On Tonight's Episode: Fixing Episodic Chapters

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

We're continuing on the golden oldies tour with an updated look at what to do when your chapters feel episodic. Enjoy!
Sometimes, the first (or later) draft of a novel can feel like a lot of loosely connected scenes strung together. Instead of chapters that flow together and build off one another so the story reads like it's one seamless entity, it feels disconnected. Every chapter might work on its own, but the book reads choppy, there's a lack of tension, and readers don't feel like they're getting anywhere, even if the plot in advancing.

The story feels episodic.

An episodic-feeling novel often develops when you have a lot of point of view character, location, or goal changes and you lose the plot thread tying the chapters together. Things are happening, possibly even exciting "doing all the right story stuff" things, but information is being dropped out there and it's not really going anywhere. There's no cause and effect between chapters, even if there is within scenes. For example:
Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com