Breaks have two functions for the reader:
They give the reader a breathing place and, in some cases, a comfortable and logical place to put the book down.
They keep a hook in the reader so that she knows more is coming and that she will understand where she is in the story when she picks it up.
For you, the author, breaks function to identify arcs in the story line, depressions and accelerations in pace, and goalposts for reaching significant points in subplots.
You will probably want to look at your manuscript with these ideas in mind, but I wouldn’t worry about your breaks much yet. Chances are your manuscript will undergo a lot of changes and you will eventually want to think about your breaks—every single one.
A thought: Some genre fiction is remarkable for the density and length of its chapters. You’ll know what I mean if that’s your thing. What you want to do is study models to see how the writers organize and break chapters.
An important consideration is how you will organize blocks of text within chapters. Think about how you might use “white space” to indicate a passage of time, viewpoint, setting, or some other break in the narrative. (Don’t decorate the space. That’s a designer’s job.) This is called a “section break” and it lets the reader take a breath, knowing he isn’t going to lose the train of thought. It is a significant break, sort of a mini chapter break, so don’t use it without considering why you want it at that particular point. For one thing, a reader may put the book down at that point; would that fit with your idea of the best way to read the book?
Every time you put in a break, consider why it belongs there. Don’t use it because you ran out of steam. Don’t use it when there is no real difference between what’s on each side of the break. Don’t use it every time you stop one scene and start another; that’s what transition sentences and paragraph indentations are for. Apprentice writers overuse white space, as if they think it is a form of punctuation.
Remember that sections are units of the chapter, so you don’t want a chapter and a section to have the same “weight” or significance in the overall narrative.
I wish I knew how to say something about short and long paragraphs, because I find that many of my students have no earthly idea why or when to break. They do so intuitively, which means they aren’t giving consideration to the function of each paragraph. Working intuitively means sensing the rhythm of the flow of text, and many writers do have that gift; maybe it is a basic part of talent. But you probably know if your writing is boring or tangled syntactically at least part of the time. You can do something about it. I am not suggesting that a writer analyze every single paragraph, but it might be a good idea for an apprentice writer to take some time in a writing session to study a page and see what logic there is—or isn’t—for the length and structure of paragraphs. (See Noah Lukeman’s A Dash of Style, listed in “Recommended Books on Craft” in the Resources section.) And for heaven’s sake, read your work aloud! Every paragraph. Every page. There’s no better way to identify the clunky places.
Is this picky, time-consuming, and sometimes embarrassing? Yes. So it’s better for you to do it consciously than for your reader to subconsciously reject your writing.
Don’t let your manuscript run away from you. Stop now and then to survey its structure. You want the reader to sense organization and design, even if not consciously. You certainly don’t want the reader to get lost.
EXERCISES
Work with your stack of books. Reduce each to three sentences. Then consider how each “part” was developed in the novel. Take the time to write out the plot steps, and see how they are distributed over chapters.
This is an exercise I would do first with a chapter from a model novel and then repeat using your manuscript.
Take a single chapter and describe its structure in detail. The first thing is to delineate the elements of narrative in the chapter. Here’s a way to do it:
Find every scene and draw a rectangle around it. I call that a “scene block.” If you discover that there’s a whole lot in the passage other than the scene action, such as extended description or other exposition, put wiggly lines under those parts of the passage. Keep in mind that in long scenes there may be compression, that is, passages of summary that are essentially part of the scene.
Later, come back to your scene and assess the function of the nonscenic elements of your scene block: the interiority, commentary, exposition. (Why is this here? What does it do for the story?)
With a different color, block out any extended narrative summaries or passages of exposition in the chapter that are not included in the scene blocks.
You’ll do more extensive analyses later on, but for now this should tell you what the balance of scene and not-scene is in your chapter. There’s not a right and wrong. You’re just describing, at this point. Variety is nice. Now do it for another chapter, at least thirty pages away. It should interest you to see if your chapters follow a pattern of some kind in composition.
Study the structures of as many novels as you can.
Start by describing the organizer for the novel.
Then flip through, look at the contents page, and see what the general layout is.
You can buy used books for a dollar these days. Mark them up, cut them up, learn from them. Tape model pages on the wall. Make a file. Find examples that help you design your own novel.
3. Write a tagline for each chapter—the list is a summary of your story.
It’s a very simple exercise. Go chapter by chapter and say what happens. In a sentence or two. No details, just what it adds up to. If the chapter is a flashback or some other iteration of backstory, write a sentence of summary and put the notation Hist (history). If, however, there is present action, always put a sentence summarizing the action, even if there is also flashback in the chapter. (Chances are you’ll have all kinds of mixes.)
Number your chapters.
If a chapter is only about a subplot, put SP (subplot) on that line. You want to be able to follow the major plot at a glance. If you want to do taglines for subplots—a good idea—do them on separate pages. Use a new line for each chapter if you are writing on paper, or use index cards, one for each chapter. The cards are handy because you can come back later to make lots of other notes. You could use white for main plot, and colors for subplots.
Some writers produce long chapters, some produce short, but a chapter should still lend itself to a summary. If long chapters have breaks and new plot points are introduced after the break, you’ll need to put two separate one-sentence summaries for that chapter.
When you are done, you will have an outline of your novel. It’s not a summary you’d send to an editor, but it ought to work for you.
Here I have written taglines for the first six chapters of Donna Leon’s The Waters of Eternal Youth. Yes, it can be this simple, especially when, as in all of Leon’s novels, the time frame of the story is short and everything proceeds chronologically. The story never goes to the past narratively, but it is revealed in the inspector’s investigation in bits and pieces, until, at the end, it adds up. Think of the narrative of the crime hanging in space like fruit, and the author reaching up for ripe relevant details as she writes the present investigation.
I put two taglines if there is subplot in a chapter, so you can see how I differentiate plotlines. Doing the whole book, I would put the SP entries on separate pages.
At a fund-raising dinner, the wealthy patroness asks Inspector Brunetti to call on her privately.
Brunetti ponders the invitation with colleagues at work and calls to set up the meeting.
The contessa asks Brunetti to investigate an event from fifteen years ago, when her granddaughter was left brain damaged after being pulled from a canal. Hist
A continuation of the prior chapter, as the contessa explains more about her granddaughter�
��s life. Hist
[SP At dinner that night, Brunetti’s daughter Chiara tells about a young male immigrant who is routinely accosting her outside her school.]
[SP The next day, Brunetti asks his colleague Vianello to investigate the school problem], then Plot Brunetti starts to look into the history of the contessa’s family and raises questions about some of the people who were at the fund-raising dinner.
As you can already see, a secondary plotline has been introduced—the matter of the immigrant harassment—and soon a couple other subplots begin (the girl’s history at a riding school; the murder of the man who rescued the girl from the canal fifteen years ago). Everything is tightly woven but developed in a way that pulls in Brunetti’s life at home, at work, with friends. (Leon’s novels have a lot in common with so-called cozy mysteries.) The subplot with the immigrant is relatively independent; the other subplots converge in the revelations that accompany solving the old case.
Another writer who does something similar, except in France’s Dordogne region, is Martin Walker, in his Bruno series. His novels are a little more complicated (they have more subplots) and livelier than Leon’s, but they also have a policeman protagonist and a colorful setting. The Bruno books are more populated than the Italian ones, and Walker introduces themes about the intrusion of the outside world on his small community, from greedy truffle hunters to terrorists. There is also an arc of story over the course of the novel series, about local politics, Bruno’s love life, and even his dogs.
Kent Haruf’s novels, set in small-town Colorado, lend themselves to this exercise well, especially since he builds his stories mostly in scenes. On the other hand, you can go to a Jane Austen novel and find there is a great deal more exposition and commentary, but the progression of the plot is still easy to lay out in steps, chapter by chapter. And don’t we love her commentary?
I urge you to do this exercise with a book you already know (you will be able to move quickly). It is instructive in a way that mere advice never can be.
Below are taglines for chapters that begin my novel A Chance to See Egypt. Chapters are titled but not numbered. I’ve chosen it because it doesn’t follow a simple chronology and is quite intertwined with backstory. Chapters are, in turns, about widower Tom Riley’s history with his wife and his honeymoon in Mexico; about his present experience in the same place; and also about other residents and their histories, including an American artist-turned-writer. There is more than one close point of view—more than one person (first and third), as well as an omniscient narrator who observes the village. Even in such a reduced form, I think you can see the story developing.
A Circus. Mr. Riley goes to a circus in a Mexican village.
At the Posada. Mr. Riley has settled into the hotel where he went with his wife on their honeymoon.
A Change of Direction. An artist narrator (Charlotte) tells how she left the New York art world and became a writer. Hist, 1st POV
A New Face. Tom Riley attends the writers’ community workshop.
The Great House. Charlotte tells how she came to know Divina, a pretty local girl who becomes the artist’s model. Hist, 1st POV
A Frequent Flyer. How Riley met his wife Eva and how he decided, after her death, to return to the place of their honeymoon. Hist
Simple Devotion. How Riley’s dream of priesthood was lost and he was sent home to a different fate. Hist
A Christening. Riley follows the writing workshop by shuffling through his memories of Eva. Hist
An Independent Stroll. Riley sets out from the posada to see the village and meets up with Charlotte, who extends an offer of friendship and information about the village.
Good Intentions. Riley remembers meeting Father Bernal with his wife on their honeymoon. Hist
Eusebio. Eusebio and Divina climb an outcrop and talk about their dreams for the future; Divina’s do not seem to include Eusebio.
A Slight Incline. Riley passes the day walking about, and meets a woman (Divina’s mother) who runs a little food stand; she suggests he visit an interesting village nearby.
Dreamer. Divina models for the artist.
A Night in the Country. Riley visits Tapalpa and, missing his bus home, must take refuge in a local home.
Note that I am suggesting this exercise as part of an analysis of a model novel and/or a way of beginning the analysis of your own. Your outline will look different from mine, depending on your organization. You might not title your chapters, for example. What’s important is that when you read through your taglines, you follow the spine of a story. Fuss with the descriptions. Eventually, you should have a version to guide your revision. It is a lot easier to make notes about structural changes on an outline like this than on pages of the manuscript. It is also easier to look across the sequence of events and assess the pace and the arc of action. If you are in a writing group, you will find you can discuss one another’s stories constructively at the outline level.
I am definitely not saying this is a way to control a first draft; many writers, me included, work intuitively in the initial stages of a novel. But at some point you have to take stock of what you have, what you need, and what you are going to do about it.
If you study a novel that has structural qualities something like what you have in mind for your own, it is instructive to take the time to make a tagline list for at least the first quarter of the book, beyond the inciting event. You’ll see how the writer “nests” the plot points in details and other activities, how they are relevant, and how the string of plot points is being laid out. The more sophisticated the construction of the plot is, the more likely the chain of taglines will be broken by subplots and backstory. (How does the author make transitions and connections?) Put your taglines on index cards, add notes about the scenes, and you have a storyboard of the novel. Use a different color for subplots.
Of course, when you reduce your own story to thirty or so sentences, you get a good idea of how strong the story line is.
A question: Are you finding a pattern in your use of the various structural components? For example, do you tend to have a scene, perhaps with some interiority, and then a passage of summary or description? Do you divide these up, perhaps with a white-space break? If this works for you, you may want to try for a fairly consistent pattern, plumping up some of the responses or descriptions where you have none.
Or do you use a lot of “telling”—long passages of exposition, commentary, and response? Plenty of writers do this very well, and so could you, but it’s important to identify where the action is. You’ll want to go through the manuscript marking all the parts where the plot is being moved along, where something is happening. You don’t want those passages to be buried in exposition. This might mean the judicious use of white space, or some shifting about of the order in which passages are presented.
If all this talk of structural elements is making your eyes roll, but you know you have a story to tell, you might want to write a first novel in scenes. There would be description and perhaps some backstory, but the building block would be the scene. Many, many popular books are written like this. Mysteries. Children’s and young adult books. Really, any book that “reads fast” is likely made up mostly of scenes.
EXERCISES
Write taglines for a novel you have read recently—at least a substantial portion of it. It’s also interesting to write them for a novel that felt very complex to you, especially if there was a lot of backstory. Then, of course, write them for your novel. You can’t do this exercise too many times. It is always instructive. If you use different-colored Post-it Notes for the various threads (plot, subplots) and then lay them out on a board or wall in the relation they have in the book, you can see the construction of the book. It is an eye-opener. It is incredibly empowering. You’ll stand there and think: I can do this.
Write taglines for the steps of action in a chapter, whether they are sce
nes (in which case, title each one) or a combination of scene and summary. These are the beats of movement in the part of the story covered by the chapter.
In a model novel, identify a subplot. What is the problem that has to be solved? (Or you could say, What is the question that has to be answered?) Write a summary of the subplot in three sentences. What is happening with the protagonist while this line of subplot is proceeding? What effect on the main plot does the subplot have?
Now do the same exercise with a subplot in your novel. How does the subplot perk up the story line? Does it complicate it? How does solving the problem of the subplot relate to the main plot, or to the main character?
4. Evaluate your first chapter.
Before we can talk about how well the first chapter works, you have to consider a more basic and essential question: Did you start the novel in the right place? Take a few moments to look again at your narrative plotlines. Skim your chapter and notice where you have referred to past events. Put a squiggly line under every reference to the past. Could you leave those backstory references out, and use them in a later chapter? If they are essential, maybe the story wants to start earlier than you did. It is possible that you have chosen to write a kind of history as an opening salvo, but you’d have to be really good to get by with it. In general, we expect a novel to begin at the beginning; something happens in the first chapter that will lead into the rest of the book. If instead the chapter casts backward, you have to wonder if the second chapter is the first.
If you can find a novel that does just what you want to do—and it is wildly unconventional—believe me I think using the model as a jumping-off point is a great idea. If you love books with a voice that draws you into someone instead of to what’s happening, maybe you can make that work for you. The key is going to be studying a lot of models and defining for yourself what the elements of your ideal opening are. Try several different openings. Come back later to think about it some more.
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