How long do you think a chapter should be?

[Guest]

My paragraph and sentence structure are deplorable.

[Brian]

Honesty, as long as it needs to be. That means ending a chapter where it feels natural to end the chapter. Readers can tell if anything feels forced or not natural to the story you are telling.

[John]

I've written my first novel (Mystery/Detective). My chapters tend to be 1800-2100 words. I purposely made the last 8-10 chapters 1300-1600 words, with more action-oriented to help move the story to the conclusion. I wound up with 83,000 words and 47 chapters.

On a seperate note, but related; I am now reading much more than I have been over the last 8-10 years, to help me absorb what others are doing. One author I read early on (20-25 years ago), I picked back up. Used to love their writing; now can't hardly stand it. The author uses very, very short chapters; sometimes only a page and a half.

Just hate it.

[Kyle]

It should serve the singular chapter movement to the next. If you're unsure that means you're not understanding writing flow and how to self-edit. Self editing doesn't come in linear writing. It comes about as a byproduct of editing. So, the answer is, you'll see for each chapter, it changing by each project in the final revisions and editing.

[Dylan]

Change the chapter if you change the viewpoint or setting. Length shouldn't really matter. I personally prefer shorter chapters which encourage the reader to read 'one more chapter' over and over. This is especially effective if you end chapters with cliffhangers.

[Joel]

It really shouldn’t matter at all. I imagine trying to make your chapters conform to some guideline in length would seriously compromise the story.

[Marlin]

My chapter length depends upon when I have completed the five commandments (1. Inciting Incident, 2. Progressive Complication(s), 3. Crisis -- What is the question to be answered in the scene/chapter (Most of my chapters are one scene) 4. Climax -- What is the answer to the question proposed. 5. Resolution -- what happened after the question was answered.

If I have completed this, I have the scene completed and the chapter is over. I usually have to go back (2nd draft and add some scene description and body beats.

[Tracie]

I can’t remember which successful writer said this, but his reply to the same question was: ‘as long as it needs to be’. I’ve read chapters that consisted of a page and ones that could have made a novelette.

[Ayaz]

Relative question: depends on the genre of the book, the entire word count, frequency of various events, and so on. General guideline is if it's a non fiction (which I think it's not)lol, the for fiction keep it short to begin with, build a cut to cut happening scene crescendo add here a bit lof onger chapters and conclude quickly with shorters.