Thread: Chapter length!

Okay, this is probably the most basic question I've ever asked. So much so it's never occured to me to ask until just now. But how long is the general consensus on the length of a publishable chapter? are there any particular rules set by publishers regarding this? if there are i haven't found any. in the novel i'm currently writing, which looks like it'll probably run at least 200-300 pages in total length, my average chapter is between 5,000 and 7,000 words (though my first chapter is only 3000). would you say this is a reasonable length? it's not like any of the chapters so far jog around at all in terms of location, time or characters involved. otherwise i'd probably look at shortening them a little. they all run pretty tight together and also, this is a first draft so the word-count will probably decrease a fair bit when i go back and edit out the superfluous. i just want to know if i'm way off the norm since 7,000 words seems quite a lot for one chapter. thanks!

A chapter can be any length you want it to be. In fact, I've read books that have had no chapters at all. Personally, I've had chapters that ran between 20-25,000 words. I've read chapters (Tom Clancy springs to mind) which were easily 30,000 words.

Anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 seems like a good length to me. But really, your chapter length should be determined by the chapter's purpose.

I personally think that a brief chapter is a bit more preferable than a chapter that lasts too long, if only for the reason that nowdays readers tend to be a bit more impatient and distracted with the speed of modern living.

But if your writing is good, your chapter length shouldn't be an issue at all.

30,000 words?! woah! see, part of my confusion around it is if you're going to have a chapter that long it seems a little redundant even calling it a chapter. unless the book is incredibly long, (say 500,000 words) a 30,000 word chapter doesn't seem to make much sense because you can't possibly have more than a handful of them. wouldn't a 30,000 word chapter within your average length of a long-ish novel of, say, 100,000 words be more accurately designated a 'part' (as in Part 1, Part 2, etc) since you can't possibly have more than three or four of these 'chapters'? i guess it's mostly a semantic difference, but i always considered the point of a chapter to be to 'break up' the novel into something analogous with 'episodes'? from what i gather, chapters first became mainstream when novels began to be serialized in early newsprint and magazines. if that's so, what is the function of a 20,000+ word chapter? that's essentially a collection of novellas.

From memory, I had 22 chapters in that novel. Ten of them were over 10,000. I had about three over 20,000. I've never, to my recollection, had one of 30,000. I have read a chapter by Clancy which had to have been that long.

For the record, that 22-chapter novel had 260,000 words in it.

Fun fact: In Frank McCourt's novel Angela's Ashes, the last chapter is a single word.

Originally Posted by JosephB

Fun fact: In Frank McCourt's novel Angela's Ashes, the last chapter is a single word.

I wonder how many times he rewrote it.

1) There are no rules as to how long a chapter should be. The genre you're writing in does have something to do with it- YA generally has shorter chapters than adult fiction, since it's dealing with a group of people expected to be a bit shorter in their attention spans. But, there are still no rules, as such.

2) That being said, chapters are-just as paragraphs and sentences- divisions in the train of thought of the story. Where there is a break in events or a changeover from one thing to another, there is a narrative shift that should be marked in some way. You can simply stick a line of asterisks in between paragraphs, or you can label one blob of text "chapter one" and another "chapter two." Up to you.

For me personally I always start by figuring how many words I want in my book, then how many chapter I want then simply to the math. Then use than number as an average.

Ex. A 150,000 word book I want to go for 30 chapters

150,000/30= 5000 words average... I use my average more as guideline than a hard quota...

One thing you could do is pay attention to how other authors have done it and how you feel about each way it's done. While I'm reading, I personally feel that if a chapter is too long I begin to wonder if there's either too much in this one chapter or if there is some scene switching going on that could be separate chapters. "Too long" really depends on any number factors though.

I think having a lot of little chapters is sometimes a good route as well. My mom is reading a book with well over a hundred chapters, and it's only like 400 pages long (with decently large type).

The chapter should be as long as you need it to be in order to convey what you seek to illustrate. Or in other words: it's as long as you friggin' make it. That is one thing I'm certain there are no rules for. Let's not box ourselves in, eh? You're the author; you call the shots.

Originally Posted by Tiamat10

The chapter should be as long as you need it to be in order to convey what you seek to illustrate. Or in other words: it's as long as you friggin' make it. That is one thing I'm certain there are no rules for. Let's not box ourselves in, eh? You're the author; you call the shots.

My thoughts on the subject exactly.

thanks. yeah, i figure it's 'down to me' ultimately. the reason i was asking was more because i thought there might be some kind of 'ideal' from a publisher's point of view. but if there's not then that's one less thing to worry about.

My own experience is slightly different from what most people above have said. I understand that if one is following a format or outline, then certain things must happen in a particular chapter. If you are writing a chapter 3/4 of the way into the book and this chapter must contain your first culmination, then the chapter must be however long it takes you to complete that part of the story. But in my own experience, my chapters tend to be all the same length. When I get to a certain point, I end the chapter, whether the story demands it or not. Most books I read are the same way. All the chapters are about the same length. The purpose of a chapter seems to be to give the reader a convenient place to stop before picking up the book again. The last book I read, stayed on my nightstand. I read one chapter a night between getting into bed and falling asleep. Anyone else have the same experience? Are anyone else's chapters the same length? C.M.