Crown of Stars: Chapter Construct

cedunkley asks

I've been curious about how you came up with the chapter construct for the Crown of Stars books. Was that something you developed after the novel was written or did you have that in mind from the beginning?

I hope I am understanding your question correctly. If you read this answer and I’m not, then ask again with more elaboration. Otherwise, here we go.

I played piano as a young person. I really love piano, the sound, the action, the music, and I love the Western European tradition classical music written for piano (or the earlier keyboard instruments). One of the things I love about this music is its structure. It appeals to an undefined and perhaps undefinable architectural scaffolding in my brain, and I believe that playing piano in my youth (together with being taken by my parental units to loads of Shakespeare plays) influenced the way I structure my writing.

This means I tend to find or create “formal” structures in my novels of one kind or another, although readers won’t always know they’re there.

For instance, The Sword of Heaven (in two parts: An Earthly Crown and His Conquering Sword) is structured kinda sorta as a five act Shakespearean play, with a point in the middle where the line of the plot gets turned over (that’s where I cut the book in half, actually).

The chapter construct in the Crown of Stars books is simply a manifestation of that, admittedly a somewhat artificial one. Look! Four fours! Look! Halves, with sevens!

In some cases the book’s plot seemed to lend itself to a halves situation (King’s Dragon and The Burning Stone instantly come to mind) in which a set of circumstances plays itself out, and then there is a change of direction or status and the characters are plunged into a different set of circumstances that are an outgrowth of the earlier situation. So, forex (spoilers ahead.….)


Liath escapes Hugh; Liath and Sanglant get married against the wishes of the king.


Usually it’s not just one thing but several things, or reversals, or major changes, which set up movement into a new situation (thus, a second half).

Other of the books have the four fours situation, or in the case of Child of Flame, Four Parts but more chapters in the third and fourth parts. This construct to me reflects a plot that has more of a progressive balanced feel, a steady forward motion with (one hopes) the tension rachetting up higher as you move deeper into the book. The part division reflects that by being more balanced.

The Gathering Storm is the exception. It’s a two parter, with a changeover separating the two parts, only with an add on at the beginning (not counting the prologue and epilogue which every novel has) which is kind of a super-prologue, I guess.

The King’s Dragon structure suggested itself because of the nature of that book’s plot. Prince of Dogs needed a different structure. The Burning Stone clearly had a changeover plot, while Child of Flame, with its expansive journeys into other worlds, needed the more balanced Four Part structure. The Gathering Storm is kind of the anomaly, and I guess I must have to some degree superimposed the Four v. the Halves structure on In the Ruins and Crown of Stars (7) because they were originally written in one go and later split because together they are rather overlong to be published as a single volume.

I hope that answers the question you asked.