Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Writing Group => Topic started by: Rane on February 18, 2009, 06:46:25 AM
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Working on my current project recently, I noticed something very stressing; my chapters are an average of two pages (11 point font, single spaced) each, and I want them to be longer, but I keep thinking of books like Maximum Ride and Holes, where the chapters usually aren't longer than three pages. What would a good length for a chapter be?
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Honestly whatever you want it to be. For me personally my chapters are around 3000 words each, + or - 1000, generally. If you want to make them longer you can just put a scene break in between two of your current chapters.
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I've read books that are over 150,000 words long and only had about ten chapters. I've read books that are 30,000 words long and had about thirty chapters. You can write a chapter per scene, you can even not write chapters at all. It's really up to the writer.
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Well, Holes is a middle grade book and I believe Maximum Ride is a YA book. Those tend to have short chapters. What audience are you aiming at? More adult books tend to have longer chapters, but it really depends on what you want the purpose of your chapter divisions to be.
Most Discworld books don't have any chapters at all, though Pratchett has bucked this trend recently (perhaps because he's getting better at plotting novels).
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Ookla makes a good point about audiences, but other than that, I'd say yeah, basically do whatever you want. Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union is fairly long, and intended for adults, but his chapters in that book run pretty short - 10 pages, maybe less, on average. (I never really counted.) Guy Gavriel Kay, on the other hand, has books with quite long chapters.
So the floor's pretty much open.
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Also The Red Badge of Courage published in late 1800's has extremely short chapters, only a couple of pages. So really the range runs all over.
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CJ Cherryh just had this to say in her blog:
02/15/09. Sunday. 4712. Chapter One done, and I'm happy with it. Well begun is half done, eh? Not quite. About 1/24th part done. How do I define a chapter, you ask? I try to keep them about 5000 words long. Occasionally I'll do a monster, and have to figure how to divide it---it's not fair to the reader, who may say, mmm, I'll just read a chapter before I go to bed, and then handing him a 20,000 word chapter? Cruel. So I try to keep it regular.
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I think short chapters are best. Mostly because that means that the story stays on course and gets to the action faster.
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As a reader, I agree that I prefer chapters of fairly regular length, so - as Cherryh says - I know what I'm getting into if I just want to read one more chapter before bed. It frustrates me to be tricked into reading longer than I meant to, and it also frustrates me to stop in the middle of a chapter.
Short chapters are nice, I think. They make me more likely to decide to read just one more chapter before bed. Long chapters can be more intimidating, especially at slow parts of the story.
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I don't really mind irregular chapters. I don't mind long chapters either, so long as they're broken up by scene breaks.
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I'll cast my vote on the 'regular chapter length' side of the house. I kind of like it when I have a decent idea how long it will be until the next break. Long or short doesn't really matter to me but the regularity does, a little. Not a make or break proposition.
I find in my own work that the chapters average from 2K to 6K. Big spread I know but, hey...
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I also prefer regular length chapters. When I'm reading, I like to be able to plan how many chapters I can read in a sitting before reality interferes. It bothers me to place my bookmark into a book mid-chapter.
I find that I write chapters that are around 3,000-4,000 words long, which is just a little shorter than what most of my short stories come out as.
I have noticed a trend towards shorter chapters in a lot of books. Sometimes it's only the opening and/or final chapters that get shorter. I think psychologically, shorter chapters are less intimidating and may encourage the reader to keep reading.
I have actually stopped reading a book because the chapters were too long. I just felt I couldn't commit the time to read a whole chapter in one sitting so I figured it wasn't worth it to read the book. I actually think I might get annoyed with chapters that take longer than a half-hour for me to read.
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The Da Vinci Code's first chapter is about 5 pages. The first chapter of My Name is Asher Lev is 50 pages. A lot of readers today tend to prefer shorter chapters, but I'm personally not one of them...
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My main concern is that my chapters have only turned out to be about 1,500 words each, and I want them to be longer. The chapter I'm working on is at 1,515, and still has a little way to go, but all the other chapters I've written never get much past that mark. Hopefully they'll get longer when I revise it and do as my friend suggested, adding more detail to the setting, but I'm worried they'll still be too short for my liking.
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What's stopping you from just adding 3 chapters together and calling them one chapter?
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Rane, you want longer chapters? If so, as long as you're not titling each chapter, you can do what Ookla says. Although my chapters usually end up being about 3,000 words long, ideally each of them are a thousand words shorter because shorter chapters feels like I'm staying on task more even though I'm giving the same amount of story.
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I'm hesitant to combine them into one chapter, because that chapter would cover a lot of ground. By the end of the first chapter, readers would probably feel slightly overwhelmed.
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not to be late to the party or anything, but using James Patterson as a benchmark for chapter lengths isnt the best idea in my opinion. his books of 90K words tend to be 120 chapters. That's right, usually 750 words per chapter. A lot of times the chapters are only a paragraph. I personally think this is a gimmick to artificially speed up the pace of an otherwise were average (at best) novel.
My personal opinion is that a regular chapter size is a good idea. I go for 3-4K. However, I feel that prologues should be shorter, and that climatic chapters can be shorter to pick up the pace.
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I personally think this is a gimmick to artificially speed up the pace of an otherwise were average (at best) novel.
How does that feel gimicky?
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To me, it is a gimmick to compensate for blah stories and pacing. It's all psychological. "Oh, this chapter is is only a paragraph long! Awesome! This book goes by so FAST and is full of action! Never mind the action of this chapter involved the PoV brushing her hair. The next chapter is about the PoV putting her finger on her chin and saying, 'hmm.'"
If you are doing short chapters, I would rather there be a reason for it rather than making a 200 page novel turn into a 300 because of 120 chapter headings taking up more room than the actual text.
When I managed a bookstore, I asked my customers what they liked about Patterson novels. Most of them said, "oh his stuff is so fast paced, that it makes the book hard to put down." I would then say, "oh, lots of action? amazing story?" to which they would respond, "Not so much. I dont remember most of the story. But the books have short chapters!" That is a gimmick, and it bugs me.
Don't get me wrong, he makes a ton of money, and releases 4+ books a year, and tons of people read them. I just think if he put as much effort into writing a good story as he put into creating a false sense of pacing, that his books would be better. That said, this is not a thread for me to rant on Patterson - i mean, it's not like im a gazillionaire from any writing ive done.
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Brandon should have a chapter that's just braid-pulling so he can be like James Patterson.
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seriously. reading patterson is like reading a somewhat violent and overly sexual version of See Spot Run. Though to be fair, See Spot Run has more words per page.
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I say just write the chapter, and let it be whatever length it ends up. Adding a lot of discription and text to make it longer will just bog it down, and trimming everything out to make it shorter wouldn't serve a whole lot of purpose, either. Sure, it's nice to sit down and know exactly how long it'll take to read a chapter (I usually determine my stopping point with chapters), but what's the point if the actual writing is butchered in the process?
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I think Flowers for Algernon had some chapters that were less than two or three pages, so.…
Also as a side note I don't think you should say 'so-and-so's chapters were 5 pages long and so-and-so's chapters were 85 pages long, so…' because books differ in length, width, font size, font, margins, headings, spacings, and basically everything. So a 5 page chapter could really be equal to an 8 page chapter in a different book if the 8-page-chapter-book has bigger type, margins, etc.