Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [71]
Now that the books I write no longer contain hot parts, I’m a good deal more flexible in dividing the dull stretches into chapters. In a series of four novels written about (and ostensibly by) Chip Harrison, I furnished each book with one chapter a single sentence in length. “The gun jammed,” for instance, was an entire chapter in No Score; “Chip, I’m Pregnant” was a similarly complete chapter in Chip Harrison Scores Again. The two other books each contained an equally terse chapter. I did this sort of thing for the fun of it, not for any particular effect.
If I’m less compulsive about chapter length nowadays, I still tend to keep the chapters of a particular book roughly the same length. An occasional chapter shorter than its fellows provides a sort of staccato effect that is not without dramatic value. When you break for a chapter you’re slamming a door on the action. The reader has to pause and think for a moment, if only for the length of time it takes him to turn the page.
Some books aren’t divided into chapters at all. The author just skips an extra space between scenes and lets it go at that. An advantage of chapter breaks—that they provide a convenient place for the reader to stop—is also their disadvantage, in that the reader may elect not to pick the book up again. Some writers avoid chapter breaks because they don’t want to encourage the reader to pause in the course of their heart-pounding narrative. One might argue in reply that a story that’s all that gripping will hold its readers through a chapter break. In my own reading, I’ve found that chapterization tends to keep me reading. I tell myself I can stop in a few minutes, at the end of the next chapter, and I keep telling myself that until I’ve finished the book.
One function of chapters is that they reduce the book in the writer’s own eyes to manageable dimensions. If your prior experience is with short stories, you may find it easier to imagine yourself writing a three or four or five thousand-word chapter than a full-length novel. By parcelling your book into such bite-sized portions the task of writing it may seem within your abilities. A chapter can be grasped all at once as a book frequently cannot, and of course when you’ve written twenty or thirty chapters of this sort, you’ll have produced a novel.
Another use of chapters is for viewpoint shifts—which is not to say that every change in point of view calls for a new chapter. In Not Comin’ Home To You, written under the Paul Kavanagh pen name, the viewpoint shifts back and forth between the two leads, who see the emerging story very differently. Breaking chapters for these viewpoint shifts prepares the reader better than simple double spacing.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the manner in which you do or don’t divide your novel into chapters is not something that will have any discernible effect upon a publisher’s decision to accept or reject your book. It’s not too likely he’ll care one way or the other, but if he does it’s the easiest sort of change for him to suggest, and the easiest change for you to make. For this reason, whether you use chapters and how long you make them is a minor point at most and one you should arrange to suit yourself while you write the book.
The length of your chapters may not be important. The length of your novel is.
From a purely aesthetic standpoint, a novel’s like a chapter. It should be long enough to get from the beginning to the end. But length is rather more rigidly determined on the basis