Page count

Are you talking single-spaced or double-spaced? Because in standard double-spaced format, I'd expect 1,300 words to be close to 5 pages, and then it would unquestionably be long enough to be a first scene.

It's probably best to think in terms of scenes, not chapters, anyway. Scenes are units of conflict; chapters are somewhat artificial breaks, sometimes split between scenes, sometimes mid-scene.

Scenes can be any length, in theory, although a range of about 4 to 10 pages is probably what you'll see most often in popular fiction. Mine probably average out around 6-8 pages.

But you're right -- don't pad for the sake of padding. And, actually, don't stress about the first scene's length or anything else about it until you've got the whole first draft in place, b/c odds are good that you'll change the first scene, possibly even cut it completely, before you've got the final version of the manuscript completed.

JD

Well concering entire books I do the 250 method and shoot for 400 pages. Often I don't even break down the chapters unless I have a clear definite new chapter and worry about breaking it up during the edit when I am re-reading it. Some switches in sections that aren't really long enough to be a chapter, I separate by triple space. Or a group of asterix to show the separations.

If the book ends up too short, then I add story, events, backstory, a new character, whatever it takes that isn't fluff that adds to it.

1300 words, 2 pages, 6000 characters.... a chapter is a chapter no matter the length. Stephen King had a chapter that was exactly one-word long. I had chapters that were shorter than 2 printed pages (1000 words). Whatever works, man.

Wisest answer I have heard.

As long as it needs to be.

Jeni said:

Single spaced, size 10 Courrier New font at (roughly) 1,300 words for a 'scene', yes.

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Uh, you do know that the standard is Courier 12, right? Although you can write it in any font and size which pleases you, of course, so long as you conform to the submission guidelines when you reach that stage.

Wingdings, anyone?

Maryn, returning you all to our thread after this brief interruption

Jeni said:

1,300 words for a 'scene', yes.

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I'm not sure how many people here have done a statistical profile of their average scene lengths, I suspect I'm somewhat unusual. For reference, my average scene is about 800 words long, but its a bi-modal distribution: short scenes average at about 650 words and are much more common, the occasional long scenes (usually the climax of a particular story thread) average at about 2,000 words. So, 1,300 for a first scene is probably substantially longer than most I write. For reference, a couple of books I've just pulled off my shelf and estimated word counts for: The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradly: 1,200 (prologue); 7,500 (first chapter, all one scene) Our Man In Havana, Graham Greene: 1,600 (first chapter)

From Faulkner's As I Lay Dying:


That was an entire chapter, all by itself.

I tend to obsess over chapter lengths too, but really, they can be as long or as short as they need to be.