An Affiliation of Chapters

Image from page 135 of "Murcia y Albacete ... Fotograbados y heliografías de Thomás, dibujos de Cabrinety, cromos de Xumetra"

When we read a book, no matter the platform or genre, we expect chapters. Capitulo. Something at the head, or top. 

Think about it:

Cookbooks are divided into courses or by ingredients. Biology books pan out according to system, phylum and class. Math books by applications... And novels? They are divided into bite-size chunks, little mini-stories all their own.

The Ferial Psalter Medieval Manuscript

It's been that way for over two-thousand years...

The Evolution of Chapters

Chapters in books and manuscripts where born out of necessity. For example, in ancient 'how-to' scripts, on topics of farming, astrology, natural sciences and the like, authors didn't expect readers to go through from start to finish. They imagined more a 'dipping in' to topics as needed: bovine husbandry, Lunar phases. life-cycles of editable fish. Chapters were like tabs, there for ease of access.

Then there was the Bible. In early renditions, the sections were not consistently divided, at all. It wasn't until the 1300s that Stephen Langton, member of the theological faculty of the Paris University, created a simple and unified system of chaptering the Bible - the one still used today.

"...the chapter has become a way of looking at the world, a way of dividing time and, therefore, of dividing experience. " The Chapter - a History by Nicholas Dames

Chapter Expectations

Huckleberry Finn

Readers, editors and publishers have certain expectations of chapters, ones that authors try to meet at least halfway. 

I liken chapters in a novel to mini-stories complete with a beginning, middle and end. There is an inciting event, something that blows things up, creates contrast and challenge, a potential solution (good, bad or temporary) and a conclusion, of sorts. Hopefully, the end hook keeps the reader turning those pages. 

In Fantasy, that hook is usually a cliffhanger, or an ominous tone or maybe a huge misdirection that the protagonist can't see no matter how loudly we scream the warning.

The Elegance of Chapters

Chapter headings can be simple statements: Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and so on... or they can have titles which cue the reader as to what's coming next. ie. Harry Potter, Chapter One: The Boy Who Lived, or Twilight: 1. First Sight.

I like to use chapter headings even further to signal a point-of-view change, as in Chapter One - Marcus, Chapter Two - Ash, but more on that next week in an A.K. Wilder post.

Your thoughts on Chapters? I'd love to hear them.

xxKim

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Kim Falconer's New YA Fantasy Series is out January 5, 2020 - Crown of Bones. (Writing asr A.K. Wilder) 

Also, check her urban fantasy  - The Blood in the Beginning - an Ava Sykes Novel and the SFF Quantum Enchantment Series. 

You can find Kim on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or pop over and throw the bones on the AKWilder.com site.

Are You Game?

The Witcher, based on the novel series of The Witcher by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.

When I think of how diverse, well crafted and emotionally charged video games have become in the last decade, it's no surprise to find popular novels have found a home on this platform. Take Harry Potter, first up. There are dozens of games under this title! You can check out all the HP games here, rated from worst to best. The Lego one cracks me up.

Harry, Ron and Hermione in LEGO Harry Potter 

But a novel doesn't have to be an NYTimes bestseller to provide a jumping-off point to explore deeply complicated political ideas through computer gaming. From Ayn Rand to the Ming dynasty, here are a few games you probably didn’t realise were based on literary works.

Enslaved: Oydyssey to the West

The 16th-century Chinese story, 'Journey to the West,' was the jumping-off point for a post-apocalyptic action video game, 'Enslaved: Odyssey to the West,'  

Then there's the Slovenian novel 'Alamut' published in 1938 where we learn 'nothing is an absolute reality, all is permitted.' Players of 'Assassin's Creed' (an action-adventure stealth video game published by Ubisoft using the game engine Anvil) will recognise the spirit of that line seen throughout the franchise: 'Nothing is true, everything is permitted.'

Fan art posted in r/assassin's creed by u/Sketchy-Linez

But the odd thing I'm finding as I look at the fantasy-book-to-game model is the absence, or very little at least, of urban fantasy representation complete with kick-ass heroines. With all the popularity of shows like Supernatural, the X-Files, Buffy, True Blood, Vampire Diaries, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and more it just feels like there’s a lot of room for the gaming industry to explore. We know there are plenty of books out there that would be fabulous jumping-off points.

I can think of a few just looking at our Sup author's backlists!

Let me know your thoughts? Any book in mind you'd love to see turned into a game?

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Kim Falconer's New YA Fantasy Series is out March 2020 - The Bone Throwers. 

Also, check her urban fantasy out now - The Blood in the Beginning - and Ava Sykes Novel and the SFF Quantum Enchantment Series. 

You can find Kim on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Rediscovering "Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone" via Audio Book

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I first discovered audio books well over a decade ago, when travelling with friends who enjoyed listening to them on the car radio. I did, too, but for some reason never adopted the medium beyond that one experience.

Recently, however, I sustained an injury to my eye, one which has made any sort of reading and screen work very difficult. Even now, it's only slowly coming right enough to write this post, and as you can imagine, with a life bereft of books, television, and the internet ("I know" — grave extremes indeed!) it did not take long for my mind to return to audio books.

As I was not feeling particularly well, my first choice was to opt for an old favorite, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone*.  From the outset, I found myself in love all over again — I believe thanks to the change of medium, from reading (with the risk of skimming if time is short or looking ahead if the suspense cannot be borne) to listening to every word.

What good words they are, too. I found myself consciously enjoying JK Rowling's gift for creating suspense through the opening atmosphere of mystery and the marvel of Harry's survival. The immediate contrast with the mundane world of the Dursleys and 4 Privet Drive, not only in the sense of building Harry's character (as well as his circumstances) works, too, as the reader is introduced to the wonders, but also dangers, of the wizarding world through Harry's marveling eyes.

 I felt, listening to the presence of the magical world unfold within the mundane, from Diagon Alley, Gringotts, and Platform 9 ³/₄, to Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest, that the heart of JK Rowling's success with the Harry Potter series lies with the truly magical world she has created — and the fact that as reader or listener you believe in it so implicitly.

Quidditch...

Part of the reason for that, I believe, is delight: we cannot help but feel delighted as the layers of the extraordinary and mystical, the absurd and the dangerous unfold. Elements such as the description of the school feasts and quidditch matches add texture that makes the world feel even more believable and real.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is not all about the worldbuilding, though. The Dursleys might be close to slapstick characters in some ways, but the central players of Harry, Ron, and Hermione, feel real and human. As readers, or in this case listeners, we can readily identify with their hopes and doubts, mistakes and successes. Supporting characters such as Neville, the Weasley twins, and Hagrid are all similarly real, while the apparent malevolence of Professor Snape is masterful.

Severus Snape

Arguably, worldbuilding and characters are enough to make any Fantasy story rock. I felt there was one further element, though, that really stood out for me when listening to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Hermione herself says it, when leaving Harry to seek help at the end of the book:  "...friendship, and bravery and — oh Harry ..."  Hermione is in a hurry, so she doesn't add "kindness", and "generosity" to that list, but I think it could be included in her "and —" that precedes "oh Harry."

The friendship between Harry, Ron, and Hermione is the heart of this book. Notably, the three of them are kind to Neville, in particular, when they could as easily ridicule and ostracize his social awkwardness and ineptitude. It is kindness, too, that sends Harry and Ron to rescue Hermione from the troll, when they haven't particularly liked her up until that point. And Harry, who has been emotionally and physically deprived by the Dursleys, is generous in sharing what he has, both in terms of time and energy, but including giving his last chocolate frog to a distressed Neville.

Harry, Ron, Hermione

There weren't many listening moments when I felt my suspension of disbelief tested and I think the main instance (which I don't recall having struck me at all when first reading the book) was Harry and Hermione leaving the invisibility cloak on the top of the tower. "Yeah," I thought, "that's definitely a 'nah' for me..." I found it hard to believe that something as valued and vital as the invisibility cloak, together with the consequences of being caught, could allow it to be so easily forgotten.

Dudley Dursley

Also, although Dudley Dursley is essentially a 'broadbrush' take on a boy who is spoiled and encouraged to be selfish, greedy, mean-spirited and cruel, one of his most significant negative attributes in the story is that he is fat. Personally, I have known several overweight and even very large people who are kind, generous, intelligent, witty, and as morally courageous (in their "muggle" ways, of course) as Harry, Ron, and Hermione. So, children's book or not — or perhaps because it is a children's book — it struck me that equating weight with qualities of character was unfortunate.

In terms of other moments of difficulty, these were not with the story itself but with the adult reflections it sparked. I say "adult" deliberately because of course Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a story written for children. So in that sense, the Dursleys' absurdity works, not least in that it softens the extent of their cruelty to Harry. Yet having recently heard of the specific case of a foster child who was subjected to a very similar from of emotional and physical deprivation as Harry in the early chapters of Sorcerer's Stone, as well as the terrible emotional and psychological effects on this very young individual, I found myself very conscious of our everyday world's realities while listening. I wished, too, that such instances might be confined to the pages of children's literature, with a Hagrid always there to ride to the rescue and the safety of a Hogwarts waiting, only Platform 9 ³/₄ and a ride on the Hogwarts Express away.

To return, though, to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, overall I thoroughly enjoyed rediscovering it through the medium of audio books and may well listen to The Chamber of Secrets very soon...

* In the UK, and also in Australia and New Zealand (where I live) the book was published as Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone drawing on the medieval tradition of a stone that could turn base metals into gold, i.e. alchemy. In the Middle Ages, and in fact well into the Renaissance and pre-Industrial eras, alchemy, like astrology, was considered a proper field of inquiry for philosophers. 

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Helen Lowe is a novelist, poet, and blogger whose first novel, Thornspell (Knopf), was published to critical praise in 2008. Her second, The Heir of Night (The Wall Of Night Series, Book One) won the Gemmell Morningstar Award 2012. The sequel, The Gathering Of The Lost, was shortlisted for the Gemmell Legend Award in 2013. Daughter Of Blood, (The Wall Of Night, Book Three) is Helen's most recent book and she is currently working on the fourth and final novel in The Wall Of Night series. Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog and is also on Twitter: @helenl0we

The End is Near

Happy New Year! In my first post of 2018 I'm writing about endings. Crazy, I know, but what can I do? Endings are important to a writer, and not just to nail the book. It's also thrilling to come to that last scene, in the last chapter and say, Done.

Do we Judge Books by their Endings?

After 400 pages of story, you'd think readers would consider the whole experience, but no. They walk away from the book, TV series, play or movie, thinking of how it ended. They might be left pondering, cheering, crying or disappointed, but The End is what sticks.

For an author, a good ending means readers feel satisfied, even if profoundly sad or disturbed. They talk about the book, passing on its greatness by word of mouth. A bad ending is one where readers feel cheated, let down or worse, unmoved. They don't talk about the book or lend it to a friend. They throw it at the wall, eventually picking it up and putting it in the trash.

What Makes a Good Ending?

Feelings. Emotions. Whether comedic, tragic or fantastic, the ending needs to make readers feel deeply. It can come out of left field at the time, but there has to be, on reflection, a sense of logic, of possibility. Good authors will seed the ending in ways readers won't see it coming but later they find the rationale.

There are many types of endings and some of them are tethered to a genre. Romance novels, paranormal or otherwise, have an HEA (happy ever after). Trillers require an unsettling twist (Gone Girl). Fantasy may end with everyone receives a medal (Star Wars) or with the goal reached, but with varying degrees of fallout (LOTR).

YA Lit is changing but in the past 'happy and optimistic' endings were considered the norm. Yet, the most important ingredient in a good ending is its honesty. It may come as a shock, but it needs to ring true to the story. I remember being disturbed by the ending in The Forest of Hands and Teeth. I didn't like it, but it felt right. See below for changing perspectives in children's literature.

The fact that texts for children express hope, and therefore typically have happy endings, raises a question about their accuracy and honesty. - Perry Nodelman and Mavis Reimer‘s The Pleasures of Children’s Literature,

An Eclectic Group of Endings that Work for me

Some endings summerize; others shock. Some come full circle. Some hang us off a cliff until the next in the series; others leave us guessing. Here's a mix of some of my favorites.

"Then she bade the white horse take her through the door, leaving the snow to close in behind them and winter to obliterate any trace of her passing. - The Heir of Night, Helen Lowe

"Later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake." - Dracula, Bram Stoker

"The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well." - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling

"He was soon borne away 
by the waves and lost in darkness and distance." - Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

"Are there any questions?" - The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

"She looked down and for an instant it seemed she held a ragged teddy, torn and chewed with one button eye missing, but when she blinked she saw it was only Teg’s fingers laced in her own." - Journey by Night, Kim Falconer

"She opened the door wide and let him into her life again." - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Stieg Larsson

She closes her eyes again and I begin to sing softly:
'''V'la l'bon vent, v'la l'joli vent
V'la l'bon vent, ma mie m'appelle.'''
Hoping that this time it will remain a lullaby. That this time the wind will not hear. That this time - please just this once - it will leave without us." - Chocolat, Joanne Harris

"And then we continued blissfully into this small but perfect piece of our forever." - Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer

"When they finally did dare it, at first with stolen glances then candid ones, they had to smile. They were uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love." - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Patrick Süskind

"Hector turns and sees me and the world around us disappears. - The November Girl, Lydia Kang

How about you? I'd love to hear your most liked, or disliked, endings.

xxKim

Kim Falconer's latest release comes out in 2018 The Bone Throwers, book one in the Amassia series, writing as A K Wilder. Find her new page on Facebook - AKWilder Author and on Twitter as AKWilder.

Her latest novel is out now - The Blood in the Beginning - and Ava Sykes Novel.

Learn more about Kim on Facebook and chat with her on Twitter. Check out her pen name, @a.k.wilder on Instagram, or visitAKWilder on FB and website.

Kim also runs GoodVibeAstrology.com where she teaches the law of attraction and astrology. 

Kim posts here at the Supernatural Underground on the 16th of every month, hosts Save the Day Writer's Community on FB and posts a daily astrology weather report on Facebook. 

To Dream or Not to Dream

The World - Shadowscapes Tarot 

I just finished reading Laini Taylor's new book, Strange the Dreamer. It's a story about a boy named Lazlo Strange who dreams of things no low-born orphan could hope to aspire to. The plot revolves around the blue skinned godspawn, a past slaughter, a lost city and the lucid dreaming of Lazlo and Sarai. It got me thinking about dreamscapes in fiction, something I've explored in my own novels as well. The funny thing is, while researching dreams in Fantasy Fiction, most of the sites that come up say, Don't do it!

Seriously? Why not?

It's considered something to avoid, but don't tell that to Laini Taylor, Elizabeth Knox - The Dreamhunter Duet, Suzanne Young and Tom DeLonge - Poet Anderson ...of Nightmares, and hundreds of thousands of writers who have used dreams successfully in their fiction.

So which is it. Avoid, or use? 

Yvonne Woon's Dead Beautiful Series uses dreams as vision, 
intragal to the plot.

Reasons to Avoid Dream Scenes in Fiction

According to K M Weiland, "A story opening that features a dream is a story opening that almost always fails to present a strong hook, character, setting, conflict, or frame."

Jackal Editing agrees saying, “Don’t put dreams in novels” isn’t a rule; it’s advice that emerged from readers’ negative reactions to dreams in novels, and it’s practical advice."

Surveys show that dreams sequences in fiction are often skimmed or skipped entirely. Readers report them as boring, distracting and irrelevant to RL, the real life of the story. It's a valid point. Because dreams aren't RL, they have no stakes. No matter what happens, what's revealed, learned or accomplished, in the end, 'is just a dream.' 

Jungian analysis aside, a dream sequence may have no relevance to the story save to tell the reader something about the dreamer's subconscious mind, repressed emotions or secret fears and desires. That may move the story along, or come off as a transparent plot device.

Other cons include:

Dreams in stories almost never ring true. Symbol is the language of the subconscious so in dreams, there is no order, no beginning, middle and end. Hence, dreams that play out as a textual mini-series can't happen, unless you premise your story-world with that ability, and explain why.

Dreams used to flesh out a character may be lazy writing. As Jackal says, "If you can’t develop your character while they’re awake, you’re already in serious trouble."

Dreams in RL are tricksters. They mislead, have dead ends, and rarely portray any concrete ah ha moments when considered rationally. NOTE: This could be both a pro and a con for writing dreams into the story, depending on how its used. 

Harry Potter is led astray by subconscious thoughts implanted by a dastardly villain. 

Reasons for Dreams in Fiction

If the dreams are visions, essential to the plot, as we see happening to the character Renée Winters in the Dead Beautiful series, by Yvonne Woon, and in all seven novels of the Harry Potter series, then they belong in the narrative. In these examples, dreams are portrayed as powerful, mysterious, dangerous, and a source of power. Good additions.

Our own Supernatural Author Helen Lowe adds, "Dream magic is an important part of the Wall of Night series world and also figured in Thornspell. You will notice, the dreams are not alternate to the main story but an integral part of it."

She has written about her approach to dreams in fiction here:

Magic In “The Wall Of Night” World 

Portent and Fate: The Mythic Aspect of Dream in Contemporary Fantasy

I find Dreams belong in the prose if they are forms of magical communication. Laini Taylor's Strange the Dreamer and Heartless (Tales of Goldstone Wood #1) by Anne Elisabeth Stengl are examples. Also George R. R. Martin uses dreams for prophecy and communication (particularly the wolf dreams of the Stark children) and in the above mentioned Elisabeth Knox duet, dreams are the premise for the entire story. 

Dreams may also bring humor, a kind of comic relief for the characters. This can work by highlighting their reaction to it, and the reactions of other characters when told the dream.

For writers, if you are Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Carrol, Bronte, Orwell and others of that calibre who have used dream narratives to great success, then don't hesitate. Dream sequences CAN work. But it might help to reread some of your favorite authors and see how they managed it.

For readers, I'm wondering how you feel about dreams in novels? Do you ever skim? Get distracted? Bored? Or do the dreams seem like integral, captivating additions to the plot? Somewhere in between?

I'd love to hear your take!

Kim Falconer's latest release is out now - The Blood in the Beginning - and Ava Sykes Novel. Find this novel in a store near you.

You can also learn more about Kim at AvaSykes.com, the 11th House Blog, and on FaceBook and Twitter.  Or on GoodVibeAstrology.com where she teaches law of attraction and astrology.

Kim posts here at the Supernatural Underground on the 16th of every month and runs Save the Day Writer's Community on Facebook. Check out her daily Astro-LOA Flash horoscopes on Facebook.