What is acceptable as a the minimum size of a chapter? would the Bible's shortest chapter, two words, "Jesus wept," be too short in fiction? Is it better to have your chapters be approximately the same length - or does it not matter?
What is acceptable as a the minimum size of a chapter? would the Bible's shortest chapter, two words, "Jesus wept," be too short in fiction? Is it better to have your chapters be approximately the same length - or does it not matter?
depends on the impact and content of the chapter.
Worm's shortest chapter was 4 words.
It was one of the most impactful chapters in that web series, it answered so many questions, so many mysteries, and raised a few other questions.
Four words. in a web series that is 1.7 million words long.
Any individual chapter should be as long or as short as it needs to be.
However, that said, I think the ratio of average chapter length to total story length matters.
If you have a short story with just two chapters, why did you divide it into chapters at all?
A very long story with hundreds of short chapters gets annoying.
Anybody have comments on chapter length?
My chapters average about 6300 words (somewhat closer to 5000 when I first started posting).
Anybody have comments on chapter length?
Are you talking about SOL stories or, say, novels?
As a reader, I like short chapters. I'm a slow reader and they're good stopping points. Thrillers typically have short chapters.
As an author, I prefer short chapters. But they can vary greatly in size. I can just as easily have a 6,000 word chapter as an 800 word chapter. The difference in length is simply because that's how many words were needed to complete the scene. A lot of times the shorter chapters are transition chapters. Sometimes I group multiple short scenes into a chapter.
What I don't like is an artificial break (new chapter) simply to have a new chapter. The non-fiction bestseller "Killing Lincoln" did that. Sometimes a new chapter started right in the middle of a scene (and the POV character didn't change so there was no need for it).
Anybody have comments on chapter length?
The size of the chapter changes with the speed of the plot.
Having said that, my first book had shorter chapters, about 5,500 words. I think if I were writing that book now (which also means I'll probably do a rewrite in a couple of years, if I feel like it), I'd go with longer and fewer chapters.
Second book has chapters between 11,000 - 16,000 words. Current book (in progress) is running about the same.
My chapters tend to be longer than some prefer, but I write until there's a natural break point. That might be the conclusion of a discrete scene, that might be something as simple as the protagonist(s) going to sleep, that might be the moment at which an idea or micro-conflict has been thoroughly explored, or it might even be a cliffhanger. But I don't spend much time worrying about length. The story I'm posting now has one chapter that's 1100 words and another that's 50,000 words. I tried to break the latter into smaller pieces but it simply didn't function correctly when I did.
That said, for stories with elaborately described sex scenes I sometimes impose a more arbitrary standard and try to limit the number of such scenes to one, or perhaps two, scenes per chapter. (If they're briefly described scenes then I don't mind including more.) The reason, of course, is that many readers have different purposes in mind while consuming that sort of content. And yes, that occasionally means writing a reason to pause into the story that might not otherwise be there, though it's something I try to avoid if possible.
In a story each chapter should be as long as needed to tell what is happening within that chapter.
Having said that, I do post what I call SoL chapters where I try for a posting of between 5,000 to 10,000 words at a time to make each posting worthwhile to the reader. That's why I use chapter titles and not numbers within the story itself as I'll usually post multiple chapters with each posting.
For me it would be based on how often you post chapters. If you are posting daily or every other day is one thing, if it is once a week or longer I would lose interest in it.
The shortest possible chapter would be one word long. And that word might have only one letter in it, so it too would be short. Not exactly a word but perhaps a T could stand for a cross, indicating the story had been buried, laid to rest, was dead.
T could stand for a cross, indicating the story had been buried, laid to rest, was dead.
At least until the zombie apocalypse sequel in which the story rises from the dead to destroy the world.
As a reader I don't care about the chapter length in kB/wordcount but it is always better reading with natural breaking points, not artificially shortened to a size for posting on SOL. That could mean long or short chapters, probably mixed. Natural reading flow is always the best. I can choose my own breaking point if I have to stop reading in the middle of a very long chapter. Sometimes you have to: Tolkien uses chapters that are each almost novel length. I prefer that over many very short chapters that should logically be combined into longer chapters.
my chapters vary wildly, anywhere from 5k words to 12k is my comfort zone. I look for what feels like a good break point, without it beign too short.
Use your judgement as both an author and a reader of your story and insert the breaks where you feel they belong.
Shad
I can just get my stories uploaded because My ability to deal with computers is in a downhill slide and I wasn't good at my best. I just let the website split it up in whatever size it wants. Works for me.
Kinkywinks aka Catman