Length of chapters doesn't really matter. Kiss the Girls by James Patterson (best seller) had about 115 chapters and was 500 pages or so. Other books I've read only had five or six altogether and these were 300 or 400 page books. Chapter length is like page length...it varies according to the story being told. It also depends on POV.
there is no 'typical' length for chapters... and writers should not let what others' books look like influence what they feel is right for their own work... as boo alluded to, patterson is fond of 2-3 page chapters, while other successful writers like seemingly endless ones... the determining factor should only be your own writing style, plus what each chapter needs to have in it, to be a good read...
I would be annoyed if the novel consisted of a couple hundred chapters, most of them under a page in length. But chapter length is an author's choice. If the break points make good sense, then it doesn't matter how far apart they are. Trust your instincts. If the chapters feel too short, consider putting more scenes in each chapter. Or it may be that the scenes themselves are too lean. Chapter length is probably one of the least important things to worry over. More often than not, if it looks like a problem, the real problem is deeper.
This is something I hadn't thought about until I realized my first chapter was 10,000 words! That seems kind of long to me. But to make things worse my chapter was already divided into three parts already. Each part was about 8-12 pages and ended with a page break to signal the day has come to an end. The three part went like this: 1. The setting character's are introduced as well as the MC's internal conflicts. 2. Second day, MC seems to have found a resolution to his conflicts, more characters are introduced 3. Bam! MC comes into work to find bodies everywhere, a long car and foot chase follows and the whole chapter ends on a thrilling note. Plot takes a new direction. Now would it be better for the reader if these three parts were divided up into three chapters? My whole objective for the first chapter was to build up the little world the MC lives in and by the end it was to be completely destroyed in an instant. I have accomplished this goal but it took a lot more words than I thought.
Ok. Chapters always were just numbers to me. I keep track of things with the page number. I end the chapter once I have completed my objective. Since my objective was completed I am satisfied. In an extreme case The first part of one of my stories took 50 pages. It was divided into various parts though so the reader could keep track of the time. I think of them as parts of the plot rather than groupings of pages. Also I just observed this about my writings, I always start of with a specific time, date, and location and with my current novel I start every section with a line from a continuous monologue. I think dates and dialogue are more meaningful than numbers, but that's just my style.
I agree, chapter lengths aren't that important, though, I do naturally vary them a bit, between 2000-6000 words. The way I do chapters is minigoals within the big story. Each chapter my character has a goal. When she gets it or fails to get it, the chapter ends. On top of the minigoals, she has the ultimate goal. When she gets that goal or fails to get it, the novel ends. I also have some goals that extend to more than one chapter, sometimes several chapters. That's just how I do things.
I'm curious does any one here write massive stories myself i can't help it, my younger brother refers to my works as leg smashers, my current work is looking at something well over 14000 pages long?
To begin with, forget page counts. Submissions are counted in words, not pages. If your word count is very much outside of the range of 80,000 to 120,000 words, your chances of getting a publisher to even look at it are slim to none. Forget Stephen King or any of the other big name writers who seem to defecate massive tomes in their sleep. They have made their mark, so they can indulge in wordiness and still get published. But an unknown writer will stay unknown if he or she can't stay within the preferred new submission word counts.
Your assuming my ungodly massive work is a single book, it's split into 18seperate parts, each with a false ending that gives the impression of a concluded story or arc with-in a larger story line leaving the reader satisfied but wanting more. What i was talking about is the length of a single story or narrative. All i was asking was do other people have trouble writng shorter stories like myself.
18 separate parts, as in 18 separate books? I'm not sure the average reader wants that much! Robert Jordan is at 12 with Wheel of Time, and in my opinion it's just getting tired. As for do I have trouble writing shorter stories? No, I have trouble writing long stories. I get impatient to get what's in my head on the page, and that makes me discouraged, and I eventually abandon it and begin on something else. I think we both need to find that happy medium!
Yes. I always find that when I try to write a shorter story, I leave loose ends that leave a reader unsatisfied. I'm much better at writing novels.
Quantity doesn't mean much to me. My essays at uni were always under 5 pages while everyone else was churning out about 12, and it didn't stop me getting a 2:1. A story takes as many words as are necessary. The longest I've ever written (not 'wrote') is a 95,000 word novel that's still tiredly doing the rounds.
When i started this particular story over a decade ago it was a ropey trilogy about saving the earth from aliens but succesive rewrite and reboots it keeps expanding and growing into something far more massive and more interesting. Whe Wheel of Time is my favourite series of books and i love reading them. I love the sheer detail and complexity you can craft into a novel of that size while still maintaining a simplicity for the reader, what i'm saying is i could compress it by at least half but the story would move at a super pace and i might lose the audience. I mean is it fair to assume your audience is as smart as i am or a dumb as a bag of hammers.
If we're talking stories rather than single books, then my longest is around 110,000 words - one novella at 25,000 words and its sequel at about 85,000. Alot of people say it's a big jump in word count for a continuation of the same story, but for me a story is as long as it needs to be. Quality, not quantity they say. I'm sure most people would prefer to read something short and concise that says what it needs to say than something that rambles on and on. And yes, measure in words, not pages. Page count can easily be manipulated by font size, line spacing and so on. Word count is objective.
My longest single story was about 165,000 words. It was the second part in a planned trilogy, but I gave up midway through the third one. Looking back on it now, it's bloody awful, and I can't stand it. That's probably to do with the genre, and the fact I was about 15/16 at the time.
I'm a short story writer, end of. And as a writer of short stories and poetry I've come to find the sentence 'I'm writing a novel' to be the most passionless, depressing thing an English speaker can utter. Not that I don't want to move into the world of novels, I really do, I just keep thinking that I'm selling out whenever I've tried my hand at it in the past, and give up; either leaving the idea completely, or just making a short story of it. My longest short story thus far is just over 10,000 words, and was a scrapped novel idea that just wouldn't leave me alone. My longest attempt at fiction is around Banzai's 160,000 mark, but this was (like his) when I was 15 or 16, and couldn't handle a project of that scope. However, I think that I'm beginning to move onto novels regardless, and my newer ideas are much more detailed, and much more elaborate than they used to be. My short stories, too, are noticeably growing in word length - and I’m a fanatic of the idea: quality over quantity!
I agree! I've heard so many writers say "I'm writing a novel!" and are so proud of the fact. I never say I'm writing a novel. As I said in my previous post, a story is as long as it needs to be, and if it ends up as a novella or something else, then so be it. There's no shame in writing a story that isnt quite long enough to be a novel. I never say I'm writing a novel. I'm always either writing a book or a story. In fact, since my stories are always handwritten on the first draft, I often have no idea of how long the story is until I type it up for the second draft. People ask me if its a novel, and I say I'm not sure yet!
As for writing short stories, I used to be in your situation. I wrote a trilogy by my final year in primary school. Now I'm trying my hand at short stories. The best method is to leave out almost all details and give the reader some space for creativity. This is to say, for each paragraph of description, slash it down to a couple of lines. You need to give the reader some credit. If they enjoy reading, they don't want to be spoonfed, they're generally going to be more intelligent than that. Readers, I'm sure you'll agree, like to think that their interpretation of the story is personal to them. That way it's almost like they made their own story WITH the author. Remember, they're paying for an experience, not a lecture. Let's take these two examples: This is the sort of thing you'd get in waffling epics. How about the sort of thing you'd find in a short story? That will let you picture the scene for yourself. If you can't imagine or you don't know what a prairie sunset looks like, then how much more wonderous a-scene could the reader conjur, given all the space in the world?
Yes, plus a couple of trilogies, the 18 parter is still is work in progress with me designing the last couple of parts and writing 16 and rewriting part 1 now...plus working on an encylopedia for the 18 parter...that i plan on doing sometime this year. I usually write between 40 and 100 pages a day, with my best day being 128 pages in a single 18 hour day, being currently unemployed means i can write all day every day...
Went toilet once and ate a sandwich that's about it, i had to finish as i had pre arranged to use an industrial office printer... so pulled an all day and nighter, stopped work at five in the morning and had to go out at eight in the AM. That was nearly a DVT time.
I think short fiction is more difficult than long fiction in the sense that it requires more attention to every detail, every word, every nuance, and more meticulous craftsmanship to allow it to do what good short fiction does better than long fiction--which is to create a meaningful reading experience in a very short period of time. Nothing is forgiven the author in a piece of short fiction. The difficulty with long fiction is, I think, to be able to sustain the reader's experience over the course of a lengthy work, where little things that wouldn't fly in short fiction can be overlooked if the long work seems interesting and vital. But that forgiveness that long fiction may have is more likely to become an excuse for the writer not to seek out, recognize, and repair deficiencies the long work may contain. Readers' thresholds for deficiency build-up are varied. So, ignoring these weaknesses may pass muster on some level (reading by friends and such), but it can easily be disastrous when it comes to marketing the work--especially so from a novice writer. Although I have a preference for artful writing, I do read some popular fiction, and some of it's awfully well put together (though, of course, a lot of it isn't). Right now I'm reading Dan Brown's DIGITAL FORTRESS. His pacing is pretty good, and the storyline is interesting, imaginative, and plausible--though maybe flawed in some ways that don't really concern me too much. The characters are identifiable, if not very three-dimensional. Still, there's nothing about it that would ever pass muster as a piece of stunning short fiction (where, as a reader, I simply expect to care about every aspect). Of course, all that's just my own preference and opinion. But that, I think, highlights the difference (which is somewhat subjective) between the difficulties of presenting fiction, short versus long. I used to think of novelists as folks who inevitably posessed more imagination than I could ever possibly have. Now, I don't think of it quite that way--more, that it requires a different kind of imagination that may or may not involve every possible fictional element--leaning more heavily on the storyline than anything else. The novelists I like best, in addition to being able to sustain my attention with an awfully good storyline, also pay attention to the kinds of elements short fiction requires, however long their stories turn out to be. I'm also finishing up Camus' THE PLAGUE, in which almost every passage is an artful experience to read. Just like painters who work better on larger canvasses than small (and vice versa), there are distinct challenges that must be faced and accommodated in either. It's a good idea to sniff out the differences, so you know what you need to overcome to succeed.
