That's a good point. Long chapters do make a book seem longer than it is. That might be a tiebreaker if I'm on the fence. Short chapters make the climb seem easier, even if I know intellectually that the mountain is the same.
My chapters tend to be long - about 10K words to 12K words. The shortest I have in my current WIP is about 8K words. Each chapter has several scene breaks, though. Honestly, I don't even notice chapters when I'm reading a novel. The whole thing always seems like one piece to me. I assume most people are the same, but I guess I'm in a small minority.
I don't notice them either. I especially never understood the idea of having not-too-long chapters to give people a point to stop. Maybe because I used to read constantly, I don't wait for a good place to stop; I just stop when it's time to stop.
Add me to the minority, then. I was never one to stop reading at the end of a chapter, but since I've started to read mostly on public transportation I stop reading at my bus/subway stop. Tomorrow's a new day, I can pick up where I left. This type of reading makes the length of chapters meaningless. Add to that that you may have chatty passengers or hip hop music that keeps you from concentrating on what you're reading no matter how much you try. In normal circumstances, however, like reading quietly in bed, I don't think in terms of chapters, I think in terms of scenes. And I'd say that 6000 words are the maximum limit per scene. I'll admit exceptions when the action can't possible be broken apart, but more than 6000 words and I'll think it's stretching it. I really can't say why, since I don't "respect" chapters as a reader. It's just my gut feeling that it gets too long for most readers.
Add me to the list of people who don't need a chapter break to stop reading. With eReaders becoming more popular, I think chapter breaks are becoming even less important than they were in the past, which still wasn't very much. As for writing, mine usually come out between 2,500 and 4,500 words. I don't plan it that way, just happens.
Ditto. I'm currently reading Michael J. Sullivan's Theft of Swords and I am finding the chapters quite long. I've only read about 400 pages yet the chapter lengths make me feel like I've read much longer. Personally, I write chapters anywhere between 2,000 - 4,000 words. Though I'm not too picky with such. Chapters help readers take a break and absorb what they've just read. It's also a good point to stop reading for many. So longer chapters can feel tedious.
That's what I had originally thought, but I was having such a hard time progressing the story with that length chapters. I aim for 3,000 to 5,000 words for my short stories so I thought it would be a natural length for my chapters. I don't know why I was having such a hard time, but the idea of longer chapters is helping for now. @BayView -- I know you've written quite a few books. Have you stayed pretty consistent with your chapter lengths throughout your novelist career? Do you think it is just your natural chapter length as a writer or do you have to put more thought into it?
Right, scene breaks. What are your thoughts (or anyone's) on how many scene breaks should occur in a fifty page chapter? Right now I don't have any, but I can see how having some would be beneficial. Thanks.
I don't plan my stories out either. It's kind of fun to have no idea where you are taking things. My only plan now is to have five or six chapters. And although the story has not yet been planned out, I think the structure that comes with longer chapters could really help keep me on track. Maybe I needed to go for the longer chapters so it would feel different than writing short stories. Just curious, why wouldn't you want to go over 5K? And I don't really see how editing a long chapter is any different than editing any given 50 pages. Am I missing something?
I thought a typed page was around 500 words. I don't know why I think that, but I have for awhile. Anyway, I wouldn't be the first to write long chapters. The story just wasn't coming together for me when I was writing shorter chapters.
I think we've all seen a variety of chapter lengths. I'm just trying something that's new for me because my novel just wasn't working with what is probably considered more average chapter lengths. I just couldn't really get the story to pick up speed with all the chapter starts and stops. Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's just this book.
Interesting. This is how my brain wants this story broken up. I sure hope I can keep it exciting enough to (in some sort of way) earn the long chapters.
It kind of seems like it shouldn't matter how long the chapters are if the word count would be the same. But I do get what you're saying.
What you're doing is along the lines of what I want to do, and we seem to think about this the same way. Have you always done long chapters? Any tips other than scene breaks when it comes to writing lengthy chapters?
I don't need a chapter break to stop reading, but sometimes if I find myself slogging through a book instead of flying, I''ll think, "Well, maybe it'll get better soon. You should at least try to finish the chapter." But if the chapter is extremely long it can seemingly take forever to get to that point, and I'm more likely to get frustrated and abandon the book entirely. I think that's why I really only notice chapter length if I'm not really engaged with the story.
I think this is true. I was listening to an audiobook a few months back and it never even mentioned when one chapter ended and another one started, but this book did have chapters and plenty of them. Maybe they just weren't so important to the story as a whole.
I put some thought into it, but not a lot... I generally write scenes of between 1500 and 5000 words. So if I have two short scenes that seem reasonably connected I glue them together into one chapter, but otherwise I do a chapter per scene. Am I reading you right that you have one scene that's 50K words long? That seems... like a lot...
Yeah, in a good book it's not a factor for me. In a mediocre book... maybe? Definitely not a deal-breaker, but I can see it becoming a tie-breaker. There's no set formula. Really it's wherever a break is appropriate. I try to make my scene/chapter breaks do as much work as possible for both me and the reader. Obviously, a POV shift gets a break, whether in chapter or between chapters. That can become problematic if you have scenes with multiple POVs, since quick breaks imply simultaneous action whereas a chapter break can be a bit more open ended. The chapter break tells the reader that we're done talking about something and are moving onto something else. There will be less confusion if there's a major shift in action, whereas a scene break might make a reader believe they've missed something if the narration feels incongruous when in resumes after the break. Not always of course. A lot of it depends on style and subject material too. If you have an intergalactic setting with multiple POVs flying around between planets, or a biopic scope that follows a character for decades, you're probably going to want to delineate things as hard and fast as possible with chapter breaks. But if you have a more immediate story that unfolds over a short period of time in a localized setting, you can probably get away with softer scene breaks here or there or longer chapters that add to the immediacy of the events. And then there's the whole narrative summary vs. blow by blow forms of narration. If you can write great narrative summary and transition easily between time and location, the need for a break to avoid confusion is not as necessary. But if you're dialogue heavy with lots of tight scenes one after another I can see how the quick pacing might cause a reader to miss a scene flip... or at least the logic of a scene flip. Some readers skim things more than others... mainly for descriptive passages, so if there's a transition hidden in there and they miss it (or they're tired, distracted, drunk, etc) they might "come to" in a different scene with no idea how they get there whereas a scene or chapter break would have alerted them to pay attention. Really, you can be successful with either method so long as the narration is forgiving and user friendly.
That's interesting in that it seems to be opposite for me, even though I also love the fun of not knowing. I see chapters as markers to keep me on track, but for me, I like more and not less. Breaking a story down into smaller parts is easier for my mind to work with. I don't write short stories, so maybe that's why I can't relate. Or maybe there's some deeper structuring of longer chapters I'm not aware of. I also write with the assumption that there are people who have short attention spans or are busy. As a reader, I see chapters as invitations to smoothly opt out for a while to see to real life. Maybe when I write, I'm also catering to my natural attention span based on my own life. When it comes to chapter length, I just assume everyone has their own way of story telling, a natural rhythm they work to, and where they want to take breaks. So for me, not planning is as much due to having a disorganised mind as it is to allow my mind to go where it wants. To allow for this, I edit heavily at the end of every chapter. I need what I've established to be stable enough to move on or I feel inconsistencies will start compounding. My husband is pedantic when he edits my work too. I can feel both of us getting quite exhausted when we review the longer chapters. It's a very interactive process for us as I make adjustments. Even though this process works for me, I get impatient and cranky to move on to the next chapter. So I guess that's the answer, 5k is the limit of my patience for each editing iteration. You're not missing anything. Also, I start each chapter with some key goals in mind, and I'll break once I've achieved them. I suppose it's a mix of internal pacing and writing style, but when I start pushing over 5000, I can almost guarantee I've waffled and rambled my point across. I can literally see my husband's eyes glazing over and weariness setting in as he reads. He almost always points to the passages that I suspected was a pile of waffle as I wrote. I'm not against chapters over 5k, but I do see a word count of 5000+ as an opportunity to streamline.
As a reader, I like book chapters to be short. If I can't read them in bursts while commuting or on my lunch break then they feel too long. I feel that long chapters make the story feel as if it is moving more slowly and the slower a story moves the less likely it will keep my attention. As a writer, I keep my chapters short (2-4k) to reflect my own likes/dislikes as a reader.
I see what you mean, but in reverse. If I'm not engaged with the story *every five sentences* will feel like five long chapters. However, this is not how I choose a book, and it's not what keeps me reading or not. On the contrary, and this will interest you too, @Homer Potvin, and you too, @deadrats. I'm the elitist reader type that will be put off if I see a book with very short chapters and lots of dialogue. I'll think it's directed at teenagers, or a short-attention-span audience, to put it mildly. (I think I'm a more sophisticated reader than that.) So it does matters who the book is aimed for. Who is your audience. Young Adult or Nobel types? Yes. My "imaginary" 6.000 word limit is for scenes, not chapters. In the same vein of my reply above, as an elitist reader I don't think that chapters are needed, at all! An entire book can be written without chapters, with scene breaks only, with a mix of both, or if you're aiming at the utmost sophisticated audience, no chapters or scenes, just text and text and more text (but don't except it to sell much unless you win a Nobel). I thought this would interest you, deadrats, because from your other posts you seem to be aiming at literary. Literary is everything but easy-reading and the audiences are not the same. So when we speak of chapter/scene length we're talking of genres/audiences where length matters.
