Chapter Quotes

First seen on the Space Trash Blog.

Why add chapter quotes? Where do you get your chapter quotes from? Aren't chapter quotes hell to format?

 

Me, personally, I enjoy chapter quotes. Dorothy Dunnett, Seanan McGuire, and of course Frank Herbert are all awesome examples. If you've never read any of these authors, don't tell me because I will get very judgy.

"Facts are a commonly accepted interpretation. Truth is a commonly argued fiction." A Planet's Philsophy, Ankara Zaneth (From book 8...yes, I'm way ahead of myself.)

They're an insight into the world backdrop, a good laugh, or a context-setter, depending on what the author is doing with them and with their book. I put them in because, well, I'm a pure pantser. I don't outline. I generally have no idea what my characters are likely to do once I've dropped them into a scene. I find out when I write it down. As you can imagine, therefore, I usually end up writing my chapter quotes well after the fact. They're actually help me in the editing stage, because they act as a kind of focus mechanism for me when I'm editing a chapter. I can stare at the chapter quote for a bit when I get stuck, remember the awesome thing I was trying to do in that chapter, and return to hacking and slashing motivated and refocused. (Hah.) At least, that's how it sometimes works.

"Modesty is like arsenic: safe only in small doses." Sayings of the Wise, Olar Fantoml

As I kind of gave away in the last bit, I don't get my chapter quotes from anywhere. I make them all up. My father, who had very serious tastes in most of his reading, and considered sci-fi to be an extreme form of escapism, never actually read any of my books - but he would steal them from my mother when she was reading them, and he would read my chapter quotes. I still regret that I never really asked him why, because I think the answer would have been interesting.

"Avoidance requires continuous effort. Confrontation merely requires standing still." ~ Universal Truths, Jahira Suran

And yes, sometimes, depending on the platform, chapter quotes can indeed be hell to format. Kobo, for example, thinks my chapter quotes are a whole separate page unless I spend hours tickling it with an ostrich feather while immersing it in chocolate. (Kidding. I had to get much kinkier than that.)

"Training is not a substitute for experience; it is merely easier to survive." Training of a Cortiian, Nadhiri Longar (Yeah, Book 8 again...working on it.)

As to what my chapter quotes are supposed to achieve other than providing a focal point for my edits - I mostly leave that up to the reader. If they're something that you just skip on your way to the main events, no worries. If they make you grin, or start an interesting train of thought, then I'm happy. I frankly suspect most of mine actually come from Khyria's choices of reading matter. Most of them are downright cynical and sound like the kinds of things she'd remember.

Writing Myths that need slaying

First seen on the Space Trash Blog.

Writing Myths that need slaying

I must write something other people will like and approve of.

No. A thousand times no. As Oscar Wilde put it “You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies.” Write your truth. If it pleases everyone, chances are high you’re doing something wrong. Offend people. Make them think. Challenge their beliefs. Challenge your own. The world is too full of people tiptoeing carefully through their existences without ever standing up for themselves or what they believe in. If everyone is comfortable with your words, you’re using the wrong ones.

I must write at a level everyone will understand.

Don’t insult the intelligence of your readers. Don’t be complicit in the dumbing-down of society. Write to the level that your book demands and your characters dictate. If you have a story able to reach out and grab your readers by the balls, they will find themselves a dictionary if they have to. Don’t lessen your work or yourself to please the masses - because often the ‘m’ is silent.

I must write something that will sell.

Why? Are there writers who seriously go in expecting to get rich from their work? Write what pleases you, because the trending genre this month will have blown away with the autumn leaves next month. Write what pleases you, because forcing yourself

to write what everyone else does will be a brutal exercise in boredom. If no one else is ever to read your magnum opus, you had best make certain it enthralls you. Be original. Be yourself. No one else can be.

Writing is a slog, a chore. Writing is like giving yourself homework every night for the rest of your life.

Writing is an adventure. Every time you pick up a pen, sit at a keyboard, you create a world that only you can; live for a while with the only people you’re willing to invite inside your head. Writing is an addiction and a cure. Writing is an antidote to the tedium of life that was the same today as it was yesterday, as it will be tomorrow. Writing should make your heart beat faster and the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Writing should be what gets you through the things you 'have' to do; the thing that wakes you up in the night with the next scene more alive in your head than the walls around you.