Unorthodox Chapter Systems

So, at first I didn't like Terry Pratchett because his work wasn't divided into chapters, but now that I'm a more serious writer, I've discovered that chapters are a severe annoyance. For those who don't write in chapters, what systems have you come up with to replace them?

I write in "Days"-ie, each section opens with my main character waking up and ends with my main character going to sleep. Some Days are much longer than others and some are much shorter than others depending on how much plot-important stuff happens on a day.

I don't understand how that is any different, other than you call your sections something else.

I've tried writing without chapters. It results in the story feeling more like a winding dream than anything.

edited 16th Apr '11 3:49:23 PM by QQQQQ

I tried doing exactly what you did.

Every time the chapter ended my MC was going to bed, being knocked out, etc. But that made certain sections of the story disjointed and fragmented and other, longer parts go on and on. When I wanted to transition to another scene I had to start looking for excuses for my protagonist to fall asleep. He started taking random naps in the middle of what was practically a warzone at that point just so I could end a pages-long fight scene.

Yeah, I stopped doing that.

edited 16th Apr '11 8:31:39 PM by Chubert

See, I cut up scenes with centered sets of three asterisks, but I don't label those scenes. The days are there to help the reader find their place in the story after putting the book down, a la chapter numbers.

edited 16th Apr '11 8:35:25 PM by PDown

Oh! That's nice.

But wait! What if a reader wants to know exactly where a scene is? Or maybe he like a particular scene, and wants to have a concrete number to recommend to a friend. Might as well number them, eh?

And for ease of access, why shouldn't you just slap a list of the numbered scenes on the front of the book?

Oh. Wait...

I lean on the ends of chapters very hard whenever I read books because I have the attention span of a two-year-old. If there's no form of division for me to use as a checkpoint while reading, I'll just be overwhelmed by the size of the reading material as a whole.

I don't care what you call your chapters as long as they're not ridiculously long and they are numbered.

I do not get what is wrong with chapters.

Imagine if the Bible didn't have chapters or different books. Now apply that to a novel.

Call it what you want, but it won't solve the problem unless their are no divisions whatsoever, making it a mess and a mental killer to the eyes and anyone who needs to look away for a second.

On the current project, I have multiple protagonists. Rather than chapter title, I merely state their name, centred in italics, with a line to itself.

I agree with Jason, what's wrong with chapters? I don't mean to say you SHOULD use them, but I wouldn't like reading a book without chapters nor would I like writting anything long without them.

I like how most manga handle the chapters nowadays and call them "page", "game" or some other random term related to the theme of the manga.

I try to use Idiosyncratic Chapter Titles or stick to a theme in each chapter's name if I still call them chapters (kind of like how all the Animorphs books are called "The X," where X is a noun that has to do with the story.)