Chapters

[anthimeria]

For those of us writing lengthy prose, I want to pose the question--What do you think about chapters?

I tend to read books straight through, so I don't notice chapters.  This, unfortunately, means I have a hard time writing them.  I know they serve a purpose, but what?  You tell me.

Should they all be approximately the same length in a given work?  Why do they exist at all?  Should there be internal structure in a chapter?  A cliffhanger ending?  How do chapters function for readers?

Comments

[anthimeria]

I can definitely see preferring short(er) chapters in fiction, especially if you use them to break. If a book picks you up and won't let go it can be a great read, but also inconvenient!

So, if chapters are places where tone or time changes, is it weird for a multiple-POV book to sometimes keep the same POV from one chapter to the next?

[feuervogel]

I don't think it is. The novel I'm working on has 3 POVs, one of which is the bulk of it so far.

You can also change POV within chapters, as long as you denote it (the # in your ms, for example). CJ Cherryh does extensive POV switching in Hellburner, between *paragraphs.* (She can do it because she's awesome, but it was still damn confusing.)

[anthimeria]

I've definitely been changing POV within chapters, and I usually do to start a chapter as well. Lately, though, I've been editing and had to rearrange my chapters, which resulted in a few chapters where the best place to break was a scene transition within a POV section.

Needless to say, chapter mechanics have been on my mind a lot.

Authors who write multiple-POV books and don't have to break to transition POVs leave me in awe.