As I'm revising and rewriting away on my manuscript, I've been thinking a bit about chapter length. What is a good chapter length, and what makes it so? In my WIP, I've noticed that my chapters are getting longer in my second draft. I'm taking what were previously two or more chapters and combining them, so where in my rough draft I had chapters averaging around 2,000 words, I'm now averaging about 3,000 to 4,000 words.
So what are the determiners that decide how long your chapters should be?
Genre
You may have noticed that different genres tend to have different chapter lengths. Literary fiction, with its generally slower pace, its emphasis on character rather than plot, tends to have longer chapters, and sometimes no chapters at all. The benefit of having longer chapters is that the author can get deep into a character's mind, immersing the reader in that character's world and viewpoint without interruption.
Young adult, which I've been reading a lot of lately, by and large has shorter chapters (in the YA novel I'm currently reading, Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater, the chapters are sometimes only half a page long), as do crime fiction, thrillers, and other fast-paced novels. To have longer chapters in fast-paced books could be exhausting for the reader, and could cause the action to drag. Short, episodic, choppy chapters can add to the sense of excitement in the story, moving the reader through the novel at speed.
(That's not to say that literary fiction doesn't ever have short chapters or action, or that all YA books are fast-paced or have more emphasis on plot than characters. Of course there is plenty of overlap between different genres, and YA alone has lots and lots of subsections—contemporary, fantasy, paranormal, romance, historical, etc.—and authors obviously have their own individual ways of dealing with pace and plot.)
Tension
So much of deciding when to end a chapter depends on finding a great stopping point in a scene—what will make the reader want to continue on to the next chapter? What questions does the ending of the chapter answer, and more importantly, what new questions does it raise? This isn't to say that every single chapter should have a crazy twist at the end or a breath-stopping cliff-hanger—save those for the really important points in the plot—but there have to be enough unanswered questions, enough curiosity evoked in the reader to keep him or her engaged in the story and wanting to continue.
So, writers, do you ever have trouble, as I sometimes do, deciding where to end a chapter? Do you prefer to write short, episodic chapters, or longer, more continuous ones, or does this change depending on what you are writing?
Readers, what sort of chapter length do you like in a novel? What about in a nonfiction book?
Personally, I'm not a big fan of super short chapters just because they seem to make a book so choppy. Even during fast-paced books, short chapters actually distract me. >_> Also, it seems more acceptable with one POV, but if POVs are being switched up, I like a longer opportunity to be in someone's head. I think anywhere between 2000-4000 is a good length because then it's a bit meatier. :)
ReplyDeleteI wrote super long chapters in my rough draft (roughly 4000 average, but the shortest was 3000 and the longest was nearly 7000), but I think that's more that I just wrote super long in general than what was really necessary for the chapter length. For some reason chapters that are in the 1000 word range make me cringe--like they're too short to be acceptable or something.
My chapters were so long though because part of my writing process was deciding that the story would get to a certain point by the end of a chapter. But when the chapter ended up being so much longer than I expected, instead of splitting it, I would add these mediocre little timeskips. I switch between three POVs, and keeping a certain POV for certain events also lengthened chapters unnecessarily.
Hopefully all that made sense?
Okay, my opinion on short chapters has changed slightly. Recently read Justine Larbalestier's LIAR, which has super short chapters. However, each new chapter didn't get a traditional page break--which worked for me. Even though everything was broken up, it didn't seem quite as choppy as say, the chapters in Maggie Stiefvater's SHIVER. And yeah, that really doesn't make any sense, but I guess it stresses on how the simplest formatting issues really do make a difference?
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I tend to prefer shorter chapters (though not super short half-page ones) or longer chapters with white space breaking them into sections. That's because I like to have a comfortable place to stop when I finish reading before bed. But like you said, a lot depends on the author's writing style, and the format of the book.
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