Repeating . . . - include summary of previous chapter?

So in The Destruction of Prefect Parts 1-12 What I do, from my dad's suggestion is the last couple lines of the previous chapter go in the beginning of the following chapter to jog the memory of the readers.

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You don't need to do this. Just check out the books in your library and see how the chapters end and begin, and you'll see that books don't do this. If the reader has been away from a scene too long, the author may do something to reassociate them with the scene--but it'll be something that provides new information, not a repetition of lines from the last chapter. Use every opportunity to keep the story moving forward, not repeating what's already been said.

I think I'm writing in Third Person Limited but I also think it might be Omniscient I don't really know >.< It's one of the two.

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You might try checking this site out for some examples of POV: http://storysensei.blogspot.com/search/label/Point of View She gives a lot of examples of third.

I vote no. Different kind of writing, but filmmaking genius Billy Wilder is quoted as saying, "Let the audience add two and two, they'll love you for it." In other words, assume your readers have enough brains to figure it out for themselves. Don't rake over old coals, advance the story.

-Derek

What I do, from my dad's suggestion is the last couple lines of the previous chapter go in the beginning of the following chapter to jog the memory of the readers.

I'm sure your dad is a lovely person who knows much, much more than I do about almost everything. (Seriously, that wouldn't be hard.)

However, one thing I do know about is writing and publishing fiction. So please, please listen to me when I say FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, DON'T DO THAT! That's not appropriate to today's publishing conventions and standards (in English, at least, or in any of the other languages I read).

Nor would it be seen as a useful innovation. Rather, it would be seen by anyone reading your manuscript as an indication that you didn't know what you were doing.

Quentin Nokov said:

Okay. in my story there the MC her story and then a flashback with two different MCs setting the basis on how the other MCs world got destroyed and how she ended up where she did OKAY!


I think I'm writing in Third Person Limited but I also think it might be Omniscient I don't really know >.< It's one of the two.

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First of all, calm down okay. I critiqued your piece, and did see a lot of headpopping, which made me assume that you were writing in omniscient. If you fully intend to write in limited, then you should write something from the POV of one of your characters and write what only that person observes. If you want to write in omniscient, you're basically God in that story. You know what's going on in that story, you know things that you're characters don't know. (To others, correct me if I'm wrong.) A problem with writing in omniscient is that you can't really go inside one person's head, either you do that to all of the characters involved or don't do it at all.

If you're a beginner, omniscient isn't recommended, I hear it's very difficult to pull off, and it can be a very awkward read unless you know what you're doing.

By the way, I'd take back what I said about the omniscient stuff, all your story consisted of is head popping.

Why would you do that? Are you assuming the readers will stop reading after a chapter for a few days, then come back and forget where they were? Even if that's the case, all they have to do is to re-read a little bit to refresh their mind.

I personally have never seen books written that way. And if you do, you would appear to be condescending -- you're saying, "oh, you readers are stupid, so let me clue you in..."

The reason why they do it on TV is that there may be new audiences who have never seen the show before, or someone may have missed the last couple episodes. Also there may be multiple plot threads. So it's good to recap a bit in the beginning especially if the clips are relevant to the current episode.

In novels, that just seems so silly. People can just pick up the book, flip to the previous page and re-read. There really is no point of repeating the last few lines of the previous chapter. And if people are reading in one or two sittings, it's redundant and annoying.

I HATE repetition. One thing that bugged me in the Harry Potter series was how Rollings insisted on repeating summaries of plots and descriptions from previous books whenever they came up again. A lot of series writers do this and it always bugs me. It's not as though that summary would even make sense if you hadn't read the first book anyway. And if it's that annoying between series books, I can't even imagine how annoying it would be within the same book.

The only time I ever repeat myself is when I'm referencing a DETAIL (as opposed to the main plot or a major event) from a previous book in my series. Even then I just put in a quick summary of the relevant part, not an exact repeat of the previous scene.

Hope To The Horizon said:

I HATE repetition. One thing that bugged me in the Harry Potter series was how Rollings insisted on repeating summaries of plots and descriptions from previous books whenever they came up again. A lot of series writers do this and it always bugs me. .

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She had to. Otherwise you'd have to read previous books in the series to figure out what's going on. It's how series books stand alone.

Yikes, it seems everyone here would loathe my own serials then. o_o;

I often begin the next chapter with the last line or few lines from the previous chapter, but this is mainly because the chapters usually end on cliffhangers and to me it just seems abrupt to start the next chapter RIGHT where the last one left off, without even one sentence to tell what's happened, even if it's just the very last thing a character said in the previous chapter. I'm the same way with reading others' stories. To me it just feels like cutting into the middle of a sentence. I don't think of it as considering the reader "too stupid" to remember what happened, it just seems like a stylistic choice to me. In my first serial, I didn't use the little "recap" lines (exact quotes actually, not recaps), and to me those older chapters sound very abrupt and I dislike the effect. They seem disjointed, somehow, like they're missing something--like they've been cut off from the rest of the story. (And if anyone reads this they might be ready to argue, "Well, that speaks to your story itself not flowing properly, etc.," but IMO it flows fine, again, I assume this would be a matter of style choice and opinion. Just wanted to counter that point before it might be made since I might not return here, I always hate speaking against majority opinion. *blush*) I guess what I'm trying to say is, without the little repeat sentences, the chapters don't seem to progress naturally.

But then again, I'm talking about serials...I notice I never seem to do this in my novels. Hm. I'll have to see if this happens in my rewrites.

I wouldn't ever go with a whole big summary of everything that's happened so far though, no.

tehuti88 said:

But then again, I'm talking about serials...I notice I never seem to do this in my novels.

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It makes sense in a serial, because often some time has passed between installments, or someone might miss an installment.

But in a novel manuscript, it makes no sense whatsoever.

I hate repetition even between books in a series. I just read vol. 3 of a series by my favorite author, and I was annoyed as heck because she stuffed all the prose in the first 50 pages with summaries of what had gone before. Hello! I just read the last book, I remember what happened!

All I want to know is, who would actually pick up a book from the bookstore or library that said "VOLUME THREE OF SERIES __" and think, "Hey, I'll just read this first."

I did this once and only once in my life, when I was about 12, and I will never do it again.

JoNightshade said:

All I want to know is, who would actually pick up a book from the bookstore or library that said "VOLUME THREE OF SERIES __" and think, "Hey, I'll just read this first."

I did this once and only once in my life, when I was about 12, and I will never do it again.

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You'll never know. Someone could pick up book 5 and had no idea. Maybe you're sick of repetition, maybe you know what happened the previous book, but others probably don't.

Heck, I'm sick of T.V reruns, but it's for the people who miss an episode.

JoNightshade said:

All I want to know is, who would actually pick up a book from the bookstore or library that said "VOLUME THREE OF SERIES __" and think, "Hey, I'll just read this first."

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A few summers ago, I rented a cottage in Newfoundland. The owner had stocked the bookshelves with a variety of reads -- including a few Harry Potter books (which I'd never read). I read some of those out of order.

Quentin Nokov said:

I was a bit leery about repeating it. At first it seemed like a good idea because the flashback chapters were left on cliff hangers and the next chapter dealing with the same story wouldn't come in until five or six chapters later. There was big break in it. Now that I've reworked it I'm having it every other and I thought it looked pretty unnecessary but being very skeptical I had to get feedback.

Anyway, I know I head hop and head pop and I'm working on avoiding it. >.< I'm a newbie

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I can give you some good tips on how to nail head popping easy. Tips available upon request.