Hello,
I'm having trouble defining the last 'chapter' of my book, and I wanted some help here.
In the past I more or less thought of Epilogues as a shorter last chapter. The final action has been done, the BBEG has been defeated, the heroes bask in their collective character arcs and enjoy a beer for the final 'real' chapter. The next thing is the epilogue where we find out that the hero is going back to his life as a beet farmer and the daughter of the BBEG will rise to burn those beats to the ground in a thematically appropriate fade to black with 'dun dun duuuuun' playing in the background.
My chapters tend to run at about 3000-3500 words, and my epilogues (all two of them) clock in at about half that. Just enough to find out where the side-characters landed when the dust settled. I know that word count does not a chapter make, but it's a silent rule in the back of my head that pops up unbidden and helps me keep my over-all word count reasonable.
Man I have a hard time keeping my thoughts together. Where was I?
Right, so my current WIP has 29 chapters and an epilogue that I just decided to beef up to see what happened to my main side character. MC really fumbled the ball in chapter 28, spent chapter 29 beating herself up about it, and in the epilogue I wanted MSC to really drive home that MC needs help so such epic ball fumblage doesn't happen again. Aside from some other loose ends and a semi-climactic reveal at the very end, this has ended up being the star of the show for my epilogue, and has brought the word count up to just under 2500.
To me this says: Hey, we've got some genuine, primo-grade character development here. You don't put that in epilogues, that goes in chapters. Word count is an illusion anyway, make this Chapter 30, no epilogue, the end.
My question, if I still have anybody's attention at this point, is does my weird, self-imposed definition make this a chapter, or epilogue? What would you call an epilogue? Would you call this (admittedly poor description of a collection of scenes) an epilogue or chapter?
It's an odd thing to get stuck on, but I am, in fact, stuck on it. Please help.
Tulip Mama <3
I'm having trouble defining the last 'chapter' of my book, and I wanted some help here.
In the past I more or less thought of Epilogues as a shorter last chapter. The final action has been done, the BBEG has been defeated, the heroes bask in their collective character arcs and enjoy a beer for the final 'real' chapter. The next thing is the epilogue where we find out that the hero is going back to his life as a beet farmer and the daughter of the BBEG will rise to burn those beats to the ground in a thematically appropriate fade to black with 'dun dun duuuuun' playing in the background.
My chapters tend to run at about 3000-3500 words, and my epilogues (all two of them) clock in at about half that. Just enough to find out where the side-characters landed when the dust settled. I know that word count does not a chapter make, but it's a silent rule in the back of my head that pops up unbidden and helps me keep my over-all word count reasonable.
Man I have a hard time keeping my thoughts together. Where was I?
Right, so my current WIP has 29 chapters and an epilogue that I just decided to beef up to see what happened to my main side character. MC really fumbled the ball in chapter 28, spent chapter 29 beating herself up about it, and in the epilogue I wanted MSC to really drive home that MC needs help so such epic ball fumblage doesn't happen again. Aside from some other loose ends and a semi-climactic reveal at the very end, this has ended up being the star of the show for my epilogue, and has brought the word count up to just under 2500.
To me this says: Hey, we've got some genuine, primo-grade character development here. You don't put that in epilogues, that goes in chapters. Word count is an illusion anyway, make this Chapter 30, no epilogue, the end.
My question, if I still have anybody's attention at this point, is does my weird, self-imposed definition make this a chapter, or epilogue? What would you call an epilogue? Would you call this (admittedly poor description of a collection of scenes) an epilogue or chapter?
It's an odd thing to get stuck on, but I am, in fact, stuck on it. Please help.
Tulip Mama <3