Author's Notes on: How long should your chapters be?
Is there a right size for your chapters?
For whatever reason, this is a question I get asked fairly often, and the answer is simultaneously more complicated and less complicated than you might think.
It’s something that comes up when I talk about my expectations for how many words I should get down, minimum, in a single writing session. I think people want a frame of reference for how much work I completed. If I say I wrote 1.5k words today, what does that mean? Is that a lot or a little? A chapter? Or just a prologue?
So, here’s your answer. Generally, I plan for my writing sessions to last at least two hours long, following along with the method of four 25-minute sprints with 5-minute breaks in between. I highly recommend Abbie Emmons on Youtube, who amongst several great writing tips, publishes videos of Immersive Writing Sessions. They follow this 25/5 format, along with music and sound design to really get you into the headspace for writing your story.
Between the four sprints, I expect to get anywhere between 1k-2k words done, or 3-4 scenes in the case of Cardinal. This usually covers about half of a Mission Log, or chapter. Often, I’ll have to rewrite a lot of this material the next day, but it’s important to get it out of my head so I can polish it. Writing sessions towards the end of the week tend to run longer as I touch up material from early in the week and add the final few scenes needed before the article is ready to be published.
Generally, I expect my chapters/Cardinal’s Mission Logs to be roughly 2.5k-4k words, though some are larger or smaller. Poking around on the internet, the consensus seems to be that chapters are roughly 1k-5k words, with 3k being the sweet spot. Fun to know that my chapters tend to fall nicely into that range!
So, that’s the not-complicated part — a range of a thousand to five thousand words is pretty big and fairly standard. There’s enough room to have a variety of chapter lengths as necessary for what you’re trying to cover, and even I tend to prefer the middle of that range for my projects.
…And here’s the slightly more complicated part: that answer doesn’t really mean anything. Or, at the very least, it doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Let me explain:
Just because your chapter meets this range doesn’t mean it’s the right size. And just because your chapter is smaller or larger than this range doesn’t mean it’s the wrong size.
I don’t mean to say that the range isn’t a useful metric — it is — but what you’re looking at isn’t a definite idea for how long your chapters must be. The 1k-5k word range is more about the approximate number of words or pages it takes to properly express a full idea.
If your chapter is only five hundred words, it may have gotten to the point too quickly and would benefit from additional elaboration. Or it could be that it’s a sub-idea of a different chapter and would do better being incorporated into the chapter before or after it.
If your chapter is ten thousand words long, it’s possible you need to break it into more defined ideas of where the story is going, creating smaller chapters that are easier to digest and focus on your narrative goals.
Or… maybe not.
Your chapter could be one word. Your chapter could be blank. You technically don’t need to use chapters at all — your whole book could be one “chapter”. It’s really up to you and how you want your story to flow.
I will admit that I do let external factors influence how many words I feel are enough for one chapter.
Writing for Author’s Notes, I don’t feel satisfied with free articles if they’re not over 1,000 words, and writing chapters for Friday’s paid-content releases, I’m unhappy with anything under 2,000.
I am, after all, getting paid for paid content. You wait a week between releases, and it wouldn’t feel right to make people wait a week to only get five hundred words, even if that’s all I thought that’s all I needed for a chapter to be effective in the story.
In my case, I often group these smaller chapters into larger ones, or else post them as Wednesday releases, like Cardinal’s supplemental files. I probably shouldn’t let outside influences determine these things, but I want to make sure I’m providing a consistently strong batch of content for people that want to see my stuff.
So, hypocrisy aside, outside influences shouldn’t have a say in how long or short your chapters are unless it’s advice that’s helpful to you and your story. If it’s helpful for you to use the 1k-5k as a guide, then by all means, more power to you. However, if you’re stretching your chapter to make it longer, or squashing it down to make it shorter, just to fit within an artificial acceptable idea of how big a chapter is, you’re not helping your narrative.
Here are some alternative metrics and questions to be asking yourself when you’re wondering how long your chapter should be and if it needs to be longer or shorter than it is:
What is the purpose of this chapter? Have I fulfilled it?
Could I fulfill the purpose of the chapter better if it was longer? If so, what would I add? How would that addition be helpful?
Could I fulfill the purpose of this chapter better if it was shorter? What could I cut that isn’t necessary? Are there any plot points that might benefit from additional spotlight in other chapters rather than being included here?
Is this a capstone to the previous chapter? Or a prelude to the chapter after? If the answer is yes to either of these questions, does the story flow better if this is included in the chapters before/after it, or does it have a reason to stand alone?
How long are the rest of my chapters? Is this chapter dramatically longer or shorter than the others? Does the story benefit from this change of pace, or does it feel jarring?
If I had to split this chapter up into several pieces, where would I put those pieces? Do I like the split-up version better?
Is it difficult to keep track of what this chapter is focusing on? Do plot points need more room to breathe, or otherwise be expanded upon?
Do I like how it is now? Why do I care if it’s too long or too short? Am I looking out for the health of my narrative, or just trying to do it the “right” way?
Don’t worry if you aren’t confident in the sizes and pacing of your chapters yet — getting a sense for determining these things is a skill and feeling you will develop with practice.
In the end, there is no perfect length for a chapter. Simply put, your chapters should be as long or as short as you need them to be to express what you want them to, and variation in chapter sizes is a very natural part of narrative flow.
Like so many other aspects of writing, there is no formula or one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Especially as you develop a stronger sense of your style and voice, you’ll find that a lot of advice is useful primarily as a guideline, but not a rule. How closely you stick to these guidelines is entirely up to you and what you feel your story needs.
Until next time, I hope this has been helpful. Thank you all for reading, and I’ll see you next month!