Chapter length standards and preferences?

For me, a chapter ends when it ends, be it one page or twenty pages, whether I wrote it or somebody else wrote it.

If a publisher, when I find one, wants to suggest cutting or merging chapters - so be it.

A chapter is as long as it needs to be. Some contain multiple scenes, some contain one. Some authors don't even write in chapters.

vhilal said:

I have a few chapters under 1000 words that I chose to separate b/c it seemed like the natural ending, but I'm wondering now if I should combine them. They fall at the beginning of the manuscript too, so I don't want to scare off an agent with what might be a rookie mistake.

Click to expand...

There's no rule about chapter length. Truly.

Short chapters can give the impression that the story is moving more quickly, but that's an illusion. Short chapters won't save a dragging plot or a story told at a snail's pace. And I've read plenty of high-tension novels with long chapters. Just finished one, as a matter of fact.

Break the chapter where it feels right to you.

Chapters are as long as they should be. If someone wants them merged later, they'll suggest it, but right now, no one will pay attention to where the chapter headings fall.

Yeah, there's no hard rule about chapter length. Personally, I try to break up some of my longer chapters, but I've gotten into trouble doing that. Once, I inserted an event that didn't make sense with everything else I'd created just to break up a long chapter with some kind of action cliffhanger. It would have been the lesser of two evils just to keep the longer chapter! If there's no natural breaking point, I'd probably err on the side of having a really long chapter.

Some of my favorite chapters in fiction have been a single sentence long, like "So that sucked." in The Stupidest Angel and "Of course they fired him." in Flux.

vhilal said:

It seems like proven authors can get away with things that a new writer like me can't, so I didn't want to unknowingly break some rule for chapter length that everyone else might be aware of

Click to expand...

No, that's not really how it works...

vhilal said:

Thanks for your comment. I've read both kinds too but wanted to put the question out there. It seems like proven authors can get away with things that a new writer like me can't, so I didn't want to unknowingly break some rule for chapter length that everyone else might be aware of

Click to expand...

Proven techniques are far more important than supposed rules.

The only real 'rules' are related to grammar and punctuation, but even there we're free to do whatever we wish, provided the resultant writing is clear and flows smoothly from one sentence to the next. And in dialogue we are completely free.

Focus on telling your story, and on your characters and how they act and react.

Put worrying about breaking rules at the bottom of your list - then score it off.

Your objective as a writer is to tell a story - so, as others have said, chapters are as long or short as they need to be.

That said - my preference is to keep my chapters in the medium/short length. I do that because as a reader I like to have the story told in chew-able bites. I usually read a couple of hours before I go to sleep at night, and when I put the book down I prefer to do it at the end of a chapter.

I'm a plotter/planner, not a panster - so what I do doesn't apply to most others. Anyway, when I am planning the flow of the story I break it up into roughly 3000 - 4500 word chunks (ie. chapters). That's just me though... YMMV (your mileage may vary).

Scenes, not chapters, are ...

Scenes, not chapters, are the basic large dramatic unit. Chapters are just containers for scenes. They are more useful to us, writers, than to readers. If we engage our readers the end of a chapter is just a page turn to get to more of our great story.

As others have said, you can put just one scene in each chapter. And if a scene is a line long, the chapter is a line long. If that works for you, fine. Some superstar authors do that.

Other writers use chapters to organize their scenes. For instance, suppose we have several heroes and heroines on a quest. They encounter a company of bad guys and fight them. The first scene might be a moderately long scene which sets the stage. The next scenes might be fairly short, each from the POV of each our heroic crew. The last scene might be a very short summary scene where the questing heroes and heroines re-gather and trudge on. We might title the chapter (maybe privately rather than publicly) "Fight at the OK Canyon."

In my latest novel I divided it into six chapters, from 6000 to 13000 words long. Each chapter is a "chapter" in the first few years of my FBI agent's career as a crime fighter, as she meets ever tougher challenges and overcomes them.

The shortest chapter I've ever written was five words.

That was probably a bit of an anomaly though. In general I keep to a relatively similar length because, *for me* wildly varying chapters can indicate a pacing issue. That's to do with how I structure my own stuff, though.

Someone above mentioned scenes were what matter - that's certainly the way I see it although chapters can also be broken into chunks which carry the scenes. My chapters are all about getting from Plot Point A to Plot Point B - a question answered and a question raised.

For at least one book, a chapter ended when I switched point of view. Switching mid-chapter is acceptable as long as there is sufficient trail left for the reader. Think extra space between paragraphs, reference changes, and if in third person, naming the character early in the paragraph.

For another book, it was scene change.

But mostly there is a structure which is a model for most commercial fiction: (note: "most" - there's some that doesn't follow this tactic)
1. beginning of the scene poises a question. Betsy couldn't tell Rex the truth about his brother, John. (what truth, why couldn't she)
2. Scene/chapter details the conflict or the resolution of the question
3. Next scene is set up. Now that Rex knew the truth about Betsy's affair, he couldn't stay in his own house. (oh no!!! where will he go?)

I recently read The Average American Male (link to the book's Amazon page so you can check out the chapters in the Look Inside, but heads up for language/content warning) which made absolutely brilliant use of nonstandard chapters to serve the book's tone.

Edit: Ooops, I typed a 2 instead of a 1!

I thought I'd share the page counts of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (American release of Philosopher's Stone). Rowling was unpublished before writing this book. In Goblet of fire, chapter 32, she added an 8-page chapter. If we think of pages as 250 words per page, this is about 2,000 words. Maybe this is helpful.

# Chapter Title-Page Count-Pages
01 The Boy Who Lived 17 1-17
02 The Vanishing Glass 13 18-30
03 The Letters from No One 15 31-45
04 The Keeper of the Keys 15 46-60
05 Diagon Alley 27 61-87
06 The Journey from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters 25 88-112
07 The Sorting Hat 18 113-130
08 The Potions Master 12 131-142
09 The Midnight Duel 20 143-162
10 Halloween 17 163-179
11 Quidditch 2414 180-193
12 The Mirror of Erised 11 194-214
13 Nicolas Flamel 3,380 13 215-227
14 Norbert the Norwegian Ridgeback 14 228-241
15 The Forbidden Forest 20 242-261
16 Through the Trapdoor 26 262-287
17 The Man with Two Faces 22 288-309

While I believe that a too-long, or short, chapter will be seen as tacky and might deter a reader from reading further, I also believe that a chapter will be as long as it needs to be. As long as the point is gotten to the reader on why that chapter is as long, or as short, as it is, the length shouldn't matter.

I appreciate the issue, but I don't ever recall giving the length of any chapter a second thought while I read.

My enjoyment or opinion of a book, or my decision to read on or not, is never based on how long or short the chapters are.

And if I want a break I just bookmark it and go away and do whatever.... then come back and pick up where I left off, unless my desire to know what happens next in the STORY hasn't been kindled.

Bufty said:

Proven techniques are far more important than supposed rules.

The only real 'rules' are related to grammar and punctuation, but even there we're free to do whatever we wish, provided the resultant writing is clear and flows smoothly from one sentence to the next. And in dialogue we are completely free.

Focus on telling your story, and on your characters and how they act and react.

Put worrying about breaking rules at the bottom of your list - then score it off.

Click to expand...

Yep. The truth of the matter is that if the book is printed you'll likely have an editor looking at chapter breaks in terms of signatures (the sections of paper that become pages) and pages, so it may change.

And you can always insert chapter breaks later. If you want to really look at it analytically, take a couple of books published in the last ten years that you like and look at what happens in a chapter and where breaks occur, more than how long a chapter is.

Most of Terry Pratchett's books have no chapters. He generally uses only scene breaks. Gabriel García Marquez has written at least one book (I forget which at the moment) that doesn't even have a paragraph break in it.

caw

My first novel was almost exactly 7,000 words per chapter. Lately I've been writing 5-12 scene chapters that can be anywhere from 4,000 to 12,000 words. Whatever works, works.

As a reader, I'm not too fussed on chapter length, but chapters that are hundreds of pages long do bother me. I don't know where to put my bookmark!

In my WIP, I have set a target for 3k words per chapter. Some fall short at 2.1k, others are 4.3k. Most sit around the middle.

I'd say write what you feel is right, any edits that are needed will come to you when the betas start complaining.

Just curious on reading you don't know where to put your bookmark if a chapter is 'hundreds of pages long'.

Don't you just put it wherever you decide to pause?

JFitchett92 said:

As a reader, I'm not too fussed on chapter length, but chapters that are hundreds of pages long do bother me. I don't know where to put my bookmark!

In my WIP, I have set a target for 3k words per chapter. Some fall short at 2.1k, others are 4.3k. Most sit around the middle.

I'd say write what you feel is right, any edits that are needed will come to you when the betas start complaining.

Click to expand...

Bufty said:

Just curious on reading you don't know where to put your bookmark if a chapter is 'hundreds of pages long'.

Don't you just put it wherever you decide to pause?

Click to expand...

Sometimes it's easier to take breaks at chapter or scene breaks. That's usually how I do things when I read.

There are some books where you can't.