Word Count and Chapters Length
I did a word count on my novel yesterday. As the software I use (TexNotes Pro) allows me to create separate notes instead of a huge file, I also did a word count per note, each note holding a chapter. Roughly, my chapters are around 3200 words long. I must admit that I have absolutely no idea whether this is too long, too short or just about right, since I’ve never took the time to count words in chapters of a published book to compare. It’s just the way things are at the moment, in what is my first draft.I have the feeling that my chapters aren’t “long”—I often end them on (semi) cliffhangers, and I have a natural tendency to not make gazillions of scenes occur in the same chapter, since it’d then make it too crammed and complex. However, this made me wonder: what’s the average length, anyway? It probably has to change depending on the kind of story told, and I very much doubt there’s any “law of writing” about this (except “don’t make chapters containing 100,00 words each”).In any case, out of curiosity, what is an accepted number here—or rather, what’s your own accepted number?
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Jennifer
The research I’ve done for writing for children never gives a chapter word length really, but I find that I keep my chapters short. Most are about 12 pages (double spaced) which is about what you have too. (approx. 3000 words). I find it easy to read, and easier to stop without losing a train of thought or having to quit in the middle of a scene…but that’s just a personal opinion.I could be telling you something completely against norm 🙂
Yzabel
I think we share the same opinion here: I also hate stopping in the middle of a scene, and the longer the chapter, the more I’m annoyed if I need to put the book down quickly! 😀
Nels
The chapters in my current novel (my first) are between 1000 and 2000 words, but I feel that they’re pretty short for chapters in a real book (I’m working on making them a little longer, but it works okay for the way the book goes in the beginning).
Cavan
My chapters are quite short, from about 1500 words to 3000. I do this because my story is in a multi-POV format, which forces me to hop back and forth between characters for the sake of keeping the chronology straight.
Nels
Here, here, Cavan. I’m doing a similar format.
melly
I’m reading Oryx and Crake now and chapters length is very short. As long as it works with the format and plot, I don’t think it matters.I think that 3,200 (which would make about 30 chapters in a 100,000 words novel), is a good average length.
Yzabel
Welcome here, Nels, and thanks for your input 🙂 If the book is fast-paced, probably shorter chapters work well with it, indeed. I’m really not sure if there’s a consensus on this—would a book be considered less because its chapters are shorter than in a “real” book? I don’t know. I suppose that as long as it fits the story and the way you want to lead it, no reader should think of counting the words.
Yzabel
Cavan, I have a few different POVs in my novel too, and it can be really tricky at times, can’t it! I normally keep one POV per chapter, but sometimes this doesn’t work well when the scene is better seen by two pair of eyes instead of one, so I’ve tried to use double line breaks to mark the change of POV. I’m not sure yet if it can work, since I’m too deep in it at the moment to cast an objective look at it. Maybe it’d look better in longer chapters, I’m not sure.
Yzabel
Melly, now this makes me realize that 100,000 words probably won’t be where I’ll stop—at least not before revising the novel and probably toning down a few things. Thinking of it this way, though, it indeed makes it look like an “acceptable” number. 30 chapters aren’t to many.
Karen Lee Field
Chapters can be any length you want. There’s no need to stress over it. There is one book on the market (can’t remember which one though) that has no chapters – it’s just endless writing. Now, that would be really annoying.For adult writing, mine average out at about 4,500 words but for children’s writing I’m getting around 2,000 words.
Yzabel
A book without any chapters? Oy, now this would be a torture for me, I wouldn’t find any point where I can really stop when I have to!
StarDragon411
It depends on the content of the chapter. Some of mine are 1500 words or less but others are 6000 plus words. So it varies from person to person.A decent chapter to me would be somewhere between 8 to 15 pages, doubled space.