Anyone else break a novel into chapters after its done?

[Prawn]

I write scenes, and then when the novel is done, I break the flow up into chapters, often moving scenes around for contrast or thematic fit.

Do any of you organize your chapters after the whole book is done?

[althrasher]

Yeah, I do that as well. Chapter breaks just get in the way when I'm writing. If I break it up as I'm writing it in my mind, I break it up into major scenes or plot points.

[ishtar'sgate]

Interesting. I can't do that. Probably because I love to read mysteries, although I don't write them, I always end a chapter with a mini hook. It's sort of a subconcious thing and chapter breaks are pretty well defined as I go along.
Linnea

[scarletpeaches]

I write scenes, and then when the novel is done, I break the flow up into chapters, often moving scenes around for contrast or thematic fit.

Do any of you organize your chapters after the whole book is done?

Yes.

The fact you do it the same way as me, means you are correct, as I am never wrong.

[Toothpaste]

I don't tend to move my chapters around, but I do wait until the end to decide where the chapter breaks go. I do this because the first time I wrote a book I was told to cut each chapter in half, because they were too long. So now I just wait until the end to figure it out. However I do write with chapters in mind, with cliffhangers and a sense of this chapter . . . is . . .coming . .. to .. . an ...end.

[Conman]

I write in chapters from the beginning. I don't think I would be able to do it any other way.

[JoNightshade]

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. In the past I have written a lot of "episodic" fiction, in the sense that each chapter is almost a standalone, or the book almost divides itself into acts. So those get chaptered as I am writing. But with Ghosts of Ivy House, I wanted a single, tightly knit narrative, so I wrote the thing straight through. Then I printed it out, cleared my living room floor, and made little piles of paper where I thought chapter breaks should go. It worked out quite well because I just went through and pinpointed all the scene breaks where I thought, "if this was the end of the chapter, the reader would have a hard time NOT flipping the page to find out what happens."

[Bekah]

I write it by scene, then separate them into chapters when I'm done. I had to start doing this after spending days feverishly arranging and rearranging chapters instead of writing anything new. Maybe someday I'll have the self-control to start off with chapters, but I definitely lack it at the moment.

[BlueLucario]

Nope. I just write a chapter and plan out how it should end.

[Shadow_Ferret]

Interesting. I can't do that. Probably because I love to read mysteries, although I don't write them, I always end a chapter with a mini hook. It's sort of a subconcious thing and chapter breaks are pretty well defined as I go along.
Linnea
Ditto with the hook. And strangely enough, each chapter works out to somewhere between 1500 to 2000 words. It's not something I do consciously, it just happens.

[slcboston]

I discovered I write in chapters because the ideas come to me that way, and then also it's easier to find what I want in my WIP. I tend to save the individual chapters as individual files, too, because then I don't have to open the whole thing if I want to review/fix something in chapter 15.

But I've been known to alter where those breaks are after the fact. :)

[PeeDee]

I don't, because I have a rhythm that goes from page to page, and a chapter break is as much a part of that as a new paragraph, or a new scene.

But if I wrote something without proper chapters, I'd probably just leave it that way, ala Terry Pratchett. It works wonderfully.

[ChaosTitan]

I write chapters as I go. That's not to say the chapter breaks stay the same from first draft to final.

[tjwriter]

With this WIP, I've not broken it into chapters yet, but I do have scenes. It's different than my previous attempts, and so far I've found that it works, so we'll see.

I can always figure out where the chapters go later.

[ishtar'sgate]

I tend to save the individual chapters as individual files, too, because then I don't have to open the whole thing if I want to review/fix something in chapter 15.

:)
I used to do that too. But it's a real bear when it comes time to forward all those chapters to an editor. Lots of attachments. And then there's the hassle with numbering pages. Of course, I'm pretty dense when it comes to the computer so maybe I did it wrong. I keep the entire manuscript as one file now. I also keep a paginated hard copy. Editing isn't hard because I can just do a page number search. Then after editing it's not so much trouble repaginating before I send it off as one attachment.
Linnea

[Straka]

I chapter as a go. Usually I don't stop writing until I finish a chapter.

[scarletpeaches]

I discovered I write in chapters because the ideas come to me that way, and then also it's easier to find what I want in my WIP. I tend to save the individual chapters as individual files, too, because then I don't have to open the whole thing if I want to review/fix something in chapter 15.

But I've been known to alter where those breaks are after the fact. :)

Why not write your entire novel in one word document, with page breaks to separate chapters? That'd save an awful lot of work if you had to renumber pages.

[Shadow_Ferret]

I find it easier to have it all one file. I used to have it seperate ones until I realized at one point that I had started calling something different, I forget now, but say it was like a character's eye color or a name mispelling. Before I'd have to open each chapter and do a search, but as one file find and replace was much easier.

[PeeDee]

I have never been given any persuading reason why I should want to keep my chapters in separate files. Long ago, it was to help prevent computer slowdown, but I cannot think of any computer that I've owned in the last ten years which does anything more than pause for a second when I first open the document as it re-paginates.

And that is the fault of the word processor, more than the file.

[JoNightshade]

The laptop I've been using for the past year actually took about 5 minutes to load my entire WIP (110K words) and often crashed if I was trying to do anything else, like open my browser. I would double click on the file, go do something else, and come back later to start work. For a while I divided my manuscript in half, but that got confusing.

But I just got a brand new laptop and I no longer have that problem. Hooray! :)

[EelKat]

I do not write in chapters.

I do not write to a set "hours per day"

I do not write to a set "words per day"

What I do is, I write small segments or scenes from my book. Say a conversation between two characters. Or maybe the description of a room. Something like that. I find this easier, because I can see a very clear beginning, middle, and end. Not the beginning, middle, and end of the entire book. Not the beginning, middle and end of the entire chapter. Just the beginning, middle, and end of that one scene, which in most cases is 2 to 4 paragraphs long or about 600 - 800 words.

I make it my goal to write three of these segmants each day. One in the morning as soon as I wake up, before I even get out of bed. One in the afternoon, when I get back in from taking my dog out for his daily walk. One in the evening, last thing just before going to bed. It takes about 15 - 30 minutes for me to write each segment. Or about 40 minutes to an hour and a half each day. In the end I end up with about 2,750 words written at the end of the day, but not a single chapter!

I usually divide into chapter breaks at the last minute during the final draft.

[Atlantis]

I don't write in chapters at all. I write in segments, part one, part two, that sorta thing, just a habit I picked up.

[loiterer]

I have never written chapter breaks in anything. I guess therefore I write in scenes. Chapters would be something I'd deal with when I finish something--whenever that day may come.

[megan_d]

When I started my MS chapters made me nervous, so I just seperated scenes with exclamation marks. It's really just a matter of going back and replacing them with chapter 1, 2, 3, etc. Or maybe clever little titles. I still haven't decided.

[juneafternoon]

Yeah I do that too. When I wrote in chapter breaks, I always felt the need to make everything dramatic and each chapter have this mega-significant, marking ending--needless to say, it wasn't cutting it for me. So I've started writing just a huge ol' text now. We'll see how it goes.

[Elodie-Caroline]

Once I have started writing my story/novel, I start dividing it into chapters at different parts. I don't write straight through, as I know I'll always have other ideas for the story and chapters as I'm writing it. By divinding it into chapters first, I can go and edit those parts because I can find them easily.


Elodie

[GeorgieB]

Yes and no.

My current long-term WIP is a mystery/suspense/thriller and the chapters are laid out in a logical sequence (got to show the clue before explaining it, right?)...but even with this genre I've moved scenes around, even from chapter chapter where they made more sense.

For last year's NaNo (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, A Fractured Fairy Tale) I moved whole chapters around. I introduced so many characters (sheepherders, Neandertals, etc) that some chapters almost became stories by themselves.

Both of these WIP's were started with a very complete and detailed outline. That's a good way to start, but the final story should dictate the scene/chapter layout.

In addition to moving scenes and chapters, some chapters become too long, and I've found it's easier for me to find a logical break somewhere, add a hook and create two chapters out of the long one.

Works for me...YMMV.

[SadieCass]

I'm a by-the-chapter girl. I write out chapters first, saved in separate files.

Then I do one edit in a chapter by chapter fashion...if I have the whole document open I tend to go a bit cross-eyed and stay up 3 times as late editing...

THEN I C&P all chapters into one word doc simply titled "full" and begin the next step of editing. Of course this means that there are occassions that I have to renumber every chapter because I've found one that's too long...or that had a break in it I should have used.

In the end I probably make more work for myself...but I find it's the only way for me to get a tightly edited piece.

Then again, I'd never rule out the idea of writing it all one piece and break it later. It depends on if my brain would wrap around such a concept *lol*

[Pantsonfire]

My first WIP I did in chapters while I was writing and in the editing process I think it messed me up more that way. I am taking a break from that one and the new one I am working on won't be broken up until I am done.

[HeronW]

I usually do chapters as I go along but I rearrange them when the whole is over since some scenes makes more sense in other places.

I also like to end chapters on a dramatic high to keep the reader turning the pg. so if I don't have them set in the beginning I reshuffle to take advantage of the high points.

[Mystic Blossom]

I was going to do that with one of my novels, but I never finished it and I want to rewrite the whole thing anyway, so who knows. I might still do it with the rewrite since I like to structure each of my novels a bit differently and try new ways of organizing it. I often end up reorganizing chapters when I use them anyway, so maybe this will be a more successful method.

[Erin]

I break scenes and chapters as I go along, keeping to a 15-25 page chapter count. My last book, I rearranged the chapters during revisions, so I'll probably start doing that. But I have to have chapters during the draft stage. Keeps me grounded and disciplined!

[stormie]

I write scenes, and then when the novel is done, I break the flow up into chapters, often moving scenes around for contrast or thematic fit.

Do any of you organize your chapters after the whole book is done?
Yep. Count me in. Can't do chapters as I write.

[deathwizard]

I write chapters from the outset. But at the suggestion of my publisher, I restructured Book 1 of my series by moving around already-written segments. To my surprise, it worked wonders.

The furniture was fine. It just needed rearranging.

[NicoleMD]

In my latest WIP, I've gone chapter happy. I've got 26 so far for 14,000 words. I keep this up and I'll be in the hundreds!

Nicole

[Stlight]

I tried to do chapters from the start, it was logical, it was reasonable, you could get a cliff hanger at the end of each. It sooooo didn’t work.

Here was the plan write about 20 pages ( I do long hand first, lets me be closer to the characters, whatever, I do it.). That was fine the first draft. Then on the re-write some chapters ended up being 40 pages and some 5. It was a mess.

I find a lot less tension if I just write it and then when I’m really close to the end make the chapters. However, just two days ago I found that I had a mini-chapter and didn’t need to. Five chapters back one was too long, cut paste etc and the chapter endings were much better - emotionally for the reader.

Okay, I know someone, hopefully an editor, will stir them up again, but there you are.

Stlight

[TPCSWR]

I find that each chapter is an easily defined part in my WIP, so I write them as I go. Something happens in this chapter, something else happens in this one. I have an idea of what happens in a particular chapter, once that scene/topic ends, the chapter ends.