Hi guys,

I guess this is probably one of the dafter questions to be asked, but how do you manage your chapters? Do you try to keep them to an average size (word or page count) or do you just let the writing flow and end up with varying lengths?

I would be interested to hear your veiws on this

Many thanks

Eve

Funny, I was just thinking about this today as my chapters are very varying lengths and I wondered what "the rules" are so to speak. I liked the way "The Curious Incident" had such a short punchy opening chapter and contrasting lengths all the way through. This was a feature that came from the character of course but the opening chapter felt very successful as a short immediate hook, setting up the mystery and the main questions about character. Be interested to know the conventions on this though.

Rosy

Hi Rosy,

Thanks for the reply, I would be very interested in hearing other peoples views on this.

My current novel has varying length of chapters and my first is very very short - but intentionally so. I just tend to write and write and make the chapter breaks where it feels right.

Eve

Hello Eve,

In my opinion, the simple answer, as that they should be as long as they need to be. I know that probably sounds flippant but is on the right lines I think.

Grinder

For me a chapter has its own arc, so that at the end the characters are in a noticeably different place - emotionally, practically - from the beginning. It's a unit of the story, if you like Which is why it makes perfect sense to say 'as long as it needs to be', because it's the sense of the shape and pace of the story that defines 'need'. It might be one big scene, or a series of shorter scenes which add up to one big change. The risk of thinking of them in that way is that the end of the chapter is so concluding that the reader doesn't feel the need to go on - the opposite of a cliffhanger (planesitter?) - if you like, so you still need to make sure the seeds of the next conflict/drama/action are visibly germinating, even as the arc of the chapter is curving down towards its end.

Having said 'as long as it needs to be' I find that my chapters do come out very roughly the same length, plus or minus about 15%, at a guess. Having realised that to be true for me, I do keep an eye on the word count as a double-check that I'm not over- or under-writing compared to earlier chapters.

FWIW, my chapters in TMOL vary between 10,000 and 14,000 words, but because it's a parallel narrative, each one has at least 3 or 4 sections of the different narrative. And the whole beast divides into 4 parts, so there are larger and smaller structural units, as well as chapters.

You really wanted to know all that, didn't you!

Emma

Eve, Grinder is right (hiya G, how’re ya doin?). It’s more important to find the right place to end a chapter than to try and even them up. The ending of each one should leave the reader intrigued enough to want to read on, otherwise it’s too easy to put the book down and not pick it up again.

Dee

Hi Ema

If you want to see what happens when you are writing chapter after chapter to a specific length have a look at any original copies of Charles Dickens. His books originally appeared as serials in a magazines and were written to precise lengths. The result a lot of irritatingly over-detailed waffle.

Be like Caeser. Let the dice, and your chapter lengths, fall where they may.

Best

Prospero

I've been running an online writing experiment all year to get into the swing of writing [warning newbie alert] and I made a decision to make sure I could output something every week I was fairly happy with. Bearing in mind as well that the internet attention span is low (did I lose you already?) - this meant keeping the word count down.

You could say each week is a 500-1500 word chapter. It seems to work and I've adapted to it. After living under this regime for months, I'd have to agree that chapter size depends on what feels right.

I do recall that James Herbert has written books with baby-bite chapters of a handful of pages each...

hmaster, never mind pages, ive written chapters of fourteen words...

Thanks guys - really insightful.

I understand that you have to follow your own flow, so to speak, but wanted to get a feeling of other people’s experiences. The endings to my chapters feel 'right' but I'm fully conscious that a few would be considered fairly short.

It only occurred to me the other day that other people might be more structured than me...!!

Eve

I actually don't like using chapters. I find I chop things up to upload them onto this site but I prefer to write in a chapterless (have I just invented a new word?)way. It might not be the most popular way to do things but it works for me. I tend to think in terms of scenes rather than chapters.

Aside from that I think chapters should be as long as they need to be. Some are longer than others, so long as you don't have one chapter that's 2 pages long followed by one that 20 pages long I shouldn't think it matters too much.

I let the first two or three chapter lengths happen naturally. Then, based on those, I allow a very rough miniumum and maximum for the rest of the chapters.

Cath

im with you a bit niniel. i find splitting things up into parts and chapters a bit artificial, though, of course, most of my favourite books use them. tho it's probably harder to pull off well, i do like the more messy, less contrived, feel of a book where everythings a bit of a mish-mash, where things run on or fall away or dont get started or just end because. more like life, i guess. but like i said, there's not many books that ive read where this is done well. i wish i knew what the secret was.

on the chapterless - I think that some readers like to have a some sort of division which indicates either progress or a place where they can put the book down and go to sleep. A formless approach may "feel" like a more inconvenient read.

In my trilogy, each chapter (as faithful members here will know - and groan ) is a kind of mini-novella, that eventually link up. I think the longest 'chapter' was 15,000 words, but they are broken up with a Roman numerals system. I'm following the same format for the sequel, but usually, in a more linear novel, I'd aim for roughly no more than 5,000 words. Overall, I think it should be as long as it needs to be.

JB