Single Character Focused Chapters

[DelActivisto]

Oh yeah I know what you mean. Good thing I'm not in school anymore. I make mental notes of how authors describe certain things like rooms and buildings since that seems to be what gets me the most. Some styles, I like, some I don't and some tell so much I wonder how they even got published in the first place!

Indeed. As I'm reading, I try to remember the styles an author used to describe something - the flowing poetry of the LOTR series, to the wind-baggery of Robert Jordan, to the simple-but-elegant script of Sanderson. I've read a few pages into a Terry Brooks novel as well - concise and descriptive is what I would use to define her. Amongst others.

It's not plagiarism, by any means, any more so than memorizing facts from a physics book. Reading is an experience, one we learn from. That's why schools are full of stuffy, absurdly hard to interpret literary fiction novels. "Read this book and give me the correct interpretation!" is the mantra of many a teacher, perhaps.

Not that I'm picking on literary fiction - I've read a few, and immensely enjoyed them. It's just not my genre. Maybe that means I'm not very sophisticated.

 

[night_wrtr]

ould this type of chapter be acceptable in the publishing world? Why or why not? Basically the whole chapter is a lead up to the meeting, but we only see his POV in that chapter and that chapter only.

As far as TV, I think LOST did this very well. It had the main story going plus heavy attention to individual character struggles/backstories each episode.

But I think yes, like @zmunkz said, you can really do just about anything if you do it well. In this case, it seems like it would provide good detail on this character as it is leading up to a meeting with the MC. Would be a good opportunity to establish him adn his motivation and such and then when the POV reverts back, the reader will have a little more tension in the scene because they now know that character better. Go for it.