“Just get to the end of the chapter"

Crinan

 

I’ve always used chapter breaks to stop reading. 

“Just get to the end of the chapter and then stop.” 

Don’t know why I do this, but maybe that writing style was inbuilt in the authors I grew up reading. Today, not so much. All sorts of pauses and downright stops are employed now.

As a writer, I look at things differently. 

Much of the time I should like to stop the chapter on what I fondly hope is a cliff hanger, or at the very least, something that will persuade the reader to read on.

Many new chapters begin by ushering in a change of both setting and characters. In other words, a scene change. Scene breaks also occur within a chapter and that means the writer has to ensure the reader carries on reading without feeling they’ve been dumped in a new environment or with strange new characters they know nothing about. 

I have lately discovered what I think is called “the narrated slide” into a change of scene. A carefully worded slide into a new place and or time. The trouble is that this method oftens sounds passive and too many scene breaks in a chapter make the writing choppy. To be honest, when reading I don’t mind if it happens once or twice, but when it happens in every chapter, I find it annoying. I try to avoid it when I am writing.