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> It was the Victorian novel that made the chapter seem natural. Key to the reality effects of nineteenth-century British fiction is its synchronisation of nove
by lqet 1y ago
> It was the Victorian novel that made the chapter seem natural. Key to the reality effects of nineteenth-century British fiction is its synchronisation of novel time with the natural rhythms of life. As a result, novelistic chapters lose their theatrics, their posturing and posing, even those unstable amalgamations surveyed in Equiano and Goethe, and instead become regular and ‘tacit’, receding into the background.
That may all be true. But many authors of that era (e.g. Dickens and Dostoevsky) published their work mainly in monthly installments. Chapters are then, exactly like TV show episodes, simply a technical necessity.
- ldmosquera 1y agoOne thing I hate about modern TV shows is that they have been further sliced into ~5-10min sequences between ad breaks, and even if you watch them without ads, you get narratively unnecessary cliff hangers just before a break, complete with dramatic music and a closeup of some dramatic gesture, trivially resolved in the next 5 seconds after the break. You're constantly yanked out of the narrative in service of ads even if you never see them, which has disfigured the medium.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago>One thing I hate about modern TV shows is that they have been further sliced into ~5-10min sequences between ad breaks, If it is on a broadcast tv network, it's not really worth watching. Sure, there are the one or two exceptional shows, but with so much premium content, why would you want to watch that?
- red369 1y agoI assume you mean it's not really worth watching if it's currently on broadcast TV? Surely there's a huge list of old broadcast TV network shows that are worth watching, and that still suffer from the ad-break problem to various degrees. Obviously I'm pulling from a wide time-period, and I'll probably get some of these wrong because I'm not in the the US and don't quite grok the network/cable divide, but off the top of my head, I think these are/were all worth watching: Seinfeld, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Freaks and Geeks, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Community, Schitt's Creek, The Office, The X-Files, various Star Trek series, Cheers That list could be easily improved on, but I assume it's missing your point anyway if you were only talking about current broadcast network TV (if it exists :) )
- thaumasiotes 1y ago> I'll probably get some of these wrong because I'm not in the the US and don't quite grok the network/cable divide Almost all of those are broadcast shows. I strongly suspect that all of them are, but I don't have personal knowledge of the entire list. As far as I can tell, the divide is pretty straightforward: Cable: nudity Broadcast: everything else In theory there's no requirement for a cable show to have nudity, but since they're allowed to, they all do.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> As far as I can tell, the divide is pretty straightforward: > Cable: nudity > Broadcast: everything else This is almost entirely wrong; non-premium cable (which is and was always the vast majority of cable) had and observed essentially the same structure and content rules as broadcast, with ad breaks and no swearing or nudity. Premium cable where each channel or later small branded group of channels is a separate surcharge on top of the broad package tended to have no ad breaks and looser content rules.
- thaumasiotes 1y agoWhat are some shows that were made for non-premium cable?
- dragonwriter 1y agoJust a few examples: Deadliest Catch (Discovery Channel, 2005-) Monk (USA Network. 2002-2009) Mad Men (AMC, 2007-2015) The Shield (FX, 2002-2008) Beavis and Butt-Head (MTV, 1993-1997 & 2011)
- School-Cotton 1y ago24 and Breaking Bad are also very popular examples.
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- crazygringo 1y agoI think you've got it backwards. That was the hallmark of old TV, on networks. Since the start of TV in the 50's. There are tons of modern TV shows that don't do anything you're talking about because they're made for streamers or paid TV without ads. It sounds like you watch different shows than I do, but I watch a lot of TV and haven't seen what you're talking about in many, many years. Not with Squid Game or Stranger Things on Netflix, or Andor on Disney+, or White Lotus on HBO, or Severance on Apple TV+, or even something like Alien: Earth currently on FX/Hulu. You might want to find better places for watching TV...
- pests 1y agoThis is mostly an issue for content produced to still be on regular tv and streaming, like on Paramount. Star Trek Discovery and Strange New Worlds, for example, are not as dramatic as described above but you can always spot where the adbreak would have been. Cut to black and a re-establishing shot at the least. These are modern shows like you describe but still the TV medium has some influence. One thing I do notice more and appreciate from streaming (sense8 in particular) is that shows are more varied in their runtime. Episodes being 40 minutes to 75 in length just depending on the needs of the plot, not even finale related or anything
- esseph 1y agoAlso an issue with YouTube...
- red369 1y agoI agree with your feeling that those mini cliff-hangers break the immersion, especially when watching without ad-breaks, although I can mostly deal with it. I agree with some of the other replies though, that it is more prevalent in older shows. I find that laugh-tracks are the aspect of older shows which I find harder to ignore. Still worth bearing with for some old shows though, especially as I gradually stop hearing them.
- beAbU 1y agoModern tv shows are more often than not released in a single go on a streaming service, intended to be binged in a single go. Often the episodes form a single narrative and a single episode cannot stand alone. The MOTD format is all but dead. Do you have an example of a modern show that has the dramatic-music-and-cliffhanger ad-break?
- bdunks 1y agoI read Isaac Asimov’s foundation series a few years ago (side note for anyone who hasn’t read it: it still holds up incredibly well with a small suspension of disbelief and some grace for when it was written). In the preface to the 4th or 5th book (which were written 30+ years after the “original” trilogy) he discussed how the originals parts of the trilogy were published as a set of short stories in a SciFi publication over 8 years, and later compiled into the books. I was astonished. Perhaps everyone else already knew this. But such a clear narrative through line to be written in discrete short stories. Very impressive. It sounds like this may have been common prior to this era as well.
- hinkley 1y agoDidn’t Verne also serialize his stories? This has been going on for a long long time but for sure Clark and Asimov have books that were serials in periodicals. Edit: looked it up. Dickens and Dumas preceded Jules Verne in serials being turned into novels.
- soneca 1y agoBut Asimov’s short stories weren’t a serialized novel from the start. They were individual short stories that he later combined with small changes to form novels. It’s different from what Dickens, Dumas, and Verne did.
- andrewflnr 1y agoWeird. I bounced off Foundation immediately because it felt like a series of short stories instead of a novel (and also I couldn't take psychohistory the least bit seriously). I'm kind of kicking myself for not predicting that it actually did start that way.
- d_sem 1y agoNew information that challenges one's context can often appear weird at first. Its a common reaction. Regarding psychohistory: It's worth considering the era in which the books where written. The 1st half of the 20th century saw massive innovations in economic theory, physics, and information theory. It was not a big leap to predict that in 500 years time, humans would further advance macro economics. Personally I felt the books did a great job setting limits in the capabilities of the theory, and using its inherit flaws to drive interesting plot lines.
- ImaCake 1y agoText size is also contingent on the basic technologies of the time. Ancient texts by the length and cost of parchment, and anything before the printing press by how easy it is to copy. Maybe its only now that we are less constrained by technology that we have to really focus on our mental faculties as the limiting factor for writing.
- galaxyLogic 1y agoI think it is simply because the writer needs to take a pause afteer writing some amount. And the reader also prefers to take pause. Having chapters aligns the interests of both readers and the writer.
- andrewflnr 1y agoNah, as a writer who talks to other writers with wildly different processes, I don't think that's how it works for anyone. Time spent writing is almost unrelated to visible time markers in the text. It's not a big deal to stop writing in the middle of a scene or stop one and start another in the same session (assuming we're writing linearly at all). Scene and chapter boundaries are something we specifically think about in their own right to optimize the reading experience.
- galaxyLogic 1y agoTrue. Personally when I write I do like to always start the next chapter or whatever is the "unit" or "task". But then stop. The units for the writer are probnably not the same as for the reader. But they serve the same purpose, taking a break, letting you think a bit about what was done and what will be done next. There is a rhythm. We live one day at a time. We tell one story at a time. We post one HN post at a time. :-)
- throw245433 1y agoAlso, I know "Journey to the West" had chapters and I'm sure other cultures books had chapters too. With all the colonization and cultural exchange going on during that period, they should've been familiar with it.
- novosel 1y agoAnd hence, Dickensian invention of cliffhanger at the end of installment. Narrative push and pull that you can feel when you read it in a book.
- dotancohen 1y agoI did not learn writing formally, and I do not publish what I write. But I do write a lot, mostly fiction to express the things that happen to myself in a controlled environment. I tried not writing in chapters, but I find that the chapters helped me compartmentalize different times and places and specific subjects. It may be that I'm simply used to chapters from reading other books, but no matter what the book I find that some sort of compartmentalization is beneficial and often necessary.
- madaxe_again 1y agoIf you eschew chapters, it can have a pretty distinctive effect on your prose. Prominent examples that come to mind are Finnegan’s Wake, The Waves, and On The Road, and all make for an intense read. The absence of pause gives you no place to put it down, you are ensnared within the inescapable flow. Seems to fit stream of consciousness stuff better. Although this does remind me of sitting on a plane as a kid with finnegan’s wake, and an older American leans over and reassures me that I’ll be able to move on to “chapter books” soon. To this day I remain unsure if he was being ironic or if he thought I was reading “Spot The Dog”.
- dotancohen 1y agoI've definitely experimented with different forms of compartmentalization, none of them to my satisfaction. I'm certain that a skilled writer could do something, but I couldn't.
- aspenmayer 1y ago> Although this does remind me of sitting on a plane as a kid with finnegan’s wake, and an older American leans over and reassures me that I’ll be able to move on to “chapter books” soon. To this day I remain unsure if he was being ironic or if he thought I was reading “Spot The Dog”. This scene is pitch-perfect. A two sentence Wes Anderson film novelization.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 1y agoMost writers kinda skip chapters. Instead, on early drafts, they focus on scenes, which might be 1:1 with a chapter, but are often 2:1 or even 3:1 with a chapter. The relationship between paragraphs, scenes, and chapters, is one way of thinking about and manipulating pace in a story.