Chapter Length

[Ethan]

Hey All -- 

 

I have a question about chapter length that I've been wondering about. Is there a word limit you aim for? Or try to keep the chapter under?

I know that shouldn't be the determining factor in how much content is included -- 

But I feel sometimes I write too much. I was aiming for 5,000 ish at first -- but now I'm mostly 7,000 to 10,000 or a bit over. 

I checked some other novels, and a bunch are closer to 2,000 to 4,000. 

So, just thought I would ask what you all think. 

 

Thanks!

 

E. 

[Backwoods Boy]

I'm sure you'll find a variety of answers, and definitely a variety of examples.  But from this reader's perspective, 4000 words per chapter is a good target unless the story is incredibly absorbing.  Unfortunately, one cannot put a bookmark in an online story and come back to it later, so being able to read in chapters of attention-span length is useful.  If the chapters average longer than 5000 words, I need extra motivation to read it - such as knowing the author or their reputation.

[Brayon]

Not to sound flippant, but the answer to how long a chapter needs to be? Is as long as it needs to be.

 

Some chapters can be as small as 500 - 900 words, or as large as 10,000. It all depends on your story and the motivation/reason to write it. Some chapters may be longer than others. I'll echo my colleague above, 4000 - 5000 words is a good place to be in for online postings. If you find your chapter is getting a little long for you, find a breakpoint, and split them it into two, three, four, etc. parts.

[Comicality]

 

I actually used to aim for about 5000 words per chapter, but now it's closer to 3000 to 3500 words per chapter. That's not a definitive cut off or anything, if I need more, I add more. If I can do it in less, then I do it in less. But I do try to make my chapter length somewhat consistent from story to story. I like for my chapters to have an arc, just like I want the entire story to have in the long run. So, ending a chapter is kind of like ending a paragraph. Or even just a sentence. Did you complete your thought, and did this chapter say what you needed it to say in order to move forward? I think that should be the main focus.

 

So I think a 3000 to 5000 word chapter should be good enough to get your point across, but don't 'stretch' to reach that word count if you don't need it, and don't cut off a story, mid-thought, to limit yourself either. Just keep a vague idea of what you want to accomplish and how much effort it'll take to do that. Flexibility is the key.   

[Ethan]

Thanks -- this is all very helpful! 

Obviously, there are many factors at play -- and you're right @Comicality about chapter arc. That's why I tend to go long, because I want it to feel like the story is moving along, and the reader is getting enough to keep them happy to keep coming back. But, I just want to make sure it's not too much to digest in one sitting.

 

In real life, I'm the idiot who doesn't know when to stop talking -- and it seems that trait has seeped into my writing too 😏

[Mikiesboy]

1 hour ago, Ethan said:

Thanks -- this is all very helpful! 

Obviously, there are many factors at play -- and you're right @Comicality about chapter arc. That's why I tend to go long, because I want it to feel like the story is moving along, and the reader is getting enough to keep them happy to keep coming back. But, I just want to make sure it's not too much to digest in one sitting.

 

In real life, I'm the idiot who doesn't know when to stop talking -- and it seems that trait has seeped into my writing too 😏

I'm a talker too lol however i have learned restraint ... as my dear and talented editor says.. chapters and stories will be as long as they need to be .. i like chapters at about 3500 to 4000 words ... in a current story i have one chapter at about 7200 words...because of what is happening in it, i didn't want to make it into two. It's very emotional and frankly, it would be wrong to make people wait to finish it. Doing that would compromise the flow in this case as well.  Cliffhangers are okay now and again, but after awhile are tiresome.  

[Disjecta Membra]

I agree that it really depends on the how the story unfolds.  Just like with short stories, you might have one at 1,000 words or one at 10,000, that’s kind of how I view chapters in a chaptered novel.  I do try to keep them similar lengths (I don’t personally like having a story in which one chapter has 500 words, the next has 9,000, the next has 2,000, etc.), but they don’t have to be exact.  But if I have a story in which my chapters are roughly 2,000 words and a few of them are a little over or under, it’s not a big deal as long as the content is there and I’ve reached a good ending point.

[Myr]

I generally aim for about 5,000 words per chapter as well.  As a side note... I usually avoid reading stories that have short (sub 2,000 word) chapters.

 

[Comicality]

19 hours ago, Ethan said:

Thanks -- this is all very helpful! 

Obviously, there are many factors at play -- and you're right @Comicality about chapter arc. That's why I tend to go long, because I want it to feel like the story is moving along, and the reader is getting enough to keep them happy to keep coming back. But, I just want to make sure it's not too much to digest in one sitting.

 

In real life, I'm the idiot who doesn't know when to stop talking -- and it seems that trait has seeped into my writing too 😏

 

My personal rule is to accomplish TWO things with every chapter. Two steps forward. Right foot, left foot. The right foot, is growth for the main character. The left foot is growth for the plot or story as a whole. Now, everybody may not see where the story is going or realize the step that you've taken forward, but the idea is that your chapter is 'leading' towards something. It's not always about some major event every single chapter. If you're having trouble being wordy (A problem that I have myself, believe me! Hehehe!), try to narrow your chapter goals down to those two steps. One for the character, one for the story. And leave it at that. If you can pull that off in a decent amount of words, your readers will come back for more. Guaranteed.

 

Sometimes, you can entice them more with what you DON'T say than what you do. Just remember...right foot, left foot, roll credits! Hehehe!   

[Krista]

I try to aim for 5k or 11 - 12 pages, I use a lot of dialogue so 11 - 12 pages may come well sooner than 5k. With that said though, if a theme or scenes that need more words to complete I don't care to go 10k - 15k or longer. As far as reading, admittedly I don't do much of it here, but if the chapters are sub 2k, and those that I've read, seem to be a bit incomplete and that the following chapter 'needs' the chapter to complete it as well. As a Beta Reader I usually tell the writers to think about combining those chapters.

 

If you can write sub 2k chapters and make them feel complete, you're fine. Quality over length. 

[Thorn Wilde]

My chapters generally average about 3k words. Depends on the story, though. For my YA novels, I'll generally split a chapter in two if it gets close to 5k, keeping chapters at between 2k and 3.5k words, with a max of around 4k. Shorter chapters fit the format better, and my style when I write those stories is kind of minimalist and dialogue focused, which brings word count down. For more adult oriented stories, I rarely if ever let chapters drop below 3k, and frequently go over 4k. 

 

I don't mind reading long chapters, though I generally feel they ought to be kept under 10k. There's a reason we divide novels into chapters, and part of that reason is for ease of reading, to give readers a natural place to take a break. I was reading a Yuri!!! on Ice fanfic over on AO3 a while back, and I got to a chapter that was 32k words long and I was like, no. That's not a chapter. That's a novella. I really liked the story, too, but I just couldn't get through that chapter. Maybe it's a mental block thing.

 

All that said, as others have pointed out, a chapter needs to be the length it needs to be. It's good to have a goal, but in the end, as Krista points out, quality over quantity. There's no right or wrong answer to this, as there's no right or wrong answer to any part of the writing process, and the answer will rarely if ever be the same for two stories.

 

The following quote isn't about chapter lengths, but I think it's applicable anyway:

 

Quote

I remember when it was all done in the first draft telling Gene Wolfe, who is the wisest writer I know and has written more excellent novels than any man I've ever met, that I thought I had now learned how to write a novel. Gene looked at me, and smiled kindly. "You never learn how to write a novel," he told me. "You only learn to write the novel you're on."

—Neil Gaiman, from the introduction to the Tenth Anniversary Edition of American Gods

 

Edited January 26, 2019 by Thorn Wilde

[MrM]

For better or worse, I write a chapter until it comes to a natural end and I've said all I need to say to push things along. This can take 1000 words or 12,000 . . . it depends on how much ground I need to cover.

I once ended up with a chapter that was 22,000 words long and decided to split it in half, 11K per part, because it was becoming too long and I found that one chapter could describe one character's point of view where the second could describe the other character's point of view. The two chapters together create the whole of what I needed to say for that part of the book, but, hopefully, made it easier reading for the reader by splitting it.

Edited February 14, 2019 by MrM

[Wayne Gray]

I shoot for 4,000 - 5,000 words.  I occasionally go over, but rarely under.

 

That's usually enough room for me to write 3-5 scenes.

 

When I write nowadays, to eliminate my temptation to go head-hopping, I stick with a limited third person perspective and let each scene feature the character's perspective I'm using at that time.  It works for me.

 

I have no preference when reading.  If it's a good story, I'll stay engaged.

[Ethan]

Even though I wanted to write shorter chapters -- I never did. 

I just posted the last full chapter -- that wraps up most of the story -- it is 15,000 words. 

Too long? Probably. 

But - breaking it up didn't feel right. 

I think it flows - and should hold the reader's attention. 

If it doesn't, I'm sure someone will let me know. 

Thanks for all the responses! 

[Talo Segura]

I like reading short chapters, the ones I write myself are around 2000 words. The reason: 200 words per minute is average reading speed (2000 words = 10 minutes). We live in a busy world of bite sized chunks. You can't bookmark online. Ten minutes reading you can fit in any time. Longer and you always need to go searching for where you stopped when interrupted. Chapters of more than 5000 thousand words are a pain.

[grahamsealby]

I suppose mathematically, we could use 50,000 words as a good medium story length with perhaps 10 chapters in all, making the average chapter 5,000 words. But it doesn’t work like that for me. All of my chapters are divided into scenes where each scene either advances the story, compounds the conflict, or introduces themes to be pursued later. This is the way I write and it’s only when I’ve attained my objectives do I complete the chapter.

In my case, it’s the length of me scenes that are important. I try and restrict these to between 1,000 and 1,500 words. Sometimes smaller, sometimes larger.

[Carlos Hazday]

On 1/24/2019 at 5:23 PM, Myr said:

I generally aim for about 5,000 words per chapter as well.  As a side note... I usually avoid reading stories that have short (sub 2,000 word) chapters.

 

Guess you won't be reading the one I'm working on now. I'm following the format Cia and Mann use for their Wednesday Briefs: 1k chapters. I took it on as a challenge and an antidote to my frequent rambling ones. It's actually kind of fun to strip things back. It does force me to limit myself to what's truly important.

[Parker Owens]

I've enjoyed reading this conversation. I write unbearably slowly, so my chapters can sometimes seem overgrown. It's something I need to work on, I think. On the other hand, I really liked @Comicality's comment about what to accomplish in each chapter. Thanks for that. In the current thing I'm writing, the chapters are around 4000 words, more or less.

[Talo Segura]

I wanted to come back to this topic because I was about to read a new story (sorry Altimexis), but couldn't face a chapter of over 24,000 words. Then I stumbled across an interesting article (which I confess, supports my own view on chapter length) that makes some good points as to why chapters should be short.

"it might sound odd, but we’re (authors) not in the book business, we’re in the time business... In the olden days of writing it was fine to drone-on for tens of thousands of words per chapter, with little thought for the reader’s attention span."

"Shorter chapters make for great stopping point... a funny thing happens when we give our readers a place to pause…they keep reading."

"10-minute time window is the perfect break throughout the day...When we give our readers short chapters, designed well, we make it easy for them to re-enter the story...Even if they don’t have time to keep reading, we left them in a place where it’s easy to jump back in."

Write long chapters and lose readers, they get exhausted, or simply can't face it. Time is precious and hard to find. There are thousands of books, why write a book in one chapter? Break it up and make life easy, you'll get more readers, of that I'm convinced, and I'm not alone in thinking this, 10 minutes, 2000 words, one chapter.

Read the full article here: https://medium.com/the-book-mechanic/writers-why-chapter-length-matters-more-than-you-think-af376ba9b9f9

 

 

[GabrielCaldwell]

On 9/2/2019 at 9:17 AM, Talo Segura said:

Write long chapters and lose readers, they get exhausted, or simply can't face it. Time is precious and hard to find. There are thousands of books, why write a book in one chapter? Break it up and make life easy, you'll get more readers, of that I'm convinced, and I'm not alone in thinking this, 10 minutes, 2000 words, one chapter.

Read the full article here: https://medium.com/the-book-mechanic/writers-why-chapter-length-matters-more-than-you-think-af376ba9b9f9

 

 

I write my stories in Scrivener and so a story will be in dozens of little blocks (some 10,000 words, others 1,000) as I'm working on it.

It's usually pretty late in the process that I start splitting them into chapters, and I try for about 4,000 words, but I'm looking for an interesting point to break the story, and that point may be 1,000 words or more from where I'd ideally break it.

I hadn't thought about the short attention span of readers...maybe I should make my chapters shorter. Not sure how to test that.

[Talo Segura]

6 hours ago, GabrielCaldwell said:

I start splitting them into chapters, and I try for about 4,000 words,

Of course chapter length is the author's choice, and 4000 or 5000 words is not unusual or too difficult to read in one go, just takes a bit more time. If reading a printed version or an ebook, you can bookmark and easily pick up where you left off, then chapter length is not an issue. But reading online, you can't bookmark, not unless you copy the chapters to read offline. So it's more a question of bookmarking than chapter length, although for online reading the two seem intimately connected, unless some clever person knows how to leave a placemarker online?

[Thorn Wilde]

On 9/4/2019 at 2:22 AM, GabrielCaldwell said:

I write my stories in Scrivener and so a story will be in dozens of little blocks (some 10,000 words, others 1,000) as I'm working on it.

It's usually pretty late in the process that I start splitting them into chapters, and I try for about 4,000 words, but I'm looking for an interesting point to break the story, and that point may be 1,000 words or more from where I'd ideally break it.

I hadn't thought about the short attention span of readers...maybe I should make my chapters shorter. Not sure how to test that.

I use Scrivener too and definitely take advantage of the feature that lets you write each scene as a separate document. Makes it easy to move scenes into a different chapter, or even reorder scenes if it suddenly makes sense to put one scene before another instead of after. It's very useful. And I think an average of 4k words is a good chapter length to aim for, especially when posting online. Much shorter, and readers may be disappointed, since they have to wait for the next one. Much longer, and it gets hard to read it all in one go.