How Big??? Chapter Sizes

[Gumboot]

A chapter is a scene, so if you think of it like that it might help you break it up (if it needs breaking up). Your 13k chapter might need all that as part of a big scene... but I suppose it depends on the content.

I disagree. I think a chapter should be more like a sequence of scenes. Any individual scene could be half a page long, or fifteen pages. I think I'd lose my mind if I read a book with chapter breaks like that.

 

[Gumboot]

My chapters are too long, I've decided. When I started writing it, chapters tended to be longer, particularly in fantasy, so I usually aimed for an average of around 7,000, with the shortest around 6,000 and the very longest up to 9,000. These days it seems short chapters are in, significantly shorter.

My chapters tend to be divided thematically, and act as episodes in their own right, so for the first book in particular I think it's unlikely I'll be trimming them down much. Later on things get a bit sillier - in the second volume I had a chapter of 33,000 words, and I've still got one of over 20,000!

Granted, it's a first draft and I'd expect to cull that, but nonetheless I suspect that chapter will be cut into at least two.

One thing I have noticed is that my chapters tend to be really, really long when I first write them. If I look at my most recent first draft stuff, most of the chapters are around 12K-14K. My first edit usually wacks a good 30% at least off the word count, but as the story progresses and the thematic sequences become more complex I'm realising that I can't use the same structural method I did in the first book. I will be cutting my later chapters into pieces, probably aiming for much smaller ones than the first book - 5,000 words or less where possible.

I think I can get away with this because the second volume cross-cuts between multiple protagonists, so I can use the jump between protagonists as the "thematic break", with several chapters following each protagonist to form each thematic sequence.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I am pretty sure Terry Pratchett either doesn't do chapters or does monster ones.

 

[Mouse]

I'm reading a chapter of amw's at the mo that's almost 24k. C'mon, missus! There are breaks though (and it's good) so it's ok.

 

[Perpetual Man]

I am pretty sure Terry Pratchett either doesn't do chapters or does monster ones.

A very good example Anya!

The later books do have chapters but the earlier one ( and most of the series come to that don't) and in a strange way that made them special, it was like they were stepping outside of convention but were still fun to read.

 

[tlrobson1]

I separate my story into chapters with regards to events and changes of location or passages in time rather than on the basis of word count. As a result they can be anything from 4,000-14,000 words long.

 

[Glitch]

My latest WiP first 6 chapters:
13,546
4,839
3,896
1,641
1,258
4,301
Giving a total of 19,481 words.

The thing is if I give myself a total to aim for I would feel constrained, either stretching things to meet the total or trying to get things squeezed in. I know what has to happen in a chapter and writ until it is done.

Does the first chapter have any natural breaks you could use to split it up?

 

[Perpetual Man]

Does the first chapter have any natural breaks you could use to split it up?

This is a good question and one I have been thinking about this evening. I have not been back and looked at it yet, but I remember it and intended it o be one long battle, so from that angle breaking it up seems unlikely.

But Mouse has looked at with fresh eyes and seems to indicate that it could be, so it is certainly something I would look at when the time came.

(Incidentally the other book with the really long chapters, would probably be a lot easier to break up.)

 

[Warren_Paul]

There are cases of authors writing massive first chapters. Robert Jordan was one to do this. I believe some of his prologues were over 20k and were sold separately as novellas to promote his upcoming 1000+ page epic. At least you got to skip the first 100 pages once you got the actual book, since you already knew what was going to happen in the prologue.


Mine end with good hooks. Sometimes I get to that hook at 2.5k, other times I've written about 6k before a suitable hook and ending to the chapter showed its face. But on average, 3-3.5k seems to be the size of my chapters.

 

[elwagner]

My chapters range a bit in length--anywhere from around 1500 to 4500 words in my current novel. I think of 4500 as a fairly long chapter. I think I read somewhere that an "average" length chapter is around 3000 words, but I'd guess it varies quite a lot. I tend to organize my chapters temporally (and usually have multiple scenes within a chapter, maybe involving different pov characters), though if there's a lot of stuff happening in one time frame, I may break it into two chapters. I think my "Average" chapter length is less than 3000 words in my own novel.

My own bias as a reader these days is for shorter chapters that end on a note that makes me want to keep reading or pick the book up again soon. I've got a book I'm in the middle of that has very long chapters, and even though I like it, I'm sort of bogged down. Why? Because my schedule these days makes it harder for me to commit more than a half hour here or there to reading, and so I'm reluctant to make a "commitment" to a chapter I can't finish in one sitting.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I've been looking at this much more closely now. Originally my chapters were monsters - 20k-30k at times - which I realised was ridiculous. These were single scene chapters, no breaks.

So far with the big rewrite I seem to do 4k chapters with no breaks - though there are a couple of sections where the scene is split into more than one POV, so I treat these as subchapters. Have only just started putting titles on them, too - before they were just page breaks.

 

[Glitch]

In my current wip the biggest chapter is the first at 1600 words. The rest seem to average around 1000 words, but this is where they naturally stopped not something I aimed for. Granted I haven't done any major rewrites, so that could all change.

As others mention I too prefer shorter chapters when reading.

I looked back over the chapter title thread - still undecided on that one.

 

[Ursa major]

I tend to organize my chapters temporally (and usually have multiple scenes within a chapter, maybe involving different pov characters), though if there's a lot of stuff happening in one time frame, I may break it into two chapters.

This is exactly what I do: the chapters cover a day or part of a day (the latter where the whole day would make for too long a chapter).

In WiP1, the longest chapter is 6839 words long and is the first part of a day (the second part being 4135 words long).

The shortest chapter is only 384 words long (but that's an exception: all the other chapters are more than a thousand words long).

The average chapter length is 2615 words.


WiP2 is currently much longer (though it's currently in a strict diet) and covers far fewer days, so there are few whole-day chapters.

 

[Gumboot]

I couldn't do short chapters. Most of my chapters have individual scenes in excess of 2,000 words, all of them have at least one scene in excess of 1,000 words, and the longest scenes are over 3,500 words.

Each of my chapters tells its own story (think of the episodes of a TV series) so it wouldn't make sense to break them somewhere else. However I'm very conscious of the increasing popularity of short chapters so I give my individual scenes pretty clear beginnings and ends within a chapter, with line breaks between. That way a reader can pause mid chapter if they want. I suppose you could think of them like commercial breaks in a TV episode.

 

[Azrael1122]

13K does seem like a lot, at face value, but if the writing was brisk and engaging, it wouldn't seem that way. It would whisk the reader along, and they wouldn't really notice how many pages they'd read.

Still, the first handful of chapters should *pop,pop,pop* and get the reader fully engaged in your plot and one or two characters before you start fleshing things out and getting meatier with your chapter definition. Just my opinion.

 

[prizzley]

I can't believe anyone is considering a chapter of more than 5,000 words. That's too long for me. I started aiming for 2,500 but my writers groups said "shorter", so now I aim for 1,500. BUT rarely achieve it. The range is 920 to 1,990.

I'm aiming for 2,000 to 2,500 in the next wip.

 

[HareBrain]

My own chapters average 3-4000 (with a couple close to 8000), but I don't tend to notice chapter lengths when reading (except that a succession of very short ones tends to annoy me). If I'm reading and want to stop soon, I might flick ahead a couple of pages to see if a chapter-end is approaching, and if it isn't, I'll just stop anyway.

 

[Perpetual Man]

I have to admit I'm struggling with shorter chapters, having spent a lot of time going through my old material of late, I'm stunned at how long my chapters are. It seems nothing to find a chapter of 18,000 words.

As I have said I seem to start writing a chapter, knowing where it has to go and finish where I intend. Could I go back and break them down into something smaller? I don't know, I'm not at the stage yet where I can look back through things, and start altering.

I suspect in many case the answer will be yes.

 

[HareBrain]

I wanted to split my two 8000-word chapters in half, but even though they both contain scene-breaks in the right place, none of the resulting halves would have felt like an entire chapter. It might come down to what someone above (Gumboot?) called theme, or it might just be that the ends of the two first-halves didn't feel "significant" enough to close off chapters.

 

[billhafan]

I have to admit I'm struggling with shorter chapters, having spent a lot of time going through my old material of late, I'm stunned at how long my chapters are. It seems nothing to find a chapter of 18,000 words.

As I have said I seem to start writing a chapter, knowing where it has to go and finish where I intend. Could I go back and break them down into something smaller? I don't know, I'm not at the stage yet where I can look back through things, and start altering.

I suspect in many case the answer will be yes.

I've never looked at my chapter lengths before this thread turned up - so I was interested to see how they measure up. I have an average of 5000 words per chapter, spread over 30ish chapters+prologue+epilogue in The Source.
As I haven't checked before, I have certainly noticed that the shorter chapters are where there are key-points in the action, and this occurred naturally ... though I did try to consciously link across chapters with small cliff-hangers and deliberate cross-overs between scenes and locations - hopefully to carry the reader along.
For instance, as two sub-plots began to meld together - written in separate chapters - I allowed the preceding chapters of these plots to hang (within shorter chapters) with their cliff-hangers(hopefully), and then brought them together in the following chapter. This was how I dealt with chaptering, though I never actually did chapter word counts until now.

As others have pointed out already, chapters can be natural breaks in the plot, or as others (and myself, without counting lengths) do, used as part of structure to build tension, or even keep the reader involved ... or awake at night

Just my observations, but it has also given me a lot of food for thought, having never considered chapter lengths before. I really will look into this more, as no one has ever commented on my chapter lengths. Interesting that publishers have stated max lengths ... so there must be a good reason for it, if none of the above?