Chapter Length

When I write, I try to aim for a 5-15 minute reading time for a chapter, partly for the medium of online writing. With a paperbook or another already-complete work, the reader can just place a bookmark at any convenient place, whether they sit down to read for two minutes or two hours. For progressing stories and routinely updated webcomics and whatnot, some consistency can come in handy. I follow a lot of webcomics, and most regular-schedule authors go out of their way to say "Hey, sorry but no update this week, but here's a picture to tide you over". Conversely to that, most won't break from a usual four-frame comic and suddenly do a two or one or eleven-frame comic out of the blue.

As for the necessity of length, I've read stunning pieces of literature that are short enough to utter in a single breath and I've read rambling 500-page novels that were flavorless goop in comparison. Size does not equal quality *cough* but sometimes it can be a nice bonus *cough*.

When I aim for that 5-15 minute chapter, I usually go for 2500-4500 words, but I really don't know how that looks printed. My latest story, the detective thing I've been going on about for so long, I wrote in notepad++, not Libre Office, so I know a character length (20482 characters before final proofread), not a word count. However, right now I decided to find out and it's 3587 words. Even without considering its length while writing, I still stuck to that comfort zone of 2500-4500 again. It must be ingrained in me.

 

Personally, when I read books I see that the chapters are usually 25-35 pages long which, in my opinion, is a little too long.
I think long chapters should be at the most 25 pages and no more. Short chapters are anywhere from 5-15 pages which I think is fine.

I'm an artist, not a writer, and I've never really liked reading and writing, so definity don't take my word. It's just what I belive being a person who isn't necessarily into reading for long periods of time. I belive chapters should be short but there can be many chapters in a book or story that can make up for it. That way if someone wanted to stop at a chapter to take a break and comeback later, they don't have to wait as long to get to the end of a chapter.
​But, that's just me complaining about summer reading for the most part.

 

When I write, I like to keep chapters as short as possible over 2000 words. I dislike adding detail at minute levels (I've read book where everything from toes eyelashes were described) because I find that sort of description distracting to the reader. This brings the word count to around 2000 most of the time.

As a reader, I don't mind a chapter of any length.

Then again, I barely write! xD

 

Back when I used to write, my chapters used to average about 4 pages or 2800 words in length.

Of course, that's a lousy metric. I never used that as a metric at all.

When I write, I usually do not think of chapter divisions or where I am going to make them. Rather, I wrote with the mentality that chapters are supposed to be nice stopover points. After all, people will rarely stop reading in the middle of a chapter, right? No; they'll stop at the end. Thus I wrote with the purpose that a chapter would end under 1 of 2 criteria: either it generated a sense of closure that would finish up a current plot point; OR the plot point was still ongoing but the chapter ending was preparing to turn into the next part of the point.

The latter manifests itself usually as a sort of cliffhanger, but it doesn't have to. (I'd estimate it only creates cliffhangers about half the time.) Either way, it usually drops a sense of 'whoa' as a new part of the story is unveiled or revealed, before moving to the next.

Technically this is a rather formulaic approach, and that can be dangerous, but I try to only give as much attention to each point as I think is due. I don't like stretching out anything too far, nor too short. I do not bind myself to pages or word count, but rather to story flow. I would rather put chapter breaks where the 'flow' is slow or slowing, not when it is rapid and a myriad of thoughts are going through the reader's head.

...That's all.

 

I write from the perspective that I feel I can get enough information into the chapter without it feeling like a wasted effort and having enough detail to advance the story. Sadly, I think this style might put a number of people off as I have had a few messaged saying that they think I go a bit overboard with my word count.

Personally, I can't feel like I've finished a chapter until it's around 4000 words. I like hovering around that amount, and the stories I tend to write often happen to just finish smoothly after that period of time. I know it might be hard on readers looking for a nice, short story, but I wanna get all my idea across, even if sometimes I space out with what I need to do to get there.

 

What is most important to me is not the length of said content, but the quality of it. As Zero said, size does NOT equal quality. A somewhat negative comparison is the classmate in class who you know did not do his work and did not pay attention, and when called up by the teacher they utter nonsense in the hopes of getting the right answer and appearing smart in front of other classmates.

A good chapter can make up for any length of words on a page or multiple pages. I try to add as much detail to scenes and characters, with a little bit of underlying meaning, as possible, but going off on a tangent is something I try to avoid. As any writer would want, they should be able to get their point across. Whether it be a short statement or an essay-length of words, the writer must be able to hit some of the points mentioned by other members, such as having the feeling of closure Eclipse said.

Then there is the whole ordeal of diction and syntax that should come into play. These two if used correctly would not only increase the length of a chapter, but it would also give the reader a better experience. Writing "The" at the beginning at every sentence is boring and using the same words over and over again would signal a lack of vocabulary. That is only the surface assumptions, but the main point is to try and write better.

It is not only what you write, but how you write it. When a character speaks, you want them to speak in the way their personality was structured. In my story, one of the characters say "havin'" instead of "having" and "ya" instead of "you". Small changes such as those can make a chapter/story feel more fleshed out without compromising the intended length.

All in all, a writer must be able to hit the aforementioned key points and should be able to add a little flare. Creativity allows an endless amount of possibilities. Content is more important than length.

 

I try to keep my chapters between 2500 and 3500 words. Realistically, though, the chapter should be long enough for something significant to happen (be it plot movement or character development), but short enough to keep the reader interested in continuing. Quality of writing matters as well; for me, details should be concise and effective, not overly drawn-out.