In media res

In media res is a Latin phrase meaning "in the midst of things". It is a literary device that you are supposed to use in a novel to increase the reader's level of excitement as you go from one chapter to the next. If a chapter picks up exactly where the prior scene left off, the lack of jump would cause the reader to ask why you put a chapter break there in the first place.

When I wrote the original long-form version of Rome's Revolution, I did not know about this. I was going for a more you are there kind of vibe so to me, chapters were just a convenient place to let the reader breathe.

However after the thunderous silence that greeted that original version, I set about collapsing my original three novels into one and that meant a severe edit job.

At that point I had been taught about in media res so I took the opportunity to cause a break in time between chapters. For example, the original Chapter 1 ended with Rei and Rome leaving the airlock/iso chamber and walking down the corridor. Chapter 2 started with them continuing down the hallway and encountering Estar. Now I have Chapter 2 starting with Rei staring up at the ceiling in the Great Room in the middle of the star base proving that at least a little bit of time had passed.

In the current version, I have Chapter 3 starting the morning after Rome and Rei have slept together. Chapter 3 and 4 are pretty seamless. I would say I failed there. Chapter 5 starts up after another afternoon of passion. The rest of the chapters break as best as I could.

However, there was one pair of chapters where I broke this rule on purpose. Chapter 11 ends mid-sentence on an ellipsis and Chapter 12 picks up with a leading ellipsis. Chapter 11 ended with "as soon as the inner hatch opened, he jumped through the doorway and…" and Chapter 12 started with "…ran right into Rome, almost knocking her over." This violation was the chapter break (no in media res) that got the manuscript thrown at me one time. That was awesome!