Goal Per Chapter Addendum

[jpskewedthrone]

OK, recently I commented in LJ that in books 1 and 2 I had a specific structure for the books, mainly a goal that I had to achieve in each chapter. dsnight picked up on it and apparently it was what he needed at the moment to give him some focus. And it seemed that others on LJ had the same reaction because he got lots of comments for his post on the same thing.

But today, while driving around, I realized that even though I'm still doing the goal thing per chapter for book 3, I still feel . . . uncertain about it. Originally I thought this was because unlike the first 2 books, the goals in book 3 aren't necessarily connected. In book 1 it was a death per chapter, and book 2 it was magic per chapter, but book 3 doesn't have a "thing" per chapter. Or at least not a connected "thing".

But now I think that the goal per chapter thing isn't quite enough, at least not for me. Because looking back over the book so far I DO have a goal per chapter. And I don't think it's that they aren't connected, because of course they are connected; they're all getting me to the ultimate goal fo the book.

So what's bothering me about the book?

I think it's that in books 1 and 2 I had a goal . . . AND I treated each goal as if it were a short story. That gave each chapter form. Each chapter told the goal's story, as well as advancing the longer story arc. But there was a definite encapsulated feeling in each chapter, because everything in that chapter, however tangentially, had to do with the goal that chapter. I didn't skip around to other plot lines unless they intersected that chapter's goal.

I don't think I'm doing that in this book. I feel like I'm skipping from thread to thread without having those threads being connected in some tangential way in that specific chapter. I think for the rest of the book I need to decide the goal for that chapter, as I've been doing, but then treat the chapter itself as its own entity, focusing on that goal alone. I'll have to revise the beginning chapters like this as well, but right now I need to finish the book first.

And maybe I'm fretting over nothing, but I do feel as if something is not quite right. Not really wrong, per se, just . . . not right. Maybe this idea will help pull myself out of that.

And now, since others are doing it:

Ask me anything you like. I'll answer, or not, as whim or whimsy takes me, in follow up posts. If you don't ask, I won't answer.

Let the games begin.

Comments

[everyonesakitty.livejournal.com]

Ooh fun! My question: What's your alcoholic beverage of choice?

[jeffpalmatier.livejournal.com]

If your writing career really takes off to the point that you can support yourself solely through your writing, will you keep your day job?

By the way, I'm still astonished somebody who is good at math is also a writer of fiction. I say that because it seems like if one is good at words, then they're not good at math, and vice versa. :-)

[anghara.livejournal.com]

Question, then. What's your favourite aspect of the writing game?... (creating the work? being read?)