flat.
If you have any topic you would like to bring up, please do. I would love to hear any insight you have.
How very true. You have to grab and hold their attention with that first page to guarantee they turn to the second. It's crucial.
If you have any topic you would like to bring up, please do.I will, thanks.
And, unless you are self-publishing you will have to do this with the most critical reader there is—the person who has to read a dozen works like yours every day before lunch and decide if it is worth calling the ink delivery truck.
Before I go... don’t forget to go back and read some of the other posts... There are things posted for critique and a really good conversation about description narrative.
I think if not in the very first page then in the first ten. I may be more patient than some...
Unless it is really bad. I read the novel based on the movie Amistad. Great movie... but the "novel" was too preachy and I knew that by page three. I finished it but the author was really heavy handed.
Agreed. Yours has to stand out from the crowd if it's ever to have a chance.
I'll do that.
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