How Big??? Chapter Sizes

[Brian G Turner]

Reading this discussion I'm very much minded of Brandon Sanderson's lecture on thriller plotting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p111rqg4RfQ

This is not least because he differentiates between the short and fast style of thrillers, with the more ponderous style of epic fantasy. Thought he raised some very nice points in there, not least about not exhausting the reader!

So, in other words, I would imagine the faster-paced novels tend towards shorter chapters.

 

[Glitch]

While searching I found the following :-

Journalist and novelist Will Self is the favourite to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize.
He is shortlisted for the first time for Umbrella, a novel with no chapters and few paragraph breaks, and which judges described as both "moving and draining".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...elf-review-for-Man-Booker-shortlist-2012.html

The chapter should end right at the crucial moment. It is good to have each chapter finish with a question that will not be answered until a following chapter. For example, if you have a chapter where a driver is about to go over the cliff, then the chapter should end with his hands clenching the wheel, realizing there’s no turning back. The next chapter should begin with him gaining consciousness, checking his minor injuries and feeling lucky to be alive. If all of this were in the same chapter it would give the reader no incentive to read on and find out what happens next.

http://suite101.com/article/dividing-a-novel-into-chapters-a33322

 

[Lucky_Lola]

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.

I do this too, and I think I subconsciously write to fit in with it. It helps that my WiP is rather epic, following five major characters and about twenty minors (currently. I have a feeling that a large number will find their heads on the block when it comes to The Great Edit). My chapters tend to include two or three episodes, each following a similar tone but different characters, and I use a line break/set of asterisks to mark the change. Length falls to whatever feels right, but I think (without being able to say for sure) that I sit around the 5-10,000 point.

 

[Steve Jordan]

Though I've never understood exactly how I accomplish this, my chapters tend to be relatively uniform throughout a book, in every book I write: Roughly 3-4,000 words (or 5 MS Word pages).

I don't deliberately plan for that length... or any length, for that matter. I usually work from draft outline copy, written out as paragraphs, and each paragraph roughly correlates to a chapter. It's just that, when I've reached the natural end of a section or scene, there I am on the fifth page. Sometimes, on the final rewrite, I will embellish a scene and end up with as many as six pages (5,000+ words) in a chapter. My work is freakishly consistent that way.

 

[Jake Reynolds]

Interesting exercise- just did mine, average 6,600 per chapter (though each is broken into between 3 and 5 numbered breaks). Typically the action ones are shorter as I am switching perspective more quickly. Have realised that one of my chapters may need more work- that sucker is clocking in at 10,000 words. Time for the virtual tippex!

 

[JoanDrake]

A published author who has weekly Q&A sessions I attend is rather adamant at 3500 words. His reasoning goes that if you ever put down a book in the middle of a chapter you will likely never resume it. But even if you're a little sleepy there is no way that you will quit at any page past one if you only have to turn past 7/8 pages to finish the chapter. Since he believes you should end each chapter with a slight to strong hook then sometimes the reader will be trapped, reading the next chapter too and on and on. So eventually you are late to work and lose your job but boy the book was really great.

 

[HareBrain]

I've heard better reasoning from ... well, so as not to offend anyone, let's say people who knock on one's door distributing magazines that sound like they might have been inspired by a certain Bob Dylan song.

 

[Gumboot]

A published author who has weekly Q&A sessions I attend is rather adamant at 3500 words. His reasoning goes that if you ever put down a book in the middle of a chapter you will likely never resume it.

I'd love to hear his justification for that little pearl of wisdom. I actually suspect, with the increasing popularity of eBooks, chapter breaks are becoming irrelevant.

Since he believes you should end each chapter with a slight to strong hook then sometimes the reader will be trapped, reading the next chapter too and on and on.

I actually hate the way every chapter of every book you read these days ends with a "cliff-hanger". The cliff-hanger is a soap opera innovation; that is, it's a cheap and unimaginative trick used by low-brow writers.

Books that feature cliff-hanger after cliff-hanger after cliff-hanger lose any sense of dramatic structure and end up becoming repetitive and boring. Actually, I think the unending chain of cliff-hangers is probably the main reason I was thoroughly unimpressed with the latest A Song of Ice and Fire book.

 

[Jake Reynolds]

Yep, not sure where that writer is coming from. Still, if he or she wants to look at it that way, no skin off my nose (though I will say that 'published' doesn't necessary mean someone knows what they're talking about).

 

[Gumboot]

Yep, not sure where that writer is coming from. Still, if he or she wants to look at it that way, no skin off my nose (though I will say that 'published' doesn't necessary mean someone knows what they're talking about).

Christopher Paolini and Stephenie Meyer are published incredibly successful authors.

Just sayin'

 

[Steve Jordan]

I'd love to hear his justification for that little pearl of wisdom. I actually suspect, with the increasing popularity of eBooks, chapter breaks are becoming irrelevant.

Well, I wouldn't say that. Whatever the book's medium, chapter breaks help set the flow and rhythm of the story, just as in-chapter breaks and chapter grouping.

Chapters should correspond to how the mind absorbs and stores information for later recall. They help break that information into bite-sized chunks, supposedly easier to encapsulate, order and retrieve on demand... just as rhyme and rhythm provide assistance to memorization of a song.

I don't know if there's some social, mental or biological factor that the author used to determine their 3500 word count... but I suppose there could be some interesting form of justification that takes into account how people read and absorb information. Does the author provide a reasoning behind their number?

 

[C. A. Mitchell]

I aim for around 5k, although they range from 1 - 7k. I prefer shorter chapters - I'm more likely to read on if my eyes are drooping.

Sorry if this has been mentioned already, but Sir TP doesn't use chapters in most of his books, meaning the reader can stop wherever they fancy. I don't think there's anything wrong with long chapters (especially during the climax), but it's easier on the reader to break things into smaller chunks.

 

[Reivax26]

For me it would depend on the style of book you were writing. George Martins style would dictate longer chapters whereas ones written by other people might not be. A good example of this would be how Rick Riordan writes from several different character perspectives over the course of one of his novels in the Percy Jackson series. If each character's perspective was as long as the chapters in Game of Thrones the reader would lose their mind.

 

[Warren_Paul]

Aren't GRRM's chapter lengths about average. 3-4k. That's not really all that big to be honest. His style actually tends towards shorter chapters, not longer, because they are one PoV and mostly one scene too.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Agreed - GRRM's chapters aren't all that long, he just has a helluva lot of them. I remember reading A Clash of Kings in ebook form and feeling depressed that, having read a whole chapter, it often amounted to only about 1% of the book!

Also, why would staying in one PoV for a long time be such a problem? That's the norm for novels. It's far more taxing when the PoV dots about, particularly when the number of PoVs is really large. That's the real problem with ASOIAF for many readers...

 

[Gumboot]

The Chapters in A Song of Ice and Fire started at around 4,000 words each and steadily rose to over 6,000 words each for A Feast For Crows but dropped back a little to just under 6,000 for A Dance With Dragons.

 

[Reivax26]

I guess the chapters in A Song of Ice and Fire just seemed long to me and not to other people.

Now that you mention it I went through my prologue and its 5,000 words. Chapter one is over 8000. I have had several people read both and no one had complained about them being boring or too long. I couldn't imagine cutting down on either one of them.

 

[Warren_Paul]

I guess the chapters in A Song of Ice and Fire just seemed long to me and not to other people.

Now that you mention it I went through my prologue and its 5,000 words. Chapter one is over 8000. I have had several people read both and no one had complained about them being boring or too long. I couldn't imagine cutting down on either one of them.

Yeah, it doesn't take long for the word count to add up. If the book is engaging enough, the reader won't even notice how long the chapter is.

 

[Jake Reynolds]

Christopher Paolini and Stephenie Meyer are published incredibly successful authors.

Depends on what you mean by 'success'.

 

[Anne Lyle]

Depends on what you mean by 'success'.

I won't comment on Paolini, whose success seems largely based on his youth and the hype that engendered, but whatever else you say about Meyer, she wrote a book that appealed enormously to its target audience of teenage girls.

But - back on topic - what worked for Meyer's YA romance won't necessarily work for your big fat space opera or whatever. Use similar books as your yardstick, not random bestsellers.