Psychology of chapter lengths?

WriteMinded

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@ jjdebenedictis: My Kindle drives me crazy showing how many minutes left in the chapter and what percentage of the book has been read. I only want to know what page I'm on, but no matter how many times I change the settings, it defies my instructions and goes back to doing what it wants to do. What reader do you use?
 

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@ jjdebenedictis: My Kindle drives me crazy showing how many minutes left in the chapter and what percentage of the book has been read. I only want to know what page I'm on, but no matter how many times I change the settings, it defies my instructions and goes back to doing what it wants to do. What reader do you use?
Have you saved your page number setting as part of a custom theme in settings? That's what I had to do to get the page number to stick. I don't know if it works on all Kindle versions; I have an older Paperwhite. Also, if you touch the %/minutes reading at the bottom (without going to settings), it should cycle through the options to give you page (though I think it will only stick for that session).

All the best,
Riv
 

WriteMinded

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Have you saved your page number setting as part of a custom theme in settings? That's what I had to do to get the page number to stick. I don't know if it works on all Kindle versions; I have an older Paperwhite. Also, if you touch the %/minutes reading at the bottom (without going to settings), it should cycle through the options to give you page (though I think it will only stick for that session).

All the best,
Riv
Ohhhhhh. Duhhhhhh. Thankssssss.
 

Cindyt

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The risk of trying to cater for everyone and giving readers somewhere we think they may wish to put the book down is that they may not pick it up again!

I wouldn't want them to put the book down until they'd finished reading it.

Folk can stop reading whenever they want to. Bookmarks are cheap.
This is what I do. In my writing, I try to end with a line that triggers the reader to read the next chapter. Might be 5 pages or 25, I know it when it pops up.
 
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PostHuman

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I don't have this problem with long chapters, but I do have this problem with eBooks. I don't have any way to easily gauge how much I have left to read.
Oh, yes, this! I'd much rather have a paper book, that I can tell at a glance how much is left.


The MoonReader app is kinda cool, it has little text at the bottom that tracks not just page total but based on your reading speed estimates how much time remaining to finish the book
 

redstick

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My genre is similar to James Patterson's Women's Murder Club. Since he's sold over 500 million books with short chapters, some only one page, I tend to emulate his style. I'm sure it's different with other genres.
 

Bufty

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My genre is similar to James Patterson's Women's Murder Club. Since he's sold over 500 million books with short chapters, some only one page, I tend to emulate his style. I'm sure it's different with other genres.

Fair enough, but in the final analysis it's content that matters regardless of length.
 

indianroads

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I use the Kindle feature of showing me how many minutes (based on my reading speed) are left in the chapter, and how far I've come, percentage-wise, through the book itself. I find both of those very useful.

Me too. It's actually been a LONG time since I've read anything other than from kindle.
 

Fuchsia Groan

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If I’m enjoying a book, and if long chapters feel appropriate, I’m fine with long chapters. I stop in the middle when I need to.

But I have noticed a “popcorn-eating” effect when reading books with short chapters—especially those “found documents” books (the literary equivalent of found footage) that consist of tons of short snippets. A study of popcorn eaters found that no matter how big you make the container, people will eat the whole thing. There’s just something about eating those little pieces that makes it hard to stop. (I have been known to take my popcorn home from the movie theater and finish it the next day, but I am a weirdo.) I do think short chapters can have a similar effect, provided the chapter breaks feel justified and not manipulative. I read one book where the author kept ending his very short chapters with cliffhangers that turned into fake-outs, and I wanted to throw it across the room.
 

Canton

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I wanted to contribute here since I have a compulsion to pause my reading on a marked chapter. It's purely a psychological thing, so I fit in with this discussion. Lee Child is one of my favorite authors, and one thing he taught me (even though I choose to write YA and not adult) is to end the scene with something the reader desperately wants answered. He's very good at pulling this off, so even if you pause and set the book down to go cook dinner, you're thinking about coming back to his story the whole time.
 

katfireblade

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I don't have this problem with long chapters, but I do have this problem with eBooks. I don't have any way to easily gauge how much I have left to read.

I had that problem with my old (very old) nook, but I recently had to replace that, and now I'm using a Kobo Aura. One of the nice things it does is tell you the percentage of the novel you've read. And it's not intrusive, you have to tap the page to get all those options to come up, then wait a second and the time will flip over to percentage read.

It still isn't quite the same as holding a physical book in your hand and seeing those pages melt away, but it's the best digital alternative I've seen so far.

Lee Child is one of my favorite authors, and one thing he taught me (even though I choose to write YA and not adult) is to end the scene with something the reader desperately wants answered. He's very good at pulling this off, so even if you pause and set the book down to go cook dinner, you're thinking about coming back to his story the whole time.

Heh. This little trick is exactly why I now make it habit to stop mid-chapter. I have a rule, especially at bedtime, never to read to a chapter's end.

I have also been known to stop in the middle fighting or action scenes. The reason is essentially the same for both--the rise of tension, of wanting to see where a plot thread is going is what keeps my eyes glued to the page, even long after I should have stopped. So I cut off either in a calm plateau, or during an action scene. The calm plateau is self explanatory as to why. The action scene also makes it easy because it's the payoff. Now I know where the plot was headed and no longer have to wonder, so it's easier to walk away. Plus coming back to such scenes is always a pleasure.

I remember when I was a kid, chapters were playful things. 20-30 pages wasn't uncommon, but they could be interspersed with shorter chapters, 15 pages, or 10, or 5...or one lonely page all by itself. What always enthralled me was how the varied lengths did a lot to both set and carry the mood of the book, the formatting acting much like cinematic background music does in a movie. It's a trick I don't see used that often anymore, and even then mostly from authors who were active way back when. I kind of miss it.

I don't think there's a proper length for a chapter, honestly; it's whatever works best for the book. Section breaks offer logical places to stop for those who can't bring themselves to walk away mid-sentence, and those tend to be much, much shorter than the average chapter. Honestly, if the writing is engaging enough chances are the reader won't even notice those chapter headings.
 

benbenberi

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For the last 10 years I've read fiction almost entirely on the Kindle. And when I'm reading an e-book, I... don't notice chapter breaks at all. Long chapter? Short chapter? Doesn't matter. I don't care. They're functionally invisible to me. I stop reading at pretty random places, not according to chapters.
I notice scenes, of course, because those are part of the narrative structure. I notice POV shifts, time jumps, that sort of thing. But chapters? :Shrug:I rarely even leave the % of chapter remaining showing at the bottom -- % of book is more important to me.
 
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Dave.C.Robinson

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For what little it's worth, all the chapters in my first novel came out right around 7,000 words. Even with more variable chapters in more recent books I still come out anywhere from 3-4,000 to 7,000.
 

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My genre is similar to James Patterson's Women's Murder Club. Since he's sold over 500 million books with short chapters, some only one page, I tend to emulate his style. I'm sure it's different with other genres.

From the novels of his that I've read, it seems like each scene is its own chapter. Stephen King does that sometimes, too. They wind up with 40 or 50 chapters.