What makes a chapter? @ Edit Red Writing Community

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vlclasby
vickie clasby
United States

I've noticed that some of my chapters are quite long - 2 or 3 thousand words, while others are short - 450 to 500 words, especially after I've slashed the crap out of them. There was plenty of that.

There doesn't seem to be a 'standard' number of words for a novel chapter. Some writers use as many words as it takes to complete a 'scene' with no care for the length.

I'm wondering if my smaller chapters may need to be expanded, or incorporated with others.

Any thoughts on this topic? Thanks very much for your help.

ThePenguin Online E-mail this user Add to Readers 13/04/2008	The usual advice - keep them as long as they have to be to get the point across. That said, the standard rule of thumb is to have about 22 chapters in a novel - something to do with the hebrew alphabet having only 22 letters. so, in a 50,000 word novel, one would expect about 2,000 to 3,000 words per chapter. I prefer chapters to be 10 to 15 minutes reading each, so 3,000 words is a goodly number to aim for as an average (but each dependent on feeling complete, and not "expanded"). I've read books with hundreds chapters (each chapter being about a page long), and others where the chapter breaks were never clear, if there were any. So, write them as you feel best - you'll not be far wrong.

Orpheus Online E-mail this user Add to Readers 14/04/2008	I have never written a book to completion although I have read many, hardly ever novels. What I think would work is the idea of leading into an event, leading out of an event, describing an element of an event or switching from scene to scene. Those are where the breaks occur. As for length, that depends on what you have to say. If you write poetry, in which idea begins and ends a stanza. I think the same principle applies. As always, a friggin master of stating the obvious. I have generally found that genre influences the chapter breaks as much as it does the length. When I did read novels for entertainment, there was no real fixed rule to establish length. The chapter usually contained a plot idea and that was that. It is easier reading historical narratives as they generally find themselves divided into clear time frames or cultural epochs. Sometimes a whole phenomenon is described in a chapter all of its own. Historical stuff is mostly thematic and highly readable but generally dry unless one acquires a taste for that sort of thing.

rupertdepaula E-mail this user Add to Readers 14/04/2008	it's a strange one this, something i've been struggling with myself. 3,000 words definitely seem about the right area to aim for, but then some novelist have much shorter chapters banging heads with more wordy ones. so i guess this is one of those 'how long is a piece of string' questions that people get hung up about, but in the end doesn't really matter. no one's going to put down your novel just because they think its chapters are too long/too short if its a great book. Post edited on: 14/04/2008 01:43:48 AM

DrCarter2001 Online E-mail this user Add to Readers 16/04/2008	My thriller novel seems to work well with mostly short chapters because there are a lot of cliffhanger breaks (and a few longer chapters thrown in), while my Sci-Fi/Dark Fantasy one has longer chapters throughout that are almost like mini short stories. I started to get a little worried about it but decided chapter are almost stylistic. I forget whose novel I read recently but the chapters seemed to never end. In contrast, James Patterson's books are nothing but 2 page chapters...and I've seen chapters that were literally one sentence.

vlclasby E-mail this user Add to Readers 16/04/2008	Thanks, all, for the information and your perspectives. The shortest one I have so far is approx 500 words, but it seems to work.

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