Chapter length?

[Mr Orange]

i was pondering a similar question to the OP's last night as i looked over my WIP. i tend to break for a chapter where it works in the story - change in scene, jump in time etc, but this meant that i had varying chapter lengths one after the other (5000 words, then 1700, 1700, 3500, 4500). i have since reworked it as the storyline didn't work like that, and it's now 5000, 3500, 3500, 4000.

but the question i had before i did that, was how do varying chapter lengths work. i see from above that people don't mind doing that, but are there any limitations? i'm guessing readers might find it annoying if continually jumping from short to long to medium to short chapters? i generally try to make my chapter lengths roughly even.

 

[StuartBurchell]

Writing my second draft and written in two new passages and a captain's log and that has doubled a chapter length and more. The captain's log I can use as an interlude between chapters, but the new passages...

Guess I'll finish the second draft and go over it again.

 

[Jarshen]

I normally break chapters when I change POV and they are as long as they are, it does vary though there does have to be some sort of end point. But with both the last two books I found that nearer the end I just wrote the whole thing and broke it up later, the POVs switch in the chapters but their segments are obviously shorter. I think the reader accepts this as the climax demands a faster turnaround of both events and views. Or at least that's what I tell myself.

 

[zmunkz]

I think it depends on the dose you want your readers to swallow in a sitting. 3K words at a modest reading pace can be 20-25 minutes.

I've been struggling with this myself. I just (3 days ago) finished draft 1 of my first novel... 113K words and 30 chapters. But some of those chapters were 7K+ and while they contained one sequence and one POV, it seemed like too much. I am not sure I want to require someone to sit for over an hour to get to the next break. Obviously people can stop in the middle, but you control their state of mind and emotion and excitement a little more if you can break them off at the right places yourself.

In the last few days I've refactored, so the same 113K words are now 40 chapters... between 1700 words and 4600 words now, and it feels better to me already.

 

[prizzley]

As a reader, I like chapters short enough that I can say, 'one more before bed'.

Most readers stop at the end of a chapter, rather than partway through. If the story is gripping, I don't notice chapter length, but a lot of my friends only read in bed and prefer short chapters.

When writing I tend to stop at 2,000 - 2,500 words, but also have shorter ones.

 

[Toby Frost]

At the moment, I’m writing longer chapters of around 5,000 words each. This is mainly because each chapter is a separate POV and generally not tied to another POV, so I need some space in which to move the story on. But then these are long books, and contain a lot of “episodes” that can fit neatly into that length.

 

[Jeremy M. Gottwig]

I'm pretty focused on keeping my chapters right around 1000 words. I'm willing to let them reach 1500 words, but I cringe every time. More words than that, and I start looking for either things to cut or some means for slicing the chapter into two.

The reason?

I travel (by train and metro) from Baltimore to Washington D.C. two or three times each week for work. One day, I started watching how people were reading books, and I found that the phone (not the ereader, tablet, or paperback) was the dominant reading platform. It occurred to me that shorter chapters would be easier to enjoy on the phone.

 

[James118]

This is something I've pondered a lot in the last few months, prepping a final draft. Seeing as I can't find an agency willing to represent me in print, I've decided to go on KDP. Anyway, I figure Kindle users will prefer shorter chapters, and I know that might sound more like gearing the narrative structure more towards the audience than towards the kind of story I want to tell, but at least it's more consumable this way.

The old concept of a chapter essentially being a story within the story is good in theory, but sometimes those can be hard to define, and even then, pacing isn't always optimal for such an approach. So I've basically placed my chapter breaks where they 'feel right', especially for the bite-sized length aimed at Kindle users. At least this way, they'll feel more like steps (no, it's not one scene per chapter) than entire flights up a massive tower. Does that make them feel inconsistent in size? Occasionally, but not as much as one might expect.