Chapter lenghths

[emely-chan.livejournal.com]

I've just had a look at my chapter lenghts. My longest is 1667 words long (wow, coincidence? anyway.) but the shorted I just finsihed mere 600. Which, to be fair, shocked me a bit. Does that even count as a chapter?


How long are your chapers on average?

And how many words make a chapter anyway?

Comments

[unconventional.livejournal.com]

Chapters are as long as you want them. I've read books that have one sentence chapters. And I've read some that seem to never end. As long as you're happy and it wraps up how you want, that's all that matters.

[alethessa.livejournal.com]

I haven't gotten to a point where I separate chapters in my writing. When I work on my NaNo, unless it's a major POV change, I just divide into sections with an extra line. Hence, I don't have an average chapter length just yet.

But I've seen a bunch of books that have really short chapters. There's no set number of words that make up a chapter-- it's all up to you.

[crawfordwraith.livejournal.com]

I've heard of chapters that were only a sentence long. They can be any length you want them to be.

[eien-herrison.livejournal.com]

Chapters are as long as they need to be -- I can't recall if it's Alice in Wonderland or the sequel, Through The Looking Glass, but one of the chapters consisted of eight words.

The average length of my chapters varies with what I'm writing: I have a series of mini-fics where each 'chapter' is between 200 and 300 words; this year's NaNo will have chapters between 7,000 and 9,000 words long.

[alpha-orionis-v.livejournal.com]

Hell, Douglas Adams did the same thing. There was a chapter in one of the books that was like, one sentence.

[alpha-orionis-v.livejournal.com]

I break my chapters up depending on flow. I wrote one story where the longest chapter was 6000 words, and the shortest was about 200.

[http://users.livejournal.com/imagine___/]

I'm not splitting mine into chapters until the very end of the editing process - I hate thinking "I need to split this into a new chapter" so I leave it until everything else is sorted.

[joshuwain.livejournal.com]

Chapters should be as long as they need to be to convey the complete idea and scene, connecting the previous setting/scene to the next; moving the narrative forward. The length doesn't need to be particularly long or short.

[takatohedgehog.livejournal.com]

I looked at my first chapter last night and decided that I split it off at a bad time, so I added six extra pages to my five-page first chapter, making it a total of 11 pages and 6343 words. But it's up to you how long you want to make your chapters :3

[gargoylekitty.livejournal.com]

I've read a book where one chapter was around three words. Chapters are as long or as short as they need to be.

[teithiwr.livejournal.com]

I agree with the general sentiment that chapters can be any length they need to be. Whatever works for the narrative!

I am currently not dividing my story into chapters at all, just separating scenes and things with three asterisks. The chapter divisions will come during editing, when I finally figure out what form this monster is going to take. :)

[auguris]

There's a two word chapter in The Gremlins book. "Peter forgot." I will always remember it because 1) UH OH SHIT'S GOING DOWN and 2) It was a two word chapter, and that was AWESOME to my child brain.

[dienaid.livejournal.com]

I chapter at the end because I just am not organized enough to have defined splits in my thoughts. I'd say an average in this depends on what you're doing. I want a 100k-150k word novel at the end, but I want at least 50k words written this month. My chapters can afford to be more like 20 doublespaced pages long. Someone who intends to write a complete novel in this time might end up with five or so pages per chapter. It's too variable!

[sandtree.livejournal.com]

It doesn't matter. Chapters can be as long or as short as you want.

[slanderouslibel.livejournal.com]

I am not going to read the other comments before I put in my two cents, because I have to go pick my son up from the bus stop soon.

Have you ever read anything by Douglas Adams? A chapter is about quality, not quantity. If it's a good place for the chapter to end, then it's good.

--Kai

[mistyzeo.livejournal.com]

I'm aiming for 4 thousand a chapter, but that's just me!

[djonma.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree that a chapter is of any length.

Basically, a chapter is like an uber paragraph.
It ends when that bit of the story ends.
That can be after thousands and thousands of words, or it can be after a couple of words, used to convey importance.
It's where you naturally have a break in the story.
Doesn't matter how long that is.

Btw, I love that you have a 1,667 chapter :-)

[dragonbloodink.livejournal.com]

I'm not even thinking chapters yet. Just words. Lots and lots of words.

[edenic.livejournal.com]

One of the chapters in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying consists entirely of this: My mother is a fish.

[safaiagem.livejournal.com]

Ugh chapter lengths. I almost didn't finish my most recent book because the chapter lengths were wonky and it drove my OCD fucking NUTS. 2500-5000 are mine but dsfhmkdshfkjd when I didn't hit the middle point I went crazy.

[ayumidah.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on the person, but so far I've stopped all my chapters at 1667 just because I wanted it that way, each day is a chapter, lol.