Does it Really Matter?
Terry Odell

Recently, I made some major changes to the wip. As in totally abandoning one thread of my female protagonist and replacing it with another. I’d written 14 chapters and was at the 13K word mark when I realized my heroine’s back story wasn’t working, and I was heading down a dark, winding road that didn’t seem to lead where I needed it to go. I knew the main conflict she was going to be dealing with, but the path we’d started on wasn’t getting there.

My keyboard has a delete key, and I know how to use it, but this wasn’t a matter of making some adjustments. This was ripping out huge chunks of chapters, and rewriting them.

My process here isn’t a “try to fix it” one. I open a new document and rewrite the offending chapters more of less from scratch. I have the original open on my second monitor, and if—and it’s a BIG IF—there is a paragraph or a section that works in both the old and new version, I’ll copy it, but this time, it was almost all new material.

I was happier with what was going on with my heroine. As for the hero, I wasn’t having any trouble with his story, but … where the two characters interacted didn’t work anymore. For most of his chapters, I could make modifications rather than start from scratch.

I’d been very proud of the fact that I’d kept up my chapter summaries on my spreadsheet. But now, other than the first 2 chapters, I had to start over. Doing summaries isn’t my favorite writing chore task, but I finally bit the bullet and worked on the requisite changes. Not as easy as I’d hoped, because as I redid the summaries, I discovered that time had ceased its unidirectional course. Results were happening before causes. Characters were reacting to, or talking about things that hadn’t happened yet.

More fixes.

And then, as I decided I should be noting whose POV each chapter was in (color coding cells comes in handy), I noticed that during the revision process, I’d ended up with two chapters in the same character’s POV. I used to have two POVs in a chapter, but with the trend to readers preferring shorter chapters, I’d switched to making each POV switch its own chapter.

Did it matter? Would readers get confused? Would they even notice? Note: I’m a stickler for establishing the POV character in the first paragraph—preferably in the first sentence—of each chapter, so I didn’t think reader confusion would be an issue. But I’m also anal when it comes to sticking to patterns, so I had to decide how to “fix” it, even if it wasn’t technically “broken.” Could I combine both those chapters into one? Maybe, but then it would be twice as long as all the rest, and anal me doesn’t like that, either.

Does chapter length matter? Back when I was a green newbie at the gig, I belonged to a RWA chapter, and the question of “How long should a chapter be?” came up. One answer was “as long as a cat’s tail,” which translated to “as long as it needs to be.” A recent read had chapters as short as a page and a half, to well over twenty pages. The book was published in 1994, so no telling whether an editor today would have “suggested” more uniform lengths, or would have gone with the “long as it needs to be” approach.

Could I tighten both chapters enough so the length wouldn’t be outside the “norm” for the book? A quick perusal of the text said “nope.” But a closer look gave me a semi-solution. I could reverse chapters 13 and 14, make some adjustments (that time thing again), and then I’d be ready to move into “new” territory.

Not saying it’s all smooth sailing from this point forward, but at least the first 15 chapters are working together. Except for those two characters who showed up. Who are they, and what are they doing here?

What about you, TKZers? Do you strive for something approaching uniformity in chapter structure, or don’t you care?

The floor is open.
TKZ:

Find me at Substack with Writings and Wanderings

Deadly Ambitions
Peace in Mapleton doesn’t last. Police Chief Gordon Hepler is already juggling a bitter ex-mayoral candidate who refuses to accept election results and a new council member determined to cut police department’s funding.
Meanwhile, Angie’s long-delayed diner remodel uncovers an old journal, sparking her curiosity about the girl who wrote it. But as she digs for answers, is she uncovering more than she bargained for?
Now, Gordon must untangle political maneuvering, personal grudges, and hidden agendas before danger closes in on the people he loves most.
Deadly Ambitions delivers small-town intrigue, political tension, and page-turning suspense rooted in both history and today’s ambitions.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”