Note Taking
by Reed James
A book is nothing more than a collection of scenes woven together for a narrative purpose. How these scenes are organized, paced, and divided into chapters greatly affects both the tone and the flow of the novel. Figuring out how to choose where your chapter breaks are can be one of the toughest decisions. There is a lot of advice out there, but what’s right for you and your work?
Short chapters can give an sense of urgency, propelling the story. Long chapters can give a story a sense of weight, a slow fire slowly bringing the kettle to a boil. The pacing of your scenes and chapters is so very important. So how do you make that decision? Some people live by the 5k rule. Studies show that most readers have about a half-hour to read before bed and prefer to stop at the end of a chapter. 5K words is what the average person reads in a half-hour. But is that the right way?
A chapter needs to have its own life and purpose. It’s there to accomplish a task. When I write a chapter, I have a mini-theme and story I want this chapter to convey and it will be as long or as short as it needs to be to get the job done. Perhaps its an action chapter, or maybe it’s setup where I’m weaving several characters to the verge of collusion. The most important thing is to be true to the story your telling. If it’s a fast paced thriller, use short chapters, if it’s a long epic, stretch it out a bit. I’ve seen a chapter that’s 190 pages long in the hardback edition. It was a single battle, the chapter seemed to never end, making me feel the exhausting, unending brutality that the characters felt. I have seen other chapters that were but a single sentence of even a single word. A word so important, so profound to the story, the author gives it such weight by having it exist as a single chapter.
What’s really important, once you have your pacing, is how you end the chapter. While most readers may want chapters to let them take a break, you should ended it so they’re wanting more. When people say a book is a page turner, they mean that at the end of every chapter was a cliffhanger that made the itch to find out what happened next. “Just one more chapter,” becomes the mantra. It doesn’t have to a life or death cliffhanger, but maybe it’s a question asked, a sudden twist, an unexpected character showing up, or a character breaking down on the verge of being crushed under the weight of their problems. Keep them reading. That’s really the most important thing.
If you were wondering about the 190 page chapter, ‘A Memory of Light’ by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. I’m blanking on a one word chapter that I’ve read. I feel it was a Steven King novel. Google is failing me in this regard. The only one I can find is ‘Misery’ and I never read that one.
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Great post!
I use to struggle with chapter placement until I came up with a simple solution that works for me anyway. When the first idea of a story is imagined and I begin the process of writing it down, I separate it into plot points, as I like to call them, or scenes. Later, I find that each scene is one chapter. Most of the time. As I write, I do pay attention to flow and sometimes there are two scenes in a chapter and other times a scene is spit between two or three chapters. But the idea helped me find a starting point. ( Hope that made sense. lol)
I like your suggestion of ending in mini cliffhangers. I try for that as well. And sometimes, the chapter wraps things up a little, so there is a little bit of both.
I haven’t done the one word chapter yet, but I like the idea. Thanks again for a great article!
Thank you! Sometimes I plot out a story in detail before hand, all the scenes, the character beats, my mini-cliffhangers, and sometimes I like to write and find those moments organically. As far as one word chapters, I think it would be neat to write one, but it would have to be one powerful word to justify it. 🙂
That’s almost exactly what I did with my WIP…and my chapters are averaging around 5K just because that’s how long they ended up being. There are a couple of outliers that sit closer to 4K and 8K, but with 112K words in 20 chapters at the moment, that 5K mark is pretty dead-on.
There’s one other factor I have to account for, which is narrative shift. The book’s in first-person, but not always the same person. As a result, one pivotal event had to be shown from three perspectives, and each of those was long enough to justify its own chapter. Conversely, one “wrap-up” chapter is barely 4K words and uses three narrator sections. Just depends on what you need…
I’m working on the last section of the book now, which the outline has as six or seven scenes. However, some of those are pretty short, and one may get downgraded to a few lines of dialogue. At least I know what plot/character points need to get hit, so I’m not going to go too far wrong.
Good luck on your WIP. Getting my WIP ready for beta readers. My chapters varied between 3k to 6k.
I normally write short stories which dont require a chapter per se but am currently working on a short novel. I think I have stopped it at the right place, as people are saying they want to hear what happens next but if you get a minute, could you maybe review it? Honest feedback is always beneficial.
You can send it to my email address admin@naughtyladiespublications.com. I make no promises at when I can get a look at it. I can read .doc .odt .pdf .epub and .mobi
Excellent insight. I never thought about it. I will now. Thank you.
You’re welcome, Patient Lee!