City of Last Chances by Adrian Tchaikovsky begins so that each chapter is from the point of view of a character who appears, at least briefly, at the beginning of the next chapter. This creates a throughline that draws readers to each chapter and moves them forward to the next. Chapters are short with interesting names, including often the names or concerns of the characters they are narrated by in a close 3rd person. Suspense results when, for example, an important object goes missing in one chapter. Who took it? It looks like the character who narrates the next chapter, but that ends up not being the case. Readers become at least as interested as the characters in the missing object and who has it.
But Tchaikovsky varies from this strategy later in the novel. In tension with the throughline is a less formal organization. The pattern created early in the novel is varied from later. Varying from an established pattern reminded me of something Charlie Jane Anders wrote in Never Say You Can’t Survive: “The principle of variable reward teaches us that we’re more likely to get addicted to pushing a lever if we get a peanut only every other time, or every few times. If every time we push the lever, we might get a peanut, an electric shock, or nothing, we’ll keep pushing that lever until it breaks. The same is true for getting yourself hooked, as a reader or writer, on a character’s struggles.”
So, the lesson? Consider structures that begin with comforting consistency but continue with addictive variety.
Writing Fiction 