Monday 11 September 2017

Short chapters... or long?

One of the surprising aspects of publishing my first novel has been the number of people who seem to be delighted that it has short chapters. The gist of the feedback is that you can read the book without feeling locked into a long portion of pages when you might not have that much time - but, if you do find a few more minutes, you can keep going and finish another; and that it makes the book easy to read. Life is busy, there are so many demands on our time that maybe it makes sense to do as screenwriters are always advised and make your material easy to read.
In the case of screenplays, that means lots of white space on the page, breaking up huge long paragraphs of action into 'beats' and not having scenes in which nothing happens... In a novel, maybe it means (as well as an exciting story, gripping characters, pace, momentum, colour etc...) short chapters so the reader feels they are propelled forwards?

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/short-chapters-long-lindsay-jane-sedgwick

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