I have a lot of trouble with chapters. Sometimes I think that if a book has too many chapters, it gets unwieldy. By that I don’t mean that the book gets too long. Just that when my chapter numbers start getting up there into the fifties (and is it better to write the number out in words or use the numeral), I wonder what the reader thinks about it. Or do they think about it at all, and am I obsessing? Which I have a definite tendency to do.

In my first couple of novels, I avoided that little problem by titling the chapters. But that can become difficult after a while and I start thinking about chapter titles like “Susan Takes a Turn for the Worse” or “Back at the Barn” or even worse, “Back at the Barn …. Again.” It can all become inane pretty quickly. And say I have some really great and clever chapter titles in the beginning, but they become mundane over time. What then?

My current quandary is tied loosely to the problem of having too many numbered chapters. But there is another issue at play. And it’s not that I write short chapters. Well, my chapters do tend to be short, but that’s not the problem. Or maybe it is. I can get so confused.

In the current novel I am writing, I have been separating out the action that occurs when the main character is not present by labeling those chapters “Meanwhile” with a number. But it is really hard to advance a story when you can only report what happens within a main character’s sphere while trying to keep the asides to a minimum. I like to keep the asides few because I often think that drops the reader right out of the main part of the story. But maybe it’s more like spice in a sauce. Maybe it enhances it. Again, I can get so confused.

First person stories are difficult. And since I approach most of my story telling from the point of an omniscient narrator, it makes it doubly difficult. I mean, it follows that an omniscient narrator should know what’s going on all over the story. On the other hand, since I am writing a mystery, I don’t want to give away too much too soon.

The very first chapters are mainly narrative. Once I got into the action, the story started to be driven more by conversation between the main character and the other characters. But that gets awkward and tedious.  Too many “he saids” and “she saids.” Slows me down getting the ideas on the page too.

So I have pretty much decided to get more narrative into the story, even though I am something like 55 chapters into the thing, use a little less dialogue, and also tell the story from perspectives other than just from the main character’s point of view. Might have to go back and do some major editing. Oh joy.

To that end, I will rename the “Meanwhile” chapters as regular numbered chapters. I have written the “Meanwhile” chapters in a slightly different tone/format from the other chapters which should serve to let the reader know that we are stepping a little aside for the moment. But since one of the secondary characters’ identity and involvement has become concrete, I’ve been blending the regular chapter and “Meanwhile” formats.

Eventually, when the identity of another of the secondary characters is revealed, the main chapter format for the story will dominate. Hopefully that will simply things for me and not confuse the reader.

But I won’t really know until someone other than me reads it. It’s a conundrum.

Photo and quote courtesy of AK Report and Now Novel respectively