Chapter Length
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Posted Jul 29, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC
410
Arrogance might be a larger issue than chapter length
6
Word lenght means very little in my opinion. The time it takes to go though the chapter is more important. I mean, if you have an interesting monologue, it takes less words but will generally be read slower. Compare that with a suspensful action scene, where people will read faster, and even accidentally skip parts in all the chaos.
5
If it is deeply compelling, and possibly the best I don't see a problem. For the rest of us, I still don't see a problem.
3
You do you. Whatever chapter length you prefer and feel comfortable with is what you should write.
Personally, I prefer longer chapters for both reading and writing.
For reading, it's because I read for the escapism. I don't want to try and cram a single chapter into a 15 minute break at work. I want to sit down and spend some time actually enjoying the story. One of my favorite webnovels posts chapters that are often 20k words at minimum.
For writing, it's because smaller chapters feel constraining. I like the freedom longer scenes offer me. I can have more room to add in little details and don't have to cram important moments into a set number of pages. I aim for 4k words per chapter, but have gone as high as 12k.
Overall, it's better to have a minimum wordcount than a maximum, and "average" wordcount can go screw itself. A chapter is as long or as short as it needs to be.
3
I'm the opposite, I like having a ton of short chapters, I tend to think of them like checkpoints in a videogame, and 5-6k is near my upper limit. 3-4 is my average. When it comes to examples, I think Dresden Files is my optimal chapter length
1
No, those seem like good ranges to me. And just out of curiosity, are you familiar with the Dunning-Kruger effect?
3
I am now thanks to Wikipedia. Wait, are you implying something?
1
I find that I don't care about the word count of a chapter, because I divide my chapters based on the milestones in my plot. I treat each of them like a short story, one that has to support itself. Basically, one dot on an outline is one chapter for me. I don't think about chapter lengths at all, but it just so happens that each is 5k - 10k words long. So yeah, I may be biased xD
Very few books have a chapter word count this large, though, and 2k or 4k chapters don't bother me at all - as long as how they're divided makes sense to the plot, the tone, the POV. There's only one instance where i stopped reading a book because of chapter length, but it was only one of the reasons. (It was really bad overall.) It was in a small format - the size of a notebook - and there were chapters shorter than a page and a half. I remember being really annoyed by this book.
Honestly, as long as a chapter is engaging and has a purpose, I find that I soak up 10k+ chapters with no problem.
1
Those ranges don't really bother me. When it comes to chapters, I try to make it less about the specific word count and more about whether the chapter served its purpose. Now, I would probably get tired of 5,000+ word chapters, but the range you described seems fair.
I agree. Fulfilling the chapter's purpose outweighs the importance of chapter length. I've read books with some really short chapters, and I must say, I prefer shorter chapters to longer ones. What I would be careful about, though, is not to have chapter length impact pacing in a negative way.