Chapters that hurt my head

I will give simple advice tonight that I think is very useful. Don't make chapters too long! Readers hate it. I hate it.

Sounds simple, and perhaps even amateur to some, but it's advice that should almost always be followed. I understand the temptation of writing very long chapters because of how scholarly it seems, but long long chapters are just annoying. I don't want to have to read 50 pages or more just to get from chapter 1 to 2. Twenty-Five pages should be a maximum, and I can't say what should be a minimum. I would have said five once upon a time, but the success of writers like Dan Brown with their frequent 1 page chapters shows that a writer can be successful with really short chapters.


Obviously, there are always exceptions to the rule, but there aren't many. Long chapters are usually unnecessary, and always bog down the reader. Many readers that get bogged down don't finish a book. Readers that don't finish a book don't recommend it to others, and that's sometimes how a book ends up in the bargain bin at the dollar store.

Taylor

Editing

Before I get started talking about a painful topic I will make a note about the change in my blog title. I inserted the word servant. That means that I will now be more dedicated to aiding others then I originally intended. I'll explain more about what this means later.

Onto the painful topic at hand. Editing. Something few writers want to do, but something all must do. There's a science to it, and no one quite understands it. In this post I will present what I do when I edit. May not be the best process for another, but it's worked out well for me.

My editing process for a short story is pretty simple. I write it as fast as possible, and edit it once immediately after writing. I put spell check to good use, and then I leave the story alone for a while. Leaving it alone for a couple of weeks is preferable. This enables me to forget some things, and means that I edit better when I get around to it. I then edit it many many times until I feel that editing any more will be useless. Then I'm done.

Novel editing is far more complicated. I start editing before I finish the book. My first edit is immediately after I finish the first chapter. This is because the firs chapter is the foundation of the entire book. If it's screwed up the rest of the book is screwed up as well. After that I throw in some small edits here and there. I edit at the half way point, and if I'm about to get to a point where I ned to tie up loose ends I may have forgotten about. Then I finish writing the book, and I edit it quickly afterwards.

Then I leave it alone for a long time. Somewhere around 2 months. As with short stories, this enables me to forget a lot of details about the book. When I do finally edit I do not do it on the computer screen. I print the manuscript out, and read out loud. This takes a long time, but it is extremely effective. I catch a lot of mistakes this way. After that I put the edits into the save file.

Tht step is followed by the step of letting others read it. These new sets of eyes provide important insights, and I make the neccesary changes in the edit that folows this step (note: I'm in the process of this step. Have only really done it with short stories as of now). I then do another edit if I thnk it's necesary, but that's about all that's useful.

There. That's my process. It's important to have a process for editing because of just how annoying editing can be. Make sure to have one even if it's nothing like mine.