DECIDING CHAPTER LENGTH
Q. How long should a chapter be?
A. We-ell, that depends. It’s another of those questions about writing technique where there’s no finite answer. It’s a ‘You’re the writer – you decide!’ type of question/answer.
OK, let’s check some famous authors for guidance.
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. A chapter at the half-way point of his journey, has two words: ‘Mile 23’. That’s pretty brief!
In Stephenie Meyer’s book, New Moon, she has some chapters’ first and only pages with nothing typed on them but the name of a month. That’s short!
But, some authors have published books with no chapters which I suppose means it’s really one chapter lasting for the whole novel. If you class that as a chapter, it’s heck of a long one! I haven’t read any of these but here are often quoted examples. . .
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Homer & Langley by L. Doctorow
Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King
So, that didn’t help. Let’s consider the question from another angle.
WHAT DO READERS WANT?
Because of current lifestyles, the trend in reading is to do it on a phone or ereader in short bursts – ten minutes on the train or bus, fifteen minutes in bed, twenty minutes at your desk with a sandwich.
My Kindle doesn’t display number of pages in a chapter, it shows ‘time left’ which is handy. I believe most other ereaders are the same. A chapter timed at, say, forty-minutes could be off-putting if you’ve only a ten-minute bus trip or you want a quick read before going to sleep. Too many like that and the reader can lose the thread of the story. If it happens too often, the book risks being discarded!
Writers must react to that, and most do nowadays, by producing short, succinct chapters. I try to keep my typical chapter length to two- or two-and-a-half-thousand words; about ten minutes reading time. Recently, I read a Richard Osman book where all chapters were timed at five or six minutes. Not only did it capture the action, it made it perfect for a speedy read.
Now, if you can’t or don’t want to write shorter chapters, you can always go for paragraph breaks. You’ll be familiar with these from books you’ve read. They are usually points in a story used to denote a shift of time, location, or action. Here’s an example from my Blood on Charing X Road where I move from a character in one location to another character elsewhere . . .
All Mallory had to do now was wait for the familiar-looking young man to deliver. Fifty-thousand? I’ll offer him ten. Sipping his cold coffee, the dealer stared through the front window at traffic passing along Charing Cross Road.
***
Four-thirty pm in Regent’s Park, London. Whilst Rona embraced her memories of a twenty-two-year-old actress, she hugged a bottle of twelve-year-old malt whisky. In her other hand . . .
In this case, the break is decorated with asterisks. Other devices used from your keyboard are: ~, ooo, ^^^, or you can insert an image. I tend to use an undecorated double space between the paragraphs. The message to the reader is the same, and it’s quicker.
Remember, our job is to make the book enjoyable and that includes being easy to read.
Check out my blog on PLANNING.
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