Friday, September 24, 2010

Serial style, novel format: Sexton Sand

I'm re-typing the first draft (half done) of Sexton Sand, Sexton Chronicles Vol. 4.

I try to keep my chapters to about 1,500 words--a couple of pages in length. Fast chapters, fast page-turning and hopefully seat-of-the-pants stuff. I hope it keeps you reading until you're afraid you'll hate yourself in the morning. That's the way I like my fiction.

But even I had to shake my head at myself, in a sort of blushing, grinning, impish way.

I have four chapters in a row in Sexton Sand describing a battle in a canyon. Each of those four chapters ends in a cliff-hanging sentence. Heck, I wrote them, and I'm turning the page and cussing at myself because there's no good place to stop.

I hope you're not looking for an apology for that. There isn't one coming.

1 comment:

Jeffrey Miller said...

1,500-word chapters? Definitely works for me.

Makes for some fast reading and if you've got some fighting going on the reader is really going to feel it. Put them right there in the middle of the action.