Tom

I'm currently trying to find a suitable lenght for each of my chapters, and was just wondering what everyone elses take on the length of chapters were.

I don't know what to do really, and have no idea what most other authors do, so I just wanted some general opinions.

Thanks in advance.

Tom.

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Non Serviam

The "conventional wisdom" is that chapters should be 3000-7000 words long. However, published work contains chapters of a single piece of punctuation, and also chapters the length of the whole book, so treat that as a guideline to be broken when it suits your artistic purposes.

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RomanticRose

Chapter length, along with total novel length, short story length, poem length, and essay length, should follow the mini-skirt rule -- long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to retain the interest.

I have a four page chapter sandwiched between two 16 page chapters.

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Tom

The Mini-Skirt rule.

I'm sure I won't be forgetting that too soon, thanks

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lin

How long is your penis

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tucanbundy

My chapters are always obscenely long.They vary from around ten to close to a hundred pages.The longest single chapter I ever wrote was 268 pages long.It works for me due to lacking any plot, but stories with a point should be much shorter.

Tom

And that's related to this how if you dont mind me asking?

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JHB

Sam Winchester

Is this the same "conventional wisdom" that says you're allowed to have whatever damned length of chapters you feel are necessary? Yeah, thought so.

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C.M.C.

The chapters of my book average right around 3,000 words, but that was a happy accident. The length doesn't matter one bit. I might get frustrated reading a book with no chapters, but there's nothing wrong with it if done right.

lin

I don't mind at all.
It's an example of posing a similar question that is parellel to the original question of the thread and which would draw the same answer from a person of normal wisdom.

(In this case, along the lines of "to each his own", "depends on you", "whatever, ya dork" etc.)

I hope that helps.

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lin

JHB I love it

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PhasesPantazis

It usually depends on what you want to write in the chapter. If you got a huge scene in one chapter than obviously the chapter is going to be huge too. There is no rule, really. As long as the chapter feels like a chapter (which means that the end of the chapter should make the reader want to turn the page instead of turn off his/her night light and go to bed) then the chapter's a success regardless of length.

Always try to end your chapters on a high--some new problem introduced, new character, something fresh.

lin

Introduce new characters at the end of a chapter?

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Kast13

I have a one sentence chapter.

Do I win?

PS: JHB, shes 18 now, I'm no longer a pervert.