Chapter length...

[Inarticulate Babbler]

It was brought to my attention that I shouldn't have long chapters (40+ pages in manuscript format). Yet, my favorites--and the type of HF I'm writing--do:

Bernard Cornwell frequently has 30+ pages (not in Manuscript, obviously), Patrick O'Brian, whose Master & Commander has 94 pages to the first two chapters, Edward Rutherfurd's Sarum starts with a packed 43 pages, and Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth has a staggering 84 packed pages of its first chapter.

Maybe I'm not widly enough read, but is it really such a big deal to have a ten or 15 manuscript-page chapter one? I've always been given to understand that a chapter doesn't have a set length, it's a matter of authorial preference. Did that change?

Any light that can be shed on this is welcome.

[donroc]

Mine vary in length. You can double paragraph for scene breaks.

[Inarticulate Babbler]

Mine vary in length. You can double paragraph for scene breaks.

I do.

How much do yours vary in length?

[pdr]

a general rule for an unpublished novelist that chapters, especially the first chapter, must hold the readers' attention and hook them into reading the book.

So - the reasoning goes - if a chapter is too long the reader will stop reading.

It is generally assumed that an unpublished novelist does not have the skills to make a long chapter excitingly readable. Hence the general rule about short readable chapters.

In reality it's what you can make work that is acceptable to an editor.

[Nakhlasmoke]

omg 40 manu pages for one chapter....*dies a little*

I would be defeated, as a reader, tbh.

[Puma]

Another way to look at it - reading time is not the same now as it was 50 years ago. People lead much more hectic lives so opportunities to read are often the little bits of time that can be crammed in between other activities - we have a gal at work who reads for fifteen minutes after she eats her lunch. It might be an idea to think about chapter length as the number of pages/words a normal person can read in fifteen minutes to a half hour. In my novel that just came out the longest chapter is 26 pages, the first chapter is only 7. Puma

[Nakhlasmoke]

On the other hand. Pterry doesn't even use chapters.

I guess you just have to be a master at what you do, and make sure that there are natural scene breaks where a reader can comfortably pause and resume reading later.

[donroc]

I do.

How much do yours vary in length?

No more than 10 and as low as 3 manuscript pages. And I do use double paragraph breaks.

I read The Tango Singer, and it had no chapters, long paragraphs, and a few I guess you would call Part breaks. I suppose it would be considered "literary" since it was written by a college professor.

[Doogs]

In my opinion, this is a silly argument. There are many definitions of what, exactly, constitutes a chapter.

More important, I think, is scene length. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I read, I use scene breaks as stopping points. In that light, I would take more issue with a scene that stretches for 40 pages than I would with a 40 page chapter divided up into eight or ten scenes.

My own preference is for longer chapters divided into scenes - or sections, if you prefer. This is the way I write, and I find the distinction really helps with pacing. Each individual section builds to a larger chapter, each chapter builds to a larger "act", and each act builds toward the overarching plot of the novel.

To use an example from my first novel:


Chapter I, Section 1 - Scipio and his father learn that Hannibal has quit Spain and marched into Gaul
Chapter I - The Romans learn Hannibal is marching overland for Italy. Scipio's father makes the fateful decision to send his army on to Spain while he and his son return to Italy.
Act I (Chapters I-III) - Establishes the opening moves of the war, culminating in the Roman defeat at Trebbia.
Novel - Tells the story of the opening years of the Second Punic War and explores the "origins" of the future Scipio Africanus.


My actual "chapters" average around 10-12,000 words, but my sections - which I've seen other authors denote as chapters - come in closer to 1,000 apiece. It's a difference in nomenclature and organizational preference, really, which is why I view scene length as the more important length to worry about.

[Inarticulate Babbler]

In my opinion, this is a silly argument.

No argument. It's an honest question-opinion/respone thread that I wanted. I want to evaluate the popular answers on my own, learn from it my own lessons.


There are many definitions of what, exactly, constitutes a chapter.

More important, I think, is scene length. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I read, I use scene breaks as stopping points. In that light, I would take more issue with a scene that stretches for 40 pages than I would with a 40 page chapter divided up into eight or ten scenes.

Exactly so for me. Line breaks are my space-savers.


My actual "chapters" average around 10-12,000 words, but my sections - which I've seen other authors denote as chapters - come in closer to 1,000 apiece. It's a difference in nomenclature and organizational preference, really, which is why I view scene length as the more important length to worry about.

This is the opinion I am inclined to, also.

[pdr]

Bernard Cornwell frequently has 30+ pages (not in Manuscript, obviously), Patrick O'Brian, whose Master & Commander has 94 pages to the first two chapters, Edward Rutherfurd's Sarum starts with a packed 43 pages, and Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth has a staggering 84 packed pages of its first chapter.

Well, yes, but until you have a following of readers as they do it is wise to cast an eye, not just the publishability of your novel, but also the marketability.

A new novelist needs to have a novel as near what a publisher thinks is publishable and marketable as possible. Having just gone through the editing to 'make your novel' more marketable for the agent, I can say that for the UK certainly there was a lot of hoo-ha about getting my first two chapters short and sharp to pull the reader into the rest of the story.

[Cinzia8]

I agree with most, especially Doogs. Scene breaks allow the reader to stop and come back. I tend to follow the organization similar to Doogs. At the same time, it seems current thought that the first three chapters need to grab the readers and pull them immediately into the story. The first three chapters create IMO the initial pace. Hopefully, the rest will sustain the momentum.
Cinzia

[Inarticulate Babbler]

Bernard Cornwell frequently has 30+ pages (not in Manuscript, obviously), Patrick O'Brian, whose Master & Commander has 94 pages to the first two chapters, Edward Rutherfurd's Sarum starts with a packed 43 pages, and Ken Follet's Pillars of the Earth has a staggering 84 packed pages of its first chapter.

Well, yes, but until you have a following of readers as they do it is wise to cast an eye, not just the publishability of your novel, but also the marketability.

A new novelist needs to have a novel as near what a publisher thinks is publishable and marketable as possible. Having just gone through the editing to 'make your novel' more marketable for the agent, I can say that for the UK certainly there was a lot of hoo-ha about getting my first two chapters short and sharp to pull the reader into the rest of the story.

Funny how we're told to relate our writing to a certain author for an easier sell, huh? Cornwell's been writing long chapters like that for a long time. Sarum is Edward Rutherfurd's first novel, Master and Commander is Patrick O'Brian's first and the excerpt from Ken Follet's first book White Out is longer than 20 manuscript pages. These are all English/British/UK authors. Just saying...

[pdr]

I'm not playing yah boo games.

The point is quite simple.

If you are a bloody good writer then you can get away with anything because it works.
If you are a popular writer with a large and loyal following of readers you can do almost whatever you like and get away with it.

Most beginner writers have a long way to go to reach that level.

[Inarticulate Babbler]

You know, I wasn't trying to be a punk--and I have no clue what a yah boo game is.

I noticed what you said--which is said in every genre: "If you get a big following/are a bestseller you can do anything"--and I realized that they weren't in that position at the time. I thought it worthy of mentioning that in case you (or some of the others) hadn't had the same epiphany. If Cornwell, Follett, Rutherfurd and O'Brian can write long (and I defy you not to find flaws in all of their prose) and reach the bestseller list with their first novel (I can't speak for Conrwell, I didn't buy his first novel when it came out), then we can, too. If we have to make it that much better, maybe we have to step up, but they weren't "bestselling names" when they wrote the books I mentioned in my last post.

[BAY]

My first chapter is 15 pages, but it begins on the day of infamy and ends with a cliff hanger to help the page turning. The rest vary. I for one never count the pages in chapters of books I'm reading. The short chapters are suppossed to give people places to break, I suppose, but isn't the goal to make it hard to put down?

[SeaMonster]

Funny how we're told to relate our writing to a certain author for an easier sell, huh? Cornwell's been writing long chapters like that for a long time. Sarum is Edward Rutherfurd's first novel, Master and Commander is Patrick O'Brian's first and the excerpt from Ken Follet's first book White Out is longer than 20 manuscript pages. These are all English/British/UK authors. Just saying...

Master and Commander was not Patrick O'Brian's first novel. Before that, he wrote The Catalans, Caesar: The Life Story of a Panda-Leopard, (and other animal stories in the same vein, no longer in print), Hussein: An Entertainment, Richard Temple, The Road to Samarcand, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore, at least one nonfiction book, and a few collections of short stories.

As for the chapter issue, I picked out a handful of relatively recent novels from my shelf and counted the pages. Their first chapters ranged in length from 4 to 25 pages, but most were between 10 and 15. These were more "fluffy" than "epic," though--because that's what people pass on to me after they read them--would that I owned more of the latter category!

[donroc]

Not only did I use the double paragraph break in my HF novel as minor scene breaks, my publisher decided to save printing costs by not starting each chapter on a new page. That reduced the page count from about 500 to 404 pages.

[Inarticulate Babbler]

I concede the O'Brian point. (I really only knew of the Aubrey/Maturin books.)

[Teleute]

I personally don't give a fig how long the chapters in the books I read are--if I enjoy your writing, you can't annoy me after the first 1/10 or so of a novel, it's simply not possible--but you can't use Patrick O'Brien to talk about today's publishing realities. His first book was published in 1930, yo. He was born before the first world war.

Ken Follett is a slightly better example, but his first book was published in the 1970's. Still doesn't apply.

Last night I read about 1/3 of Sharon Kay Penman's Here Be Dragons (700 pages in teeny tiny font), published in 1985 I believe, and she has within it entire (LONG) chapters of nothing but exposition with no dialogue whatsoever. Probably 10% of the dialogue is used for exposition, too. And there are probably almost twice as many characters as needed, and it's a bit difficult to keep track of everyone. (Not to say she doesn't rock my socks, because she does. I'm just saying, I know like... three people who could put up with this. Me. And my spouse and one other friend, both with PhD's in literature, who have actually read Finnegan's Wake. This is not your intended audience, trust me. Even I buy books that are as long as possible just to maximize my reading dollar.)

Even if she could get an agent and a publisher in today's market, I highly doubt that her MS's would survive the editing process intact. I wouldn't use her as a signpost for what market forces applied to my own work because 1) I'm not Sharon Kay Penman and more importantly, 2) it's not 1985.

I've been reading her blog archives this week, and Miss Snark opines that one should only look at (an author's first) work from the last 10 years to determine what is publishable now, and preferably only the last 3.

This doesn't apply to me because I don't write sweeping epic BFA's (big f'n novels, in Miss Snark's vernacular), but that's just my input.