I’ve enjoyed writing for most of my life, and I’ve finally developed an interest in knowing how stories work besides plots, grammar, paragraphs and characters. Since I’ve finally gotten (fairly) solid answers to how long a book should be, it’s time to investigate the other mystery of books: chapters. I have the feeling that if I ever write anything of novel length it should probably have chapters…
You would think, given the sheer number of books I’ve read over the past 22 years, I would have a better idea about how chapters “work,” but sadly they continue to mystify me. I get so wrapped up in reading that I fail to notice more mechanical things.
Most novels seem to have chapters, but how does an author know when and where to put them in? Beyond the gut feeling that the end of a scene would be a good stopping place, are there other indicators they go by?
I know chapter lengths vary in wildly from author to author, but how long (pages or words count) is the shortest acceptable length for a chapter? For example could there be three chapters in the first 4500 words/11 pages?
Are chapters something a writer should be concerned with while writing, or are they an afterthought sort of activity? What would an editor do if you sent them a great book, but didn’t put in chapters?
I’ve seen 1 pages chapters before in a book with a norm of 12 pages per chapter…very odd.
I guess there are two main criteria for the length of a chapter:
- The attention span of the reader
- The complexity of the chapter’s theme
You don’t want your reader to nod off because you decided to have one 200-page chapter on “War.” You’d want to slice that down, maybe separate it by (surprise) war.
Chapters do not need to be the same length throughout a book. Basically, a chapter contains a main idea - a point that the author wants to go over in detail - and then ends when the point has been made.
Maybe a good way to look at chapters is to view them as minibooks. Each chapter should have a beginning that introduces the topic, a middle that supports the points, and a conclusion that wraps up the discussion of that topic.
Chapters can be thought of very much like paragraphs. You know how you have an instinct for when you need a new paragraph? Which intuition is based on years of reading and writing experience? Same deal.
I think you probably do have a good idea of what a chapter is, but it’s a very loose definition indeed. I would say, as a reader, that I prefer my chapters to be defined by:
Big changes in setting
Cliffhangers or major plot developmets
Shifts in perspective
“Beats” or chunks of story.
If any of these things occur without a new chapter, they can tend to take me out of things. But as in all things artistic, take this with a grain of salt.
Stephen King is a guy who is all over the place with his chapters, and ISTR a few single-sentence chapters along with some really long ones, but he has a good sense of those discrete “chunks” of info so it doesn’t take me out of it.
Hopefully others will have more concrete advice, I would be interested to read it. Perhaps RealityChuck will be along.
Most chapters that I’ve seen seem to focus on either people or events. A climactic battle, for instance, or the Grand Audience with the High King, could be a chapter. On the other hand, you can have each chapter focus on a different character. So Chapter 1 tells about the hero starting off on his quest, then Chapter 2 switches to the princess in captivity, Chapter 3 is some random townsperson who will become important later, and Chapter 4 is back to the hero again. Of course, you can mix and match these, as well.
Chapters are like paragraphs: there is no rule for their length or for how to end it. I do it by feel – if it feels like it’s a good place to end a chapter, then that’s where I end it.
For a few helpful rules of thumbs, I suggest you look at the book as a series of scenes. There should be places in the narrative where the action shifts from one place to another. That’s where you need to have a scene change (indicated by a # symbol in the center of a blank line).
You then end the chapter at the end of a scene that has some sort of dramatic event. For instance, I once ended one chapter just as the hero fell off the top off the Empire State Building. This is sometimes called the “Tom Swift” method, since those books used it a lot.
Lacking this sort of event, end the chapter when you come up with a good closing line for the scene. Maybe the character reveals something about her past, or you’ve just written a particularly good line of dialog. Stop things there and move on to the next scene.
You can also use “end of the day” chapter endings – ending a chapter after all the action is complete. However, you should have some sort of intriguing line at the end to give the reader a reason to read on (i.e., “Just before she fell asleep, she realized that Evilon’s corpse hadn’t been found. She hoped it meant nothing, but something about it nagged at her.”)
If you’re using a multiple character point of view, then you can end each chapter when you plan to switch characters.
As far as short vs. long – it depends on your preference. However, short chapters tend to be faster to read. Some authors – Terry Pratchett and Christopher Stasheff come to mine – don’t bother with chapters at all.