Where do you break a scene, a chapter, a book series? How do you break a huuuuuge tome into smaller books, if you realize that you need to? [Preferably not where the translators broke the first Game of Thrones novel, which was the point where they reached the top page count and it happened to be the middle of a chapter. The next edition moved the break to a chapter end, although not the end of the English-language book. I got to hear aaaaaalll about that.]

The header images is from the historical park at El Rancho de los Golondrinas, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. The ranch, which had excellent water, sat at the end of the long, hard, relatively dry climb from Bernalillo and Albuquerque to Santa Fe on El Camino Real. Caravans stopped there to rest, get cleaned up before going into the city, and perhaps do a little early business. It also served as a last place to check brakes and animal health, to secure loads before starting down the road to the south. And it was a fortress when it had to be. Not everyone needed it, but many did.

We writers do the same thing with pacing and breaking our stories. Even thrillers need pauses, moments to catch breath, process information, nap, reload before the next burst of activity. Right now, as several people mentioned last week on Margaret Bell’s post about Neville Schute’s stories, we tend to follow the W-pattern of writing. Action, tension release, greater tension and action, a little less release, building to the climax and then a nice relaxing wrap-up. Dwight Swain’s book outlines exactly how to do that, and once you toss in the necessary beats and “reader cookies” for a particular genre, it can work very well for many novels. Not everyone follows the pattern, and of course short stories are going to be different, but it has become the most common pattern.

So, when do you release tension, break chapters, or even split a book into two or three? Ideally, you will realize early on that your idea for the story needs more space than just one book, and plan accordingly. Otherwise, I’d suggest finding a place where the action winds down for a moment, say one of your three major plot threads has been resolved, and end Book The First there. As you know, I’m philosophically opposed to cliff-hangers, unless the author has the next story ready to go and will release within a very short period of time. Three years does not count.*

I tend to stick with the general W-pattern, and break chapters when the peak action for that chapter has ended. This sometimes means that my chapters are of varying lengths, although I have yet to do a single-page chapter a la Dumas or Hugo. The problem-of-the-moment has been solved, and the protagonist gets a break, or decides he or she needs to go do something else (Day Job, thing spouse had been politely requesting get done, collect kids from school, rescue supper from the oven …) Keep in mind, the problem-of-the-moment might be dealing with a hectic day at work that seems unrelated to the Plot Crisis, but that builds tension. Will our heroine be too exhausted to notice that Something’s Odd at the Creepy House on her way home? Is the bad guy manipulating things at the hero’s place of work to get him fired, so that he can’t make the next payment on his house and he gets evicted, or loses the family farm, or … So a day-in-the-life chapter might seem quieter, a time for the character and the reader to catch their breathes and relax, but you can still use it to move the plot along.

Another places to break to a new chapter is where you need to switch PoV characters. Romances, thrillers, epistolary novels (stories told as an exchange of letters) use that. Occasionally you will get a pan back to omniscient overview, although that seems to be a technique that’s fallen out of favor (or is used for humor, like Deadpool breaking the “fourth wall.”

Note: you don’t have to break the chapter after the crisis-of-the-moment. You might break it just before, or even during (if you have a good way to do it) and shift to a different point-of-view**. Thrillers and mysteries/police procedurals seem to do this more than other genres. You have one character in grave danger, and the rest of the team is trying to find him and the bad guys. Or you show a hostage and the terrorists who are about to blow up the European Parliament, and cut to the Belgian Police and military scrambling to get into position to both evacuate the EU Parliament and stop the terrorists. It can really ratchet up the tension if done well, and sparingly.

I can only think of a few times when I’ve done that, and they involve characters realizing that Something Worse Has Happened. Chapter break, and the protagonists take a deep breath, mentally regroup, and start deciding what they have to do next. Those are often near the climax of the story, when tension is building rapidly, and I’ve just tossed yet another complication on the poor characters.

Scene breaks. I’m going to hold off on this one, because I am wrestling with this at the moment. Some are pretty clear, such as when a married couple give each other warm looks, retire for the night and the door closes.*** Others need to be smoother and not as abrupt. That’s where I have developed a problem, for several possible reasons including laziness and writing at Warp 10 to get things done within a hard, self-imposed deadline. I’ll probably come back to this one when I iron out what my problem is.

*It wasn’t entirely the author’s fault, but I’m not going back to the series until it is finished, so that can’t happen again.

**This is NOT the time to introduce a second P.o.V., if you have not already done so. I didn’t quite wall the book, but I was tempted.

***Unless you are writing spicy books or erotica, when you’ll break the scene at a later point.