I know your chapters can be any length you like, but how do you personally decide, and what do you think the pros and cons of short and long chapters are?

Deb

I think chapters should be as long or as short as they need to be, and it’s not the best idea to force your chapters into a certain size.

When I’m reading, I don’t mind what length chapters are, although I do like frequent scene breaks. To be honest, if a reader is eager to get to the end of a chapter, they’re probably not as deeply into the book as the author would like them to be.

Dee

Research your target audience. Readers of action books prefer short punchy chapters. Readers of more emotional, character based pieces prefer the depth and subtleties of long flowing chapters. It's also worth noting the chapter content and the balance between narrative voice, descriptive passages and dialogue. People with short attention spans die when they see a page of solid, descriptive text, whereas others see pages of dialogue as uninteresting chatter.

Find out who you are writing for.

Colin M

Oh, dear. You see, I come from a very different school of thought to Colin, which is don't give a moment's thought to target audience at all. I am my target audience, and I make everything suit me.

A chapter is as long as it needs to be. There are many books which have both long and short chapters. There are no rules. I often end chapters when I've written a sentence and I think, 'Right, that is a meaningful sentence. Stop here.'

This will make you laugh, Deb...my first book, i didn't plan AT ALL, got to 100,000 words...it only had four chapters

My second book i planned a lot and it had 21 short ones in 70,000 words.

It is so personal. I like the sense of achievement you feel as a reader, working your way through chapters, i don't like long ones. If your work fits a specific genre, though, i would have a read around and see what's popular at the moment. If not, i wouldn't worry about it and i think the other sentiments on this thread are very sensible.

Casey

You're probably giving it more thought than you realise, in that you are writing the kind of books that you like to read yourself, so you've already got a target audience in mind.

My idea only comes into play if you are writing outside your comfort zone. For instance, if your particular genre isn't accepted, either through market demand or publisher's fashion, then you might have to write for a different market if you really want to make money. Purists would argue the point and stick to their chosen genre, but we don't all have that luxury. I can give two modern examples: Sheila Quigley and Michael Marshal. Both are talented crime/thriller writers, but only because the horror market has continually turned them down. However, when you read their work, the bias towards horror is apparent.

So the short answer to the posted question, in my view, isn't as simple as "however long it should be" because the pace of the book makes its own demands on the chapter length, and the pace of a classic sci-fi saga is usually slower than a contemporary sci-fi comedy; a historical romance is slower than a hi-tech action thriller.

Colin M

A chapter break's another tool in the toolkit, and if you use them to help do what you want to do with the novel, then they'll be 'right', however long the chapters are or aren't (Which I think is what Colin is really saying, isn't it? That different novel-horses suit different chapter course-lengths)

Like Sappho, I often suddenly think, 'right, that's it' as to exactly when I finish a scene, though structurally, I plan in chapters from the beginning, because with parallel narratives you have to be a bit organised: which bits of which story match up to which matters and needs controlling.

In this one, each of the ten chapters has turned out to have a sort of theme that links the different narratives: one of my many, many jobs in the second draft will be to bring those out, maybe even find chapter epigraphs to make them more explicit still. As it happens, they're coming in somewhere between 9,000 and 15,000 words each, but that's not really the point. And there are many subdivisions and therefore breaks within the chapters, because I'm juggling three narrators.

Emma

<Added>

Cross-posted with you, Colin.

I find that the story dictates when the chapter end should be. I've tried to consciously plan actual word lengths of chapters before (if i feel one is too long/short) but it rarely works.

Anyway, didn't someone once say on a thread that an editor will TELL you where the chapter ends should be, and insert them him/herself? I seem to remember Emma's reaction was (i love that new smiley)

Casey

Casey, I'm sure I was very indeed! I'm a peaceable type, most of the time, but I pity the editor who tried to do that to my work.

Though I can imagine an editor questioning where I've put one of my chapter breaks, in relation to the development of the narrative, and wondering if somewhere else would be better. But then my novels aren't straightforwardly linear - more like a plait - so I'd tend to think not 'I must move the chapter break' but 'that episode should be in the chapter before,' or whatever.

Emma

I have some short chapters and some long ones.

I'm a bit concerned, because I'm up to 50k words, and have 25 chapters already.

But then the other day I was looking thought some of my books, and one of the Erica James ones, has sixty six chapters, so I'm not too concerned.

I agree, that chapters are as long as they need to be. You are the writer, you know your book and will have a feel for where to end a chapter and start another one.

Katerina

<Added>

through, not thought

Thanks everyone - really interesting comments.

I feel most like you, Katerina, with presumably many chapters around 2k words. I haven't yet decided where chapters begin and end but I am currently writing in scenes.

I'm currently reading Mark Haddon's "A Spot of Bother" which isn't my usual type of reading matter but I'm really enjoying it (I wanted something light after a heavy novel). Mark does something very unusual in my reading experience, which is that each scene is one chapter. So some are two paras, most are 2 or 3 pages, and occasionally there's one which is about 6 pages.

It does feel weird but in a way I like it, because it has great simplicity, and he has 4 viewpoint characters which alternate between the scenes (not in strict rotation I don't think, but roughly).

But what, really, is the point of chapters?? I can see the point of cliffhangers in tv series, but if I'm reading a novel I don't stop reading for a break at the end of a chapter - I stop for a break when I have to go do something else, and if I don't have to go do something else then I continue straight into the next chapter as if nothing has happened.

I recently read Andrew Miller's Oxygen which also has around 4 viewpoint characters, and he too changes viewpoint at the end of chapters, but the chapters are considerably longer than Haddon's, and made up of a number of scenes. I think Miller's approach is probably more standard.

My work-in-progress will also have several (3) viewpoint characters whose tales need to interleave. I'd prefer not to change viewpoint until I change chapter so I guess practicalities may therefore impose a chapter length on me.

Deb

I think chapters may be about cliffhangers, but they're more profoundly about pace and structure. I use mine to mark off the stages of the development of both plot and character, and to keep my own eye on the pace and balance of that development. And in TMOL, at least, they group into larger Parts which are about the overarching structure of the tale. I'm waiting to see if this is something that the new one needs...

Emma

Thanks Emma.

(TMOL?)

I hadn't really thought of them like that. I must do some thinking on this. Perhaps I'll have short chapters and then have Parts. I really don't know atm.

But I have plenty of time to think about this since I've still got a long way to go before I finish my first draft.

Deb

Sorry, TMOL is my novel The Mathematics of Love.

Yes, I think the best structures are the ones you see emerging from your material as you career along through the first draft. I only 'saw' the bigger, part-structure of TMOL when I was writing a synopsis for it, to help the workshop who were looking at later chapters.

Emma

I use mine to mark off the stages of the development of both plot and character, and to keep my own eye on the pace and balance of that development.

And me. At least one of my main character's has to be a different stage in their development at the end of a chapter. I'm 60k words in and on Chapter 6 - so each chapter roughly 12k words.

Cliffhanger endings just have me dropping the book like a hot potato - the opposite reaction to what the writer intended, I'm guessing. I just find myself thinking along the lines of 'you're trying to manipulate me into turning the pages cos your writing's not up to doing it on its own'.