[stylist] Introduction (was why do chapters?)
Judith Bron
jbron at optonline.net
Mon Apr 20 19:17:41 UTC 2009
Tami, I look forward to meeting you on the conference call this Sunday. All
of us have a great time and share priceless information. Judith
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tamara Smith-Kinney" <tamara.8024 at comcast.net>
To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 2:38 PM
Subject: [stylist] Introduction (was why do chapters?)
> Thanks for the welcome! I live in Oregon, in the Portland metro area, out
> in the 'burbs. I grew up in rural eastern Oregon, but I'm a city girl at
> heart. My dad's family moved from Kansas when he was young, during the
> depression, so I've heard quite a bit about it, and I have some long-lost
> rels around there somewhere. /smile/ They mostly lived around Lucas, but
> they also spent some time in Lawrence.
>
> Anyway, I've always been an avid reader and writer, although most of my
> non-work-related writing has been for my own entertainment, just
> practicing
> for when I was ready to write that really great novel... You know how
> that
> is. I did submit Volume 1 of a proposed five-part fantasy series long
> ago,
> and was a little shocked that it made it out of the slush pile and up the
> line to be rejected by the top editor of a major publishing company. I
> even
> got a very nice and encouraging rejection letter! I had been honestly
> expecting to get it back quickly with a rubber stamp: "Get a life and
> keep
> your day job!" /grin/ But my health had broken down, and I had no choice
> but to move home to survive, which was a difficult choice to make. Not a
> healthy environment there. I kept working on my writing, but the
> combination of pain, sleep deprivation and the stifling family atmosphere
> was more than I could overcome. I just kept making it worse instead of
> better, so I decided to table it until life improved. Which is has;
> although it's been a real struggle to make that happen. Whew!
>
> The past few years, I have been recovering from physical injuries received
> at, of all places, our state's VR for the blind living skills program.
> Mentally ill roommate, negligent staff - not a good combo! So now that
> I'm
> nearly back to health - again!! - I'm thinking a good way to start
> rehabbing
> my finances is to use my writing as a freelancer. I'm actually a geek by
> trade, but being nearly 3 years behind in the field, I might as well try
> to
> get a job based on my strong background as a dinosaur herder. There's
> also
> the matter of the adaptive tech I need to start gathering if I want to get
> back in anywhere close to where I was.
>
> The past couple of years, I have been owner-training a poodle guide as
> part
> of my self-assigned physical therapy. Mitzi will be 3 in June, and she is
> finally starting to reach the psychosocial maturity required for her
> career.
> /smile/ She's always been really great - brilliant, even - at the get out
> and go aspect of guide work. It was the lie down and rest part that
> stressed her out. /lol/ The first time she took me straight to the booth
> at a restaurant and just went under and lay down, I couldn't figure out
> what
> had happened. I'm just now starting to take it for granted.
>
> My exuberant, lively black poodle pup has given me plenty of fodder for
> storytelling. She's as smart as they come, has a highly developed sense
> of
> humor and drama, and has taught me the real meaning of "intelligent
> disobedience." /lol/ It is very hard to convince your poodle you're mad
> at
> her for being a bad, BAD dog when you're cracking up inside and just
> totally
> impressed by her creativity. She also happens to be one of the most
> adorable creatures ever to walk the face of the earth, from what people
> tell
> me. Portland is a ridiculously dog-friendly town, anyway, and with the
> Guide Dogs for the Blind (GDB) Boring campus close by, people are
> accustomed
> to seeing guide dogs in training or out with their raisers. GDB is famous
> for the mellow yellow labs they produce, so my jet black bundle of bouncy,
> curly adorableness gets lots of attention for being so unlike them. This
> has been a real adjustment for me because, while I like people and am
> generally considered to be friendly and outgoing, I prefer to watch others
> and avoid being the center of attention. Well, it's my dog who is the
> cente
> rof attention these days, but being her mouthpiece is not terribly
> comfortable for me. I'm getting used to it, though. She does make some
> really good friends for me, though. Yup. My dog is my social
> coordinator.
> /smile/
>
> Mitzi is my first guide dog, so I've been reading the NAGDU list to learn
> more about being a good guide dog user and to refine my understanding of a
> guide dog's role and responsibilities. I've also been part of a
> clicker-training list for owner trainers of guide and other service dogs.
> I
> just haven't been able to resist the urge to tell tales on my young wild
> one
> - and on myself, of course. She came to me at a week shy of 7 months,
> with
> no individualized training whatsoever, so getting her all socialized and
> refined has been quite an adventure. I've taken an adaptive approach to
> the
> process, which means I chucked out my sensible training plan on Day Two
> and
> hoped for the best. I've enjoyed using a loose, free flow style of
> writing
> born mostly of exhaustion from keeping up with the antics I'm telling
> stories about. Apparently, I have managed to entertain a number of
> people,
> while utterly shocking - even frightening - established guide dog users
> who
> know "the right way" to do things and didn't realize I was talking about
> an
> untrained pup. Oh, my! I've gotten really good feedback that way,
> though,
> which has been a boon because I often haven't known the right questions to
> ask.
>
> Now I'm hoping I can remember how to be disciplined in my writing instead
> of
> just blathering through my fingers. I am one of those people who can't
> write a summary of a thousand-word essay in under ten thousand words, so I
> have my work cut out for me there! As you may have noticed. /grin/
>
> I'm enjoying getting to know the rest of you through your posts, so I'll
> get
> back to playing catch up now.
>
>
> Tami Smith-Kinney
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of James Canaday M.A. N6YR
> Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 10:38 PM
> To: Writer's Division Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [stylist] why do chapters?
>
> thank you for your thoughtfulness Tami,
> and welcome to our list or lists. where are you located?
>
> your message summarizes the range of chaptering, from a hard-and-fast
> quantity to flow, events and change of perspective.
>
> yes I know this is ultimately my preferance, though I suspect some
> publishers also have some ideas, and even requirements sometimes.
>
> that's why I posed the question.
>
> yes, you are absolutely correctly, when I am reading in audio format,
> chapter break might cue me to a change of perspective, time, or
> events. but indeed for sighted people depending on the type of book,
> the new chapter might also come with a page break, too, thus ending
> the reading of the previous chapter with a partial page of print and
> going on to the top of the next page. I remember that. I had low
> vision until I was 13.
>
> by way of introduction, I live in lawrence, kansas, grew up in rural
> central california. I've written nonfiction but my heart is really
> in writing fiction. and I haven't found a good label for the kind of
> fiction that seems to be attracting my storyminding.
>
> welcome Tami.
>
> jc
>
> Jim Canaday M.A.
> Lawrence, KS
>
> At 03:25 PM 4/7/2009, you wrote:
>>Jim,
>>
>>Hm... I did a lot of thought about this about a zillion years ago and
>>started analyzing my favorite authors in the genre (fantasy). And now I'm
>>wracking my brain to remember what all I observed. /smile/ I've set my
> own
>>fantasy work aside for a number of years, for various reasons, but always
>>with the "I'll get back to it and get it published even if I'm 90!" caveat
>>firmly in mind. /smile/
>>
>>As I recall, I started out by making my chapters an even 30 manuscript
> pages
>>and shooting for a specific number of words for the whole. I was really
>>digging in to the project to practice novel writing, then ended up really
>>getting enthused about the story and characters I came up with. So I had
>>a
>>big, rambling mess to somehow wrestle into some sort of structure with the
>>notion that I wanted someone else to be able to enjoy reading it as much
>>as
>>I was enjoying writing it.
>>
>>The 30 chapters of 30 pages notion worked surprisingly well, and I learned
> a
>>lot in the process of fitting my story and its pacing into that format. I
>>did use section breaks at places within some of the chapters to help with
>>flow. When I get back to "really" working on it again, though, I will
>>probably take a less structured approach, using chapter breaks as part of
>>the flow and pacing as well as to switch from main plot and characters to
>>this or that subplot and the characters involved in that story line. Make
>>sense?
>>
>>Ultimately, how you use chapters is up to you, depending on your personal
>>style of organization and how you structure your story overall, how you
> want
>>to tell it.
>>
>>Thinking about it more, it suddenly occurs to me that chapter breaks and
>>headings are a visual tool, much like heading levels in a structured
>>technical document or the like. The let the reader see at a glance that
>>something has changed, that we're starting another section of importance
>>here, etc. In most novels there will be some sort of fancy initial
>>character, or even a picture of what the chapter is about. Paragraph
> breaks
>>and indentation serve the same purpose.
>>
>>So for us nonvisual readers, a lot of the usefulness is lost. We just
>>have
>>to have our reading interrupted by hearing JAWS say "Chapter 29" or to key
>>through a line of all caps on our Braille displays (or whatever; I'm new
>>to
>>nonvisual reading and am startled by many things about it, while being
>>delighted to learn I enjoy it quite a lot). So those breaks and fancy
>>caps
>>or even the line of asterisks between sections don't have the same meaning
>>they do for the visual reader. They just get in the way.
>>
>>So for a blind writer, you might make chaptering (is that word?) decisions
>>based on your target audience? If you're writing for the general print
>>audience, you would want to give them the familiar trappings of the book
>>reading experience, unless you're wanting your book to make some sort of
>>stylistic statement... If you're writing for a primarily audo book or
>>Braille audience, then you might just decide to do what you suggested and
>>skip breaking things into chapters....
>>
>>They do help those of us who forget to bookmark our stopping points on our
>>electronic Braille displays search through the book for where we left off,
>>though. /smile/
>>
>>Tami Smith-Kinney
>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
>>Behalf Of James Canaday M.A. N6YR
>>Sent: Monday, April 06, 2009 2:22 PM
>>To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>>Subject: Re: [stylist] why do chapters?
>>
>>why do the chaptering?
>>
>>I'm assuming that most authors set out the chapter organization
>>before they write?
>>
>>I realized on reflection that I was asking this question about
>>fiction book writing. nonfiction topics often just fit right into a
>>chapter organization.
>>
>>what's the shortest work appropriate for chapters? a
>>5,000-word "short" story? and in that case you don't necessarily
>>have a table of contents and title each but you write the text with
>>an extra blank line between the end paragraph of one chapter and the
>>beginning of the next chapter.
>>is that correct?
>>
>>so far on this there've been four responses: Lori just doesn't and I
>>would love to know more about that; Aziza says it is to
>>organize what's important in the story; Justin points out you can
>>use chapters to change perspective or time; and Helene says chapters
>>make the reading easier to digest (I hope that's a good choice of words).
>>
>>I hope we can continue this, as I want to learn more on making chapters.
>>jc
>>
>>Jim Canaday M.A.
>>Lawrence, KS
>>
>>At 04:18 PM 4/4/2009, you wrote:
>> >Chapters make it easier for the reader. Personally I find books that
>> >don't have chapters or have very long chapters, hard to get into.
>> >
>> >Helene.
>> >
>> >On 04/04/2009, Justin Williams <justin.williams2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > It is a good way to segway into something else. Chapter two can be
>> > > completely different than chapter one. It allows you to switch
>>characters.
>> > > Also, it helps with the setting up of different plot lines in a book.
>> > >
>> > > -----Original Message-----
>> > > From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org]
> On
>> > > Behalf Of James Canaday M.A. N6YR
>> > > Sent: Saturday, April 04, 2009 1:06 AM
>> > > To: NFBnet Writer's Division Mailing List
>> > > Subject: [stylist] why do chapters?
>> > >
>> > > Alan and others,
>> > > I think we should discuss this. do we set chapters because everybody
>> > > seems to do it? because it gives the reader to catch his or her
>> > > breath? because it makes changes of perspective easier? to help
>> > > readers recollection of what they read?
>> > >
>> > > why do we designate chapters?
>> > >
>> > > jc
>> > >
>> > > Jim Canaday M.A.
>> > > Lawrence, KS
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > _______________________________________________
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>> > >
>> > >
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