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 did pretty much the same thing re: chapters and chores when I was growing up!

I also feel weird continuing with the same POV after a scene break.

So did I! I got around it by transitioning within the same POV--letting the words show the break between scenes instead of a line break (in the format my novel's in, a line break is always a POV change). It can still feel a little awkward, but I wanted to make sure a line break meant the same thing every time.

I think that I often let my chapters fall into a sort of a pattern, and I feel uncomfortable if I realize that and then realize the pattern's broken (In the book I'm editing, many of the beginning chapters tend to take a scene from each POV, just about, but later in the book, that gets all twisted and messed up because the logical flow demands that I continue with a certain POV for awhile).

Breaking the pattern, especially toward the end, can be a good thing. A broken pattern means something's changed, and logically, a lot of things must have changed for your characters by that point.