Writing a chapter (Patreon)

On last week’s post, someone commented they liked learning some of my method, and while normally that would cause my mind to go blank and not able to do anything about it, this time around I actually know what to write about, based on discussions and observations of how other writers write.

So, how do I write a chapter? The quick answer is, I have no idea.

For the longer answer, I’m going to use Chapter 16 of Stepping up, as well as no specific chapters of Faith in the Family and Hemirtal.

At it’s core, my writing was described by someone, many, many years ago, as vomit on the page. I think of it as Improv in written form.

I have a few things I keep in mind when writing a chapter. “something” needs to happen. It can be action, drama, or new information, but I do my best to keep chapters relevant to the story. One thing I’ve noticed with Web Novels is that sometimes the characters are simply “going through the motion” of their lives.

After that, the process depends on the project, because I almost never approach them in the same way. Stepping up started with three or four events I knew I needed to happen through out the book. And I knew the starting point was Tibs in a city, trying to find “His Street”. With each chapter that I wrote, idea for needed seens got added to a list, and when I start a chapter I look at that list to decide with ones I’ll address.

For Chapter 16 it was “Jackal’s father arrives” “Pyan grieves the loss of Geoff” and “The new schedule for the dungeon is up”

If you’ve read it, you know it didn’t quite happen that way. For one thing, I realized I needed to address the events of chapter 15. Then I had Pyan’s scene, and then Jacka’s father, by which point I was out of time, so the new schedule is pushed to the next session.

Except that this chapter led to adding a scene to the list that will have to be addressed first thing next chapter, and that’s the fallout of Sebastian’s arrival, at least in how it affects Jackal, and I have no idea if 1) I’ll be able to have that on the page, since I need Tibs to be there for that to happen, and 2) if I manage it, how long that will be.

Those come about because I just let the character go about what they ‘want’.

For Faith in the Family, I have a full outline from my co-scripter and creator of the story. So I have fairly solid fences I have to remain within, but within that, I let the characters do as they will, which, since they aren’t mine leads to interesting situation where my co-scripter will nudge them back where he feels they should be going in his rewrite.

Hemital is… Honestly, that one is pure Improv on the spot. I have a 2k work “treatment” that indicates the direction I want th story to take, but unlike Stepping Up, writing a chapter isn’t giving me a list of things that will then need to happen, although not in this book. My mind working the way it does, already has plans for book 2 and 3.

So with this story, I look at where the previous chapter ended, figure out what James wants, and let him go in that direction, putting things in his way. This is a story that I know the second draft will be about tightening the plot. With draft 1 I am stepping extremely close to having James “go through the motion” at times.

So yeah, that’s it for this week, if you have specific questions you’d like answered, please ask. As I’m horrible at coming up with ideas for this posts.

And with that. I, will wish you a good day.