Support for Indie Authors discussion

Hi,

Let me introduce myself! I go by K.R. Reese when I write, though anyone who has viewed my facebook page knows my name. I write new adult/contemporary romance. My first in a series was published as a novella, quite small in size. However, the second in the series I planned on it being a full length novel. It's currently in editing and now I'm wondering if I should've spaced it more. There's 110,000 word count, but only 10 chapters. Should I change it? What is the average amount of chapters in a novel?

I've read a lot of different genres, and I realize that every author has their own opinions, but I need some insight. I've read novels that had the same word count, but thirty chapters, or the same word count by around twelve chapters.

What's your opinion?

Yes, those are really long chapters. I find readers like shorter chapters. If it was mine (a current one; some of my older ones had super long chapters) it would probably be 25-30 chapters.

P.D. wrote: "Yes, those are really long chapters. I find readers like shorter chapters. If it was mine (a current one; some of my older ones had super long chapters) it would probably be 25-30 chapters."

I agree. Readers who use kindles and other e-readers tend to prefer shorter chapters over longer ones. It usually matches up perfectly with subway, bus or train stops or errands being completed throughout the day. Even when we have more time to read we still have to stop and take things out of the oven, transfer the laundry from the washer to the dryer, help a child with a math problem etc. And nothing pulls you back into a story after a break than an awesome chapter ending.

So advice is to split it up some? I didn't have this problem with the novella because it wasn't long, but now I'm freaking out that it's too long on the chapters! Thank you guys!

As well as what P.D. and Tara said, I think a lot depends on the pacing of the novel. 10k word chapters sound long to me but if it's a slow-paced story with lots of character development then that may be appropriate.

My novels tend to have lots of short chapters (42 in a 100k novel, and then 44 in one slightly shorter!) because they are meant to be fast-paced and action-packed. I like to end a chapter right where the reader (hopefully) needs to know what happens next, and in an action adventure that should naturally happen a lot :)

There's no rules, but I'm going to have to agree that 10k words is a long chapter. Now, if you have hard scene breaks within those chapters, then it could be fine. By a hard break I mean denoting with an asterisk or triple spacing between scenes. If there is not a natural point for breaking, then you dont want to force it, but you might consider some tweaking. Even if only to cut them in half.

Thanks so much for everyone's advice! I broke the chapters at moments where it just felt "right" because of what was happening at the time. Other points, the chapters split where it was converting into a new scene (usually when it skipped a few days, something like that). I'm going to shorten them up! It should be easy since there are two main characters, and the story goes between the two throughout the novel.

I try to keep my chapters between 3500 and 5500 words. I also like to end them on a little cliffhanger to keep readers turning pages. :)

Cool stuff K.R.

Just for the record I'd agree with ^Christina
:-)

Tara wrote: "P.D. wrote: "Yes, those are really long chapters. I find readers like shorter chapters. If it was mine (a current one; some of my older ones had super long chapters) it would probably be 25-30 chap..."

I agree. Plus, I like to read a chapter sometimes just before bedtime. If it's too long, I fall asleep!

I too have extremely long chapters (4 chapters per book and over 120k words per book), but I do use hard breaks within them. As of now, I have yet to hear anyone make mention of the long chapters in a negative light and I've gone so far as to ask people who have read and they find the hard breaks work fine.

But I agree with Christina, if places don't exist to put natural breaks, then I wouldn't recommend it. And my opinion is if you can't make the breaks a standard throughout the book, I probably wouldn't either. It would seem a little odd to have one or two breaks in the entire book.

I am definitely a short chapter person. My chapters vary wildly in length. I even have chapters of about a page! It is ENTIRELY up to you, though I think that 10k-11k/chapter is long, but others will tell me that 1 page chapters is short!

In both traditional books and Indie books you'll see chapters that vary from less than a half-page to hundreds of pages. It just depends on the story and the writer's style. There is no wrong chapter length. The reader gets to decide which style he wants to read. For me, shorter chapter lengths are better.

Well, as Christina mentioned, if there's hard breaks in the chapters it may be different. I have hard breaks in the chapters that make the differences stand out more, and when a new chapter begins is when it's a time change (a few days later) or something major happened at the end of the last chapter.

K.R. wrote: "Hi,

Let me introduce myself! I go by K.R. Reese when I write, though anyone who has viewed my facebook page knows my name. I write new adult/contemporary romance. My first in a series was publish..."
I like to read short chapters myself.
10k sounds long to me, but I wonder how many scene breaks you have in your chapters. Plenty of scene breaks could have the same effect as short chapters.

David, there's a lot of scene breaks in the chapters.

If there's a lot of scene breaks, to me I'd say you'll probably be alright.

Thanks Thomas!

I'm sure you're fine. I read through my two recently and scene breaks work the same to me.

I've always considered 30 chapters of 3,000 words (or thereabouts) kind of standard. Sounds overly prescriptive but it's amazing how many novels of various genres conform, roughly, to this model. Of course there's no rules though - Terry Pratchett didn't have chapter breaks at all in most of his novels and ni-one accuses him of being hard to read.

For comparison, my book has 120k words and 98 chapters, and people who've read it told me that they couldn't put it down.

When I'm reading before sleeping, I sometimes look ahead and check how long the next chapter's going to be. If it's short, I'll tell myself, "Okay, one more chapter." And then it's suddenly 2 a.m. in the morning. (;

There are no rules to write your book, as Ken put it, and it strongly depends on what you're writing. But I like my chapters short and sweet, always leaving the reader wanting more.

Ken wrote: "In both traditional books and Indie books you'll see chapters that vary from less than a half-page to hundreds of pages. It just depends on the story and the writer's style. There is no wrong chapt..."

You're absolutely right Ken. Everything is possible, but like you, I prefer shorter chapters. It does improves pace of the subject matter if constructed well. Leo

For me, my chapters tend to be on the long side. (5000-8000 average) However, I have around ten scene breaks in each chapter. I'm a newb, though; I may change it down the line. :)

Lynzie,

I'm a newb too! I have at least 6-7 breaks in the chapter where it switches characters!

K.R. wrote: "Lynzie,

I'm a newb too! I have at least 6-7 breaks in the chapter where it switches characters!"

See, as a reader, I'm totally cool with that. As long as the author mixes it up my attention stays put!

Mine are short (<2k) for two reasons. I used to work in television, and tend to see the points where cuts would occur on the screen. Also I tend to use "counterplot", split the main characters into two groups and cut on cliffhangers to keep the readers worrying.

I usually go about 5000 max for a chapter, although sometimes the action does make the occasional one run over if I can't find a good place to break it without annoying the reader. My current manuscript is around 108,000 and has 23 chapters and an epilogue.

I just saw a great way to split chapters like this in Clive Barker's Weaveworld.

He split the chapters themselves into Names, and then under each name had it's own chapter 1, 2, 3, etc, and they started over with each new named chapter.

One of the things I liked about the book.

OK, my last comment got deleted, I assume because it included a link rather than anything else I said, so let's try again.

A lot of people here are talking about the problem of breaking down larger chapters. In my current project I've been trying a different approach - ignoring chapters altogether in the first draft. I worked just at the scene level, marking good points to break a scene. These might survive as scene, or even chapter, breaks or they might eventually get removed and scenes rolled together. No matter, the point is to break things up into smaller units at first and worry about lumping them up into chapters later.

Now I've finished a first draft I've got a long string of scenes, some as small as 200 words, some over 2k that might make a good chapter on their own. To help make sense of it, I compiled a scene list. I had posted a snapshot of it to show how simple the idea is, and also how a picture can highlight POV switches and overall balance between POVs.

The trick now is to pick points in the story to introduce chapter breaks. The idea (for me, anyway) is to always try to break at a point that leaves the reader at a cliffhanger, or major twist or revelation, and wanting to read on.

A little late to the thread:

As many have already brought it up, chapter length is part of your own creative way and most writers use shorter chapters. Agreed.

What I want to add is that the main point is to give the readers spots to stop reading and put the book down. (Going to sleep, check the kids, get off the train, etc.) If the flow of the story is too homogeneous, it's hard to find such a spot and it can be frustrating for some. Whether that spot is presented as a full fledged chapter, an asterisk or other, is less important. Find your own way to do it.

My personal preference in novels is around 3000-4000 words, but have no bad feelings to deviate from that if I see a good reason for it.