Hi and thank you so much for the advice you gave me regarding the topic 'suggestions from agent' it really helped. I have started playing around with it a bit now and if I were to make sure all the signposts absolutley crystal clear, so there is no way anyone can be confused, I have to break up a couple of chapters at the beginning to juggle them around and make four chapters out of the two original ones. So my question is, can a chapter be any length? I once flicked through one of Jessie Keanes novels and discovered a few of her chapters are sooooo short, like a couple of pages short. So is there a rule? I hope not as I quite like how it reads with these chapters shorter but I don't want to leave one problem only to find myself in another problem. Advice would be most welcome. Thanks everyone.

No rule, I'd say. Very short chapters can work well in thrillers - think of The Da Vinci Code!

Personally, I think in terms of scenes - which tend to be anything from about 800 words to about 3,000 words in length, and my chapters are then usually made up of two or three or four scenes which are linked either temporally or thematically in some way to form a coherent whole. Some chapters are unitary, consisting of a single scene.

I suppose the danger of using (exclusively) very short, single-scene chapters is that the narrative nay begins to have a bitty, broken-up, unsustained feel. And the danger, conversely, of very long chapters, especially if not broken into shorter scenes, is that the reader may not get enough of a breather. I suppose the thing to think about, if the reader isn't getting to a nice line break or chapter break as a signal to take a breath, is making sure that the writing within the scene has sufficient variation - quieter or slower moments between the peaks of action to allow readers to relax a bit and take stock of where things are at. If that makes any sense?

Rosy

As Rosy says, no, there are no rules. 'Chapter' is an arbitary measurement and instead it's best to think in terms of scenes.
If you have a long chapter that is just the one scene then it might be too long and need a rewrite. Conversely, if you have a long chapter composed of many scenes you could simply shift the chapter break down a few pages.
A scene break is where there's a gap in time or location, and in most novels is indicated by a space between 2 paragraphs within a chapter - eg, If you look at Terry Pratchett's novels you'll see he has a mix of short and long scenes within his chapters.



- NaomiM

Yes, I think in terms of scenes, though how you move from one scene to another - a jump cut, or taking the reader with you - makes a big difference. My chapters are like Rosy's - a set of scenes which together make one big chunk of the novel.

Emma