The Craft Behind the Story Read online

Chapter 6 · The Chapter Break

14. Sources Cited

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14.1 Criticism, narratology and book history

  • Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Translated by Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974. [French original 1970.]
  • Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984.
  • Butt, John, and Kathleen Tillotson. Dickens at Work. London: Methuen, 1957.
  • Dames, Nicholas. The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023.
  • Dames, Nicholas. “The Chapter: A History.” The New Yorker, 2014.
  • Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.
  • Genette, Gérard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
  • Hughes, Linda K., and Michael Lund. The Victorian Serial. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991.
  • Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.
  • Moretti, Franco. Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History. London: Verso, 2005.
  • Moretti, Franco. Distant Reading. London: Verso, 2013.
  • Patten, Robert L. Charles Dickens and His Publishers. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
  • Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987.
  • Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968.
  • Sternberg, Meir. Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
  • Stone, Harry, ed. Dickens’ Working Notes for His Novels. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
  • Todorov, Tzvetan. The Poetics of Prose. Translated by Richard Howard. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977.

14.2 Cognitive and empirical studies of reading and perception

  • Emmott, Catherine. Narrative Comprehension: A Discourse Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
  • Gerrig, Richard J. Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
  • Newtson, Darren. “Attribution and the Unit of Perception of Ongoing Behavior.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 28 (1973).
  • Ovsiankina, Maria. “Die Wiederaufnahme unterbrochener Handlungen.” Psychologische Forschung 11 (1928).
  • Speer, Nicole K., Jeffrey M. Zacks, and Jeremy R. Reynolds. “Human Brain Activity Time-Locked to Narrative Event Boundaries.” Psychological Science 18 (2007).
  • Van Bergen, Annie. Task Interruption. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1968.
  • Zacks, Jeffrey M., Nicole K. Speer, Khena M. Swallow, Todd S. Braver, and Jeremy R. Reynolds. “Event Perception: A Mind-Brain Perspective.” Psychological Bulletin 133 (2007).
  • Zacks, Jeffrey M., Nicole K. Speer, and Jeremy R. Reynolds. “Segmentation in Reading and Film Comprehension.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 138 (2009).
  • Zeigarnik, Bluma. “Über das Behalten von erledigten und unerledigten Handlungen.” Psychologische Forschung 9 (1927).
  • Zwaan, Rolf A., Joseph P. Magliano, and Arthur C. Graesser. “Dimensions of Situation Model Construction in Narrative Comprehension.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 21 (1995).
  • Zwaan, Rolf A., and Gabriel A. Radvansky. “Situation Models in Language Comprehension and Memory.” Psychological Bulletin 123, no. 2 (1998): 162–185.

14.3 Craft literature, used as documents of a practice

  • Bickham, Jack M. Scene & Structure. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1993.
  • Burroway, Janet. Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Various editions.
  • Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. London: Edward Arnold, 1927.
  • Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
  • Le Guin, Ursula K. Steering the Craft. Revised edition, 2015.
  • McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: ReganBooks, 1997.
  • Swain, Dwight V. Techniques of the Selling Writer. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965.
  • Yorke, John. Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey into Story. London: Penguin, 2013.

14.4 Primary texts discussed

Passages are quoted briefly for the purposes of criticism and study. Where a work was not written in English, the translation used is named.

  • Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. 1958.
  • Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. 1813.
  • Calvino, Italo. Invisible Cities. 1972. Trans. William Weaver (1974).
  • Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. 1605, 1615. English versions cited: trans. John Rutherford (2000); trans. Edith Grossman (2003).
  • Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. 1859–60.
  • Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. 1852–53; Great Expectations. 1860–61.
  • Dumas, Alexandre. Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. 1844–46. Trans. Robin Buss (Penguin, 1996).
  • Eliot, George. Middlemarch. 1871–72.
  • Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. 1925.
  • Ford, Ford Madox. The Good Soldier. 1915.
  • García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. 1967. Trans. Gregory Rabassa (1970).
  • Heller, Joseph. Catch-22. 1961.
  • Herbert, Frank. Dune. 1965.
  • Ishiguro, Kazuo. The Remains of the Day. 1989.
  • Kafka, Franz. Der Process. 1925. Trans. Breon Mitchell (1998).
  • Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. 1851.
  • Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 1987.
  • Proust, Marcel. À la recherche du temps perdu. 1913–27. English versions referred to: trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff, revised by Terence Kilmartin and D. J. Enright; and the Penguin edition under the general editorship of Christopher Prendergast (2002).
  • Saramago, José. Blindness. 1995. Trans. Giovanni Pontiero (1997).
  • Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. 1939.
  • Sterne, Laurence. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. 1759–67.
  • Thackeray, William Makepeace. Vanity Fair. 1847–48.
  • Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. 1869; Anna Karenina. 1878.
  • Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. 1927.

14.5 Second-edition sources

Examples added in the second edition (Core chapter) and the sources used to verify them, with the sources for the corrected claims about reading devices and streaming.

  • Atkinson, Kate. Life After Life. 2013. (The recurring darkness fell at Ursula’s deaths: Keeping Up With The Penguins review; Inventing the Medium, “Replay Story Structure: Life After Life”, 2013.)
  • Brown, Dan. The Da Vinci Code. 2003. (About 139,000 words: wordcounters.com; more than a hundred numbered chapters between a prologue and an epilogue, 105 or 106 by different study guides’ numbering: eNotes, BookRags.)
  • Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. 2016. (Chapter titles and the Mabel chapter: GradeSaver and LitCharts study guides; that Cora never learns her mother’s fate: BookBrowse discussion.)
  • Yarros, Rebecca. Fourth Wing. 2023. (In-world epigraphs, including Major Afendra’s Guide to the Riders Quadrant and The Book of Brennan: Bookish Goblin, “Epigraphs in Fourth Wing”.)
  • Game of Thrones, season 1, episode 9, “Baelor”. HBO, 12 June 2011. (Ninth of ten episodes; ends with Ned Stark’s execution: Wikipedia, “Baelor”.)
  • Severance, season 1, episode 9, “The We We Are”. Apple TV+, 8 April 2022. (The ending: Wikipedia, “The We We Are”; season 2 premiere on 17 January 2025: Apple TV+ press release, December 2024.)
  • Thackeray, Vanity Fair, monthly part IX (September 1847) comprising chapters 30–32: Wikipedia, “Vanity Fair (novel)”, list of monthly parts.
  • Kindle “time left in chapter”, estimated from the reader’s speed: Good e-Reader, “Amazon Kindle Reading Progress Explained”.
  • Netflix Post-Play (automatic next episode): TechCrunch, 15 August 2012.
  • Schaffner, Brennan, et al. “An Experimental Study of Netflix Use and the Effects of Autoplay on Watching Behaviors.” arXiv:2412.16040, 2024. (76 participants; disabling autoplay shortened sessions by about 17.6 minutes.)