Do I use Aritifical Intelligence in any way, shape or form when I am reviewing a manuscript? No, I do not. True, I have software at my disposal, but I--in careful collaboration with my clients--make the choices about how the prose sounds and flows. AI is no substitute for human intuition and insight, especially in the realm of writing.

Another approach is to make a fan (typically a contest winner, or maybe a paid subscriber on Substack) have the option of being a character. I've never tried it, but it seems to work if you have enough rabid fans. Literary immortality (or at least, recognition until the book is gone)!

I've used fan names 4 or 5 times now.

Several of them even chose their own call signs.

One of them is a recurring character from series 5.

Another 2 were in 15 novels as secondary characters.

Yeah, it's fun if anyone else is in on the joke. I think that's easier with celebrities.

Another approach is to make a fan (typically a contest winner, or maybe a paid subscriber on Substack) have the option of being a character. I've never tried it, but it seems to work if you have enough rabid fans. Literary immortality (or at least, recognition until the book is gone)!

But as far as chapter breaks go, I follow the architectural maxim, "Form follows function." In other words, the chapter breaks must ultimately be determined by natural break points in the narrative, not forced into a length formula. If you're serializing or trying to keep people reading in a regular novel, it helps to end at a suspenseful point, so for me, that's one determiner of a break point. Since I've been writing with that in mind for some time, it's not hard to make that happen for a reasonable length chapter. It would be harder to take an preexisting piece and do that with it.

On the 42-chapter model, Post-Doctorate-D has a good point about not wanting to borgify things. However, the imitation of biblical structure in this case feels a lot like it's an author thing more than a reader thing--something an author will know is there but a reader will probably miss unless it's explicitly pointed out. There's nothing wrong with it being an author thing--unless enforcing it hinders the reader's experience.

There are, I think, three possibilities here:

• The reader is familiar with Biblical structure and notices
• The reader doesn't notice it
• The reader notices it because it is somehow distracting or otherwise a hindrance to the reader's experience as you wrote

The first case is good.  The second case is no harm, no foul.  The third is the bad case.  But, if done well, the most likely scenarios are 1 or 2 and, honestly, 2 is the most likely.  Regardless, the third situation is the only one that needs to be avoided.  But, if the author can pull it off, it's a win whether readers fall into the first or second camp.

I'll end on a funny story. One of my books has a Hitchc*ck moment--a brief appearance by me as a character. (Well, it's actually a shapeshifter pretending to be me, so I guess, only semi-Hitchc*ck.) The character is called Mr. H, teaches English at the high school where I used to teach--and where the scene is set--and matches my physical description. A number of people who knew me read that book and missed that entirely. Even people who read my bio might have at least wondered about it, but as far as I can tell, no one did. It tickled me but was lost on my audience completely.

I had a main character from one book make a brief appearance as a secondary character in another book in a slightly different genre and my beta reader caught the appearance immediately.

On the other hand, in one of my books, I had a secret message in one of the chapters where the first letter of each paragraph spelled out the message.  To date, no one has picked up on this.  But, to date, no one has mentioned that particular chapter stinks or anything so including the secret message did not hinder the reader's experience.  Also, I kind of forgot about it when editing so the secret message has a typo.  Regardless, someday, I hope, someone will notice it and feel quite pleased with themselves for finding it.  So, win-win.

I've started moving toward shorter chapters as I've gone along, though initially I was thinking pages rather than words (which actually doesn't work as well in a word processor, unless the page size and margins are set up to mimic a paperback book.

Initially, I was going for a max of ten pages. If the earlier estimate (1200 words to a page) is correct, that would have been a max of 12,000, but since I was aiming more at an average of seven than hitting the max every time, that would have been 8400. More recently, I'm thinking that's perhaps too long.

When I started Substack serialization, the goal was to avoid having the post (which would usually be a chapter in a serial) get truncated in email (with a click-to-read-more at the end). Posts over over 6,000 words get into the danger zone, so that would be a functional maximum. Occasionally, posts would come close to that (usually the first part of a serial or the last). Most of the time, they'd be in the 1,000 to 3,000 range.

But as far as chapter breaks go, I follow the architectural maxim, "Form follows function." In other words, the chapter breaks must ultimately be determined by natural break points in the narrative, not forced into a length formula. If you're serializing or trying to keep people reading in a regular novel, it helps to end at a suspenseful point, so for me, that's one determiner of a break point. Since I've been writing with that in mind for some time, it's not hard to make that happen for a reasonable length chapter. It would be harder to take an preexisting piece and do that with it.

On the 42-chapter model, Post-Doctorate-D has a good point about not wanting to borgify things. However, the imitation of biblical structure in this case feels a lot like it's an author thing more than a reader thing--something an author will know is there but a reader will probably miss unless it's explicitly pointed out. There's nothing wrong with it being an author thing--unless enforcing it hinders the reader's experience.

I'll end on a funny story. One of my books has a Hitchc*ck moment--a brief appearance by me as a character. (Well, it's actually a shapeshifter pretending to be me, so I guess, only semi-Hitchc*ck.) The character is called Mr. H, teaches English at the high school where I used to teach--and where the scene is set--and matches my physical description. A number of people who knew me read that book and missed that entirely. Even people who read my bio might have at least wondered about it, but as far as I can tell, no one did. It tickled me but was lost on my audience completely.