Chapter Length

[kristie911]

I find myself stressing over the length of my chapters (like I don't have enough other things to stress over!) Do you normally try to keep your chapters approximately the same length throughout the novel or do you just "go with the flow" and wait for a natural break? I find myself sometimes making up a "cliffhanger" so I can break when I get around 12-15 pages...or should I stop stressing and just break where it seems natural even if I end up with some chapters being 10 pages long and others 20?

[triceretops]

Just go with what seems natural, Kristie. I think between 10 and 20 pages is quite acceptable. I really don't like doing anything less than 15--17 myself. For some reason I run out of steam almost at exactly the 20-page mark, so I shoot for that figure. Sometimes I'm over or under by five, but that repetitive 20 just keeps popping up. I feel it is also a fairly brief read for the average reader. But that is just me. There are others that have different limits and strides.

Triceratops

[WannabeWriter]

There's no rule to chapter length. James Patterson writes really short chapters while others write long ones.

[James D. Macdonald]

Just break where it seems natural. The chapters will change length in the rewriting and revising stages anyway.

[Ivonia]

Hmm, I was just thinking about that too. My chapter 1 is approx. 70 pgs long on Word, but Chapter 2 and 3 are only about 35 pgs each.

Is that going to be a major problem when it comes to sending my first three chapters out? The reason why my first chapter is so long is because I have to introduce my characters and put them in some dangerous situations (otherwise it'd be a pretty boring read. One of my beta readers felt shocked that I almost killed some of them several times hehe). I'll probably have to cut some stuff out eventually anyway, but for now, would it be a big problem if my chapter 1 is that long (none of the other chapters are that long however).

[Mistook]

It's kinda funny seeing the responses to this. I can tell everybody's getting weary of the ol' chapter length question. It's probably come up twice in the past month, and maybe ten times since I've been around.

Not to be snarky, because I'm sure I started a thread on chapter length myself.

If your chapters are waaaaay long, then it might indicate a problem in your writing overall. A good, snappy narrative can get across some very complex issues in not so many pages.

It's less the case that writers chapters are consistently too short. Chapters are divided into scenes, and I know I didn't really appreciate that when I first started in on writing. A short chapter might actually be a longish scene that fits best at the beginning or end of another chapter.

But when you get right down to it, there is no rule, and you just use your own descretion.

[Garpy]

Look, there are no hard rules on chapter lengths...it's more about what's in 'fashion'. Shorter chapters are in vogue right now....say 1500 to 2000 words. I don't know whether that's a reflection on the short attention span of readers today, or because of reading habits (ie: we do most of our reading on buses and trains)...and hence only have shorter periods in which to ingest our books. And this of course varies from genre to genre....thrillers, YA, ChikLit tend to have shorter, pacier chapters...whilst historical fiction, literary stuff, tend to be longer.

I have noticed in many published books, chapters being 'broken up' in very arbitrary ways. Clearly in these books, some of these chapters were grouped together as one, but I'm guessing an editor has said that some of the chapters are too long, and the author has simply snapped them in two without being clever about rounding the first off with a cliffhanger etc etc. And you know what?...it doesn't really matter. I mean...you don't want a chapter break mid sentence, or halfway through describing something, but where you might start a new paragraph might suit as a chapter break. It's certainly something not to agonize over too long and hard.

For my novel, I had to break up some chapters that had swollen out of proportion with all the other chapters...in particular, an action sequence that had grown to about 7k words. It was easy enough, to wait for a lull in the action as both sides reloaded, and call that the chapter break. It worked just fine!

[maestrowork]

I really don't understand why people think all chapters should be of the same length.

[Andrew Jameson]

As a reader, I like to have a sense of how far away I am from the next chapter break, since I'll typically read a chapter at a time. Not that I expect all chapters to be *exactly* fifteen pages, but I do like it when they stay within some reasonable range. Ten to twenty, say. Or fifteen to thirty. Or five to ten. Whatever. I find wide variations in chapter length to be annoying.

(In my current novel, all the chapters are between about 2000 words and 4500 words, except for the climactic chapter, which I've intentionally broken away into a nice short 700-word chapter. I rather like the obvious breaking of the pattern to underscore the climax, but then I'm probably the only guy anal enough to become annoyed at repeated wide chapter length variations.)

[scarletpeaches]

I cheat. I don't divide my first draft. :D

[Saanen]

I don't generally need to make my chapters longer or shorter to "match," because they generally run about the same length without me even trying. Last night, however, I did go back and break a chapter into two when I realized I had a very long chapter followed by a very short one. That's unusual for me, though.

I don't think it matters anyway, as long as the chapters are well written.

[Danger Jane]

I break where it's natural, though that tends to be more or less uniform. Around eight pages for me, and for this particular story.