How I Write Chapters

This is not writing advice, just how I personally approach chaptering.  This approach is not necessarily going to be useful for all authors, or all types of stories.  If you are not trying to write the same kind of story, this may not be a useful approach for you, and some things, like titling chapters, are purely a matter of authorial taste.  Though as I tend to write rather long stories, I consider chapter names more a courtesy to the reader to possibly help them determine where they left off. And I try to make the chapter names helpful for someone who's read them to find what happened where.

When I write a chapter, I try to consider several things:

*where the story is going--I do not plan this all out from beginning to end, but I do plan ahead. I have a rough idea of plot points I want to happen.  These can change over time, but I'll make a pool of ideas to draw from.  This pool is part outline, part drafted scenes for future chapters.

*where the story has been--usually I try to read over previous chapters to refresh my memory on what I wrote earlier.

*how to make the chapter seem self-contained, like a cohesive whole in and of itself rather than a fragment or vignette.  Often I think of chapters as sub-stories.  I try to give them a beginning, climax, and end.

*how to have one or more secrets be revealed, some memorable event occur, and/or a character undergo an important change of some sort (whether physical, emotional, or mental).  I don't like to wait for the juicy parts when I'm reading, and this is doubly true when I am writing.  Some things require buildup, but that doesn't mean other things can't be explored along the way, and the reveal of one chapter can serve as the buildup to another.

*a title that encapsulates some aspect of the chapter

Developing as a Writer

I think that it can be really hard to develop as a writer after a certain point, though that's something I'd like to continue to do.  I think reading widely and thinking about what I read helps with that, and I think feedback on my own work is useful, though I think my limited social skills make actively seeking the kind of feedback I'm looking for difficult.  The feedback I get by happenstance on my publicly posted stories can be very useful, but I would hardly expect every reader to write an in-depth analysis.  That's simply not reasonable. Whatever windfalls I get there are from chance alone.

And beyond getting more detailed feedback, there's also knowing how to act on it, which is something I also think I need to get better at too if I want to improve.

Star Wars is a Story About Vengeance

The more I think about it, the more I feel that Star Wars is, when you boil it down to its essentials, a story about revenge. It's a motif that arises again and again in the series.

One of the most memorable scenes of A New Hope is where Tarkin takes revenge on Alderaan for hiding dissidents by shooting it to smithereens.  This is followed by the rebellion taking revenge against him by blowing him up in his Death Star. The second film's final scenes focus on Jabba the Hutt enacting revenge on Han Solo by freezing him in carbonite.  The last film then starts off with Leia taking revenge on Jabba for stealing her boyfriend by strangling him to death with his own slave chain.  In the climactic scene of the film, Vader metes out vengeance on Palpatine in one of the most well executed scenes in the series.  As we now know, any Sith Lord worth his salt is supposed to kill his Master. And, Palpatine straight-up telling him to his face that he's about to replace him as Apprentice with his own flesh and blood, and then deciding his son isn't worth the trouble either finally gives Vader the impetus to act out his revenge.  A revenge which is foreshadowed quite clearly in The Empire Strikes Back.

And we can also very clearly view the prequel trilogy as a story about vengeance.  One of the most dramatic and memorable scenes of the first film is of Obi-Wan bisecting Maul in vengeance for killing Qui-Gon.  In Attack of the Clones, a pivotal scene of the movie is Anakin taking vengeance for the death of his mother on the Tusken Village.  And as for Revenge of the Sith, well, the word Revenge is even in the title of this very aptly named piece.  In a reversal from the original trilogy, ROTS is about Palpatine's revenge, rather than the revenge taken against him.  In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine executes the Sith revenge scheme against the Jedi and we see this in not one, but two climactic battles of his against them.  Also, in a reversal of the original trilogy, where Vader emerges triumphant, we see Obi-Wan, truly the most vengeful Jedi who has ever lived, leave him to roast painfully in lava after lopping off his remaining limbs.  You were my brother indeed.

And the sequels.  Ah, the sequels.  In The Force Awakens, we see revenge enacted on Phasma in the form of her being shoved into a trash compactor.  This is a very Han Solo-flavored revenge.  It therefore pairs well with the metatextual revenge we see Harrison Ford get on Lucas for not killing his character off in the original trilogy.  And at the end, we see Rey get revenge on Kylo by slashing his face up.

In the second film, we see Kylo Ren get revenge on his boss by bisecting him in the classic Obi-Wan style.  Maybe it was Kylo who was really a Kenobi all along.  We also see Hux repeatedly fail to mete out revenge, first on Rose and Finn, and then on Kylo as he fails to shoot him before he revives.  This will be important later.  There was also a cut scene where Rose takes revenge on Hux, which while not being able to support my argument due to its lack of inclusion in the film, is indeed very amusing.  Oh, and here we see Finn take revenge on Phasma, which is the vital reason she was revived for this film.  This is because Finn is an important character, and as we know, important characters get revenge!  This was also why the remainder of that scene was cut, as it would take attention away from the central Star Wars theme of vengeance.  The capstone of this film, of course, is the scene where Luke takes vengeance on his nephew for committing arson on the Jedi Academy by punking him one last time.

In the last film, we see Palpatine somehow return for an entirely predictable revenge setup.  You see, since the sequels are just a play-by-play redo of the original trilogy, which is about getting revenge on Palpatine, the suits at Disney and Lucasfilm realized that this film, too, would have to be about getting revenge on Palpatine.  So, somehow Palpatine returned, because we can't get revenge on him if he is already dead.  However, before that occurs, we see Palpatine take symbolic revenge on Vader for throwing him down the reactor shaft by him yeeting his granson and fanboy Ben Solo down a pit which he had clearly set up for this express purpose.  This is in contrast to Hux, whose purpose in this film is to show us a failed revenge narrative.  The capstone of the film is Rey taking revenge on grandpa Palpatine for her crummy childhood by incinerating him with his own Force lightning and then further taking symbolic revenge on him by taking on the surname of his mortal enemies.

And so, like Lucas says, Star Wars really is like poetry.  And this poetry rhymes with revenge.