The Art of Chaptering

In a recent Ask the Editor post, Kathy Stemke asked how a writer decides where to place chapter breaks. In fiction, chaptering is often intuitive. The practice isn't even as old as long-form fiction—it began in Great Britain so parts of books could be published in serial form.

Chaptering may feel arbitrary at first, but here's what you can gain from the exercise.

1. Chapter breaks remind you that story structure is important. Unless you plan to create numbered "books" or other multi-chapter sections within your novel, the chapter will probably be its largest building block. Building blocks make you think of structural elements like scene goals and conflict relevant to those goals, which is a good thing.

2. Chapter breaks remind you to think in terms of scenes. Chapters may have been revolutionary in Dickens' day but the modern reader is well adapted to sound bytes and jump cuts. We are busy. We want you to get to the good part. Whether your chapter includes one scene or more, ask what new conflict will now impact the forward movement of your story?

3. Chapter breaks remind you to watch for dramatic turning points. The savvy writer will create a chapter end in one of two places:

• right before a dramatic turning point, when the reader's senses are heightened and he is dying to know what happens next (such as: "My tour group was looking at one of the most revered sculptures in the world while standing on a piazza made of ancient stone. At least we were, until the ground gave way beneath us.")
• right after a dramatic turning point, when the next question has been raised (such as: "Even though I never had a chance to see his body or say goodbye, the memorial healed me. I laid out the dreams Jimmy and I had shared, admired them one last time, and buried them. I would move on with my life, because that's what Jimmy would have wanted. But that was before I got home and picked up the mail. In the pile was a hand-addressed letter, no return address. But I knew that writing like my own: it was Jimmy's.")

4. Chapter breaks can offer an added way to communicate with the reader. Who of his readers will ever forget A.A. Milne's chapter designations in Winnie-the-Pooh, as in this charming title from Chapter VIII, "In Which Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition [sic] to the North Pole"?

In her bestselling novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd began each chapter with a nonfiction epigraph about the social nature of bees that kept you thinking about how the hive might serve as a metaphor for the relationships in the book.

In The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, told through the point of view of a boy with autism, Mark Haddon titles his chapters in the POV character's beloved prime numbers, beginning with "2."

5. Chapter breaks remind you that you must woo your reader—not just at the opening, but again and again. Your job is to make it difficult for a reader to put down your book and walk away, where distractions may prevent his return. Young adult novelist Brian Jacques, who until his death last month wrote of woodland creatures in his Redwall series, is well worth studying for the masterful way he handles chaptering. You may not be writing action/adventure, but once you get the hang of it, subtler forms of psychological and literary tension can perform the same trick.

Kathryn Craft is a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, an independent manuscript evaluation and line editing service. Formerly a dance critic and arts journalist, she now writes women's fiction and memoir. The first chapter of her memoir, Standoff at Ronnie's Place, modified as a stand-alone essay, has been published online by Mason's Road, the online journal of Fairfield University's MFA program. She blogs about Healing through Writing.