Two odd things
Dec. 16th, 2010 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceI'm surprised by how often I use numbers in my text. Low numbers, two and three. They are ... not constant, but frequent, certainly that.
I have learned this by dint of searching for them, through 27K of text: because it struck me suddenly that I was not chaptering as I usually do, not finding and seizing the obvious opportunities for a chapter-break, or else forcing them at regular intervals. I love chapter-breaks, both as a reader and a writer; I have a long history of building them in; I used indeed to claim the shortest-ever chapter in British print (three words! eclipsed, alas, by that Lindsey Davis, who used to be my good friend before she produced a one-word chapter). But it seems to be a corollary of the way my process has changed, that I no longer look for natural breaks nor manufacture false ones. This current text has one after 25 pages, and then not another in all 85. I need to do something about that. But not now...
I have learned this by dint of searching for them, through 27K of text: because it struck me suddenly that I was not chaptering as I usually do, not finding and seizing the obvious opportunities for a chapter-break, or else forcing them at regular intervals. I love chapter-breaks, both as a reader and a writer; I have a long history of building them in; I used indeed to claim the shortest-ever chapter in British print (three words! eclipsed, alas, by that Lindsey Davis, who used to be my good friend before she produced a one-word chapter). But it seems to be a corollary of the way my process has changed, that I no longer look for natural breaks nor manufacture false ones. This current text has one after 25 pages, and then not another in all 85. I need to do something about that. But not now...
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-16 10:48 pm (UTC)Has Frank McCourt's memoir Angela's Ashes been printed in Britain? The final chapter consists of a single word.
I like Lindsey Davis's books quite a lot, and heard her speak once when she was in St. Louis, of all places. I've not read all of them yet, though. Which has the one-word chapter?
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-16 11:37 pm (UTC)I think Lindsey's done the one-word chapter thing more than once, actually. She talked of it as a thing she liked to do, rather than a one-off. I noticed it in one of the later Falco novels, but I can't remember which.