by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
Some years ago I was at the dentist for a cleaning, and along the way the hygienist asked, “So what do you do?”
“I’m a writer,” I said.
“Oh? What do you write?”
“Thrillers.”
“I love thrillers…”
I knew what was coming next, and was powerless to stop it.
“…Have I heard of you?”
The answer to that is always No. So I changed things up a bit.
“Have you heard of James Patterson?” I asked.
“Yes!”
“Well, I’m not him.”
At least she chuckled. Then I told her my name. Shocker: she hadn’t heard of me. So I gave her my author card. She leaned me back in the chair.
In a low voice, she said, “I know the secret of why James Patterson’s books are bestsellers.”
“Do tell,” I said, hungry to find out what a reader deems the magic elixir.
“He writes really short chapters,” she said.
By gum (pun intended), she got it. At least part of it. For Mr. Patterson is the writer who has unapologetically used the short chapter to help create a sense of propulsion, of page-turning momentum.
Indeed, in a Patterson it’s not uncommon to read what would usually be a 1500 word chapter broken up into three or four numbered units. So a book with 30 chapters might actually come out to be 120 when published. Which raises the question, How long should a chapter be?
Of course, the answer is it all depends on your strategy. For thrillers, short chapters control pace. A more literary approach might go the other direction.
My first Ty Buchanan legal thriller, Try Dying, has 127 numbered chapters. They are of varying lengths, but the gist is that I wanted it to move fast. Still, I was slightly embarrassed by this, as looking at a TOC with numbers 1 – 127 is almost comical.
Andrew Vachss
Then I read a thriller by Andrew Vachss, who had one of the cooler thriller-author pics around. And I was pleasantly surprised to find he didn’t use chapters at all. Just a series of scenes set off by a drop cap. It looks like this (from Footsteps of the Hawk):
I liked it so much that all of my Mike Romeo thrillers are done in this fashion. Indeed, I was pleased to read an Amazon review the other day that said this: I particularly like the format of simply starting the next scene with a little space and a large initial cap. I write in scenes, and this allows me to be cinematic and use a “smash cut” or “jump cut” between them.
I note, however, that this only works in First Person POV. Otherwise, the reader would become confused as to who the viewpoint character is in a given scene.
A helpful article on chapters says:
Short chapters are good for plot-centered novels with fast pacing and suspense. They are also used in novels with longer chapters to interject action that takes place away from the main plot, perhaps to let readers in on something the main character doesn’t know.
The dangers in writing a lot of short chapters include underdeveloped characters and a plot that twists and turns too quickly for readers to absorb and enjoy it.
Long chapters are good for epic drama, for world-building with background, and for developing characters at a leisurely pace. The danger lies in bogging down the reader with excessive description, tedious monologues, and inadvertent repetition.
Chapters of any length are most effective when they form a satisfying unit in themselves and end at a natural break in the action or story in a way that invites the reader to continue.
So, writing friends, I ask, do you have a strategy for your chapters? Do you like a standard length? Does genre play a part in this? Have at it in the comments!
I don’t feel I have a strategy for chapter length other then the chapter is as long as it needs to be. However, ADHD has gotten to me, too, so my chapters are shorter than they used to be when I first started out. However, I sometimes get annoyed with my own writing as well as that of other writers when there are excessive amounts of very short chapters. Whether right or wrong, it somehow feels like a cheat when there are a ton of short chapters–like the author didn’t really have much to say–or perhaps the shorter length makes it seem more superficial.
But of course the bottom line is how well the author engaged my interest–whether long or short.
In my first books, chapters are between 2500 and 3000 words. . While I rarely read reviews, I happen to read one that gave my book four stars on Amazon and the reviewer said she would’ve given it five except the chapters were too long for a romantic suspense. At the time each chapter had two POV characters and I was writing in Word.
I didn’t start shortening my chapters because of the review but it did start me thinking. Two things happened.
I started writing in Scrivener which for me is writing in scenes and it felt natural to make each scene a chapter. I no longer had chapters with two POV characters. When I started editing in Word, I liked the pacing better.
I didn’t actually change my style, just the way I put my book together.
My chapters used to average about 10 pages but now they seem to run only 4-6 pages. I too write in scenes and try to end each chapter with a “read-on prompt.”
I’m finding that the books I read now have shorter chapters. I think it fits with the shorter attention spans these days of the reading/viewing public.
My editor suggested shorter chapters, so when I took a break from my Mapleton mystery series and wrote a romantic suspense, I, like Patricia above, made each POV character’s scene a chapter rather than combining them into one chapter. I’m working on another romantic suspense, and my chapters are running in the neighborhood of 1000 words, give or take.
I try to end each one on a page turner, which often determines where the chapter ends, which determines it’s length.
I agree with JSB, that seeing a TOC of 127 chapters would be daunting.
One of my peeves about Mr. Patterson’s ultra short chapters is they waste a lot of paper in print and inflate the page count.
Like Pat, I write in scenes. My chapters usually have several scenes that happen at the same time but from the POVs of different characters at different locations. The reader knows more about what’s going on than the individual characters do. That foreshadows upcoming trouble. The reader anticipates a crash when the characters finally collide, neither knowing what the other has been planning.
To propel the reader forward, I like to end each scene with an unanswered question or the above-described foreshadowing.
Occasionally I include a one or two-page chapter to highlight a significant turning point in the story but most chapters are 1000-1500 words.
Jim, thanks for asking this apparently simple question that has numerous complicated answers.
I also write in scenes, and then decide when to do a chapter break. Early on, a chapter is usually 2-3 scenes long. Later in the book, a single scene may be the chapter, to represent an accelerating timeline. Then, the final wrap-up chapter might be a couple of scenes, though that depends again on pacing.
One of my other writing mentors very much focused on writing in scenes, and when asked about chapters said, “Chapters are about managing the white space.” I try and keep that in mind. I can see where, for thrillers, not having discrete chapters would make the book even more propulsive.
I was just telling someone the other day that I could never get into James Patterson’s books because it feels like he wrote an outline and forgot to go back and fill it in. I need more character development to care about his characters. More everything except action. Since I write in more than one genre, I have different strategies. With romantic suspense I use a piece of advice offered in a writing workshop: “go in late and get out early.” My chapters are shorter, and I try to leave the reader hanging the way dramas do on TV at commercial breaks. I also pay attention to the last line of the chapter & the first line of the next to make them hooks to keep the reader from setting the book down. Chapters usually run about 5 pages. With women’s fiction & Amish romances, the chapters are longer, but I still try to leave them hanging at the end of one and hook them in with the beginning of the next–for the same reason. Chapters run about 10 pages. But it varies.
Same for me. Romance and Romantic Suspense – shorter chapters, usually 1,500 words. My Women’s Fiction chapters can be longer, between 2,000 and 3,000 words.
Food for thought, Jim.
I don’t really have a plan, but I think it depends on genre as has already been stated.
My novels have longer chapters. My creative non-fiction and non-fiction have shorter chapters.
For reading, I can handle short or long, as long as the characters are well-developed and the action keeps going but is not dizzying.
Happy Sunday!
When I finished my first novel, the chapters were about 1K words in length. I didn’t realize those were considered short – I was just writing what came naturally to me – but several readers said they really liked the short chapters. The chapters in the books I write now are still about that same length.
I also use Scrivener. Each folder is a chapter, and there’s usually only one scene (text file) in a chapter, but sometimes it makes sense to include a couple of scenes. Although I admire the way you use a drop cap to signify a new scene, Jim, I like chapter titles, and I use them in all my books.
I aim for around ten pages, but I don’t get hung up on the length. Definitely if it runs longer than fifteen pages I take a moment to think about making it shorter, but I’m most focused on the right exit point.
Good convo, all. I’m doing this on the fly on my phone, as I’ve had to go out and about to take care of some business. Keep up the conversation.
The only market I know of that requires chapters of a certain length and a certain number of chapters are category romances. I’m talking Silhouette and Harlequin.
For me, chapter breaks are about pace, even the longer chapters. I make very sure that the end of each chapter gives the reader a very strong reason to keep reading. It is almost never a cliffhanger which should be few and far between. I wanted my reviews to say, “I couldn’t put it down,” and most of them did.
And on a side note, most of my novels contained a cliffhanger for my own amusement. They were never at the end of a chapter. The main character falls on a metal spiral staircase and her leg is tangled in the structure, another dangles off a catwalk above a Vegas stage, and my final book was a literal cliffhanger off the side of a mountain. The last one made me very, very happy.
I was figuring out just these stats last night! For the second book in my mainstream trilogy, Pride’s Children, I have:
Average word count per chapter is ~9,300 (20 chapters per volume)
Average word count per scene is ~1,652.
My scenes in NETHERWORLD go from 1,250 to 2,250, and there are 112 of them.
Why keep these stats, which I build as I go? For the all important sense of control over pacing.
When I design the books, I have an overall sense of pace develop before I finalize the structure and the plot. For example, the last three chapters – three scenes each – of this middle volume of the trilogy sum up the whole book, bring it to a surprising conclusion, and change the course of the story’s path. Since my typical chapter has 5-6 scenes, the 3-scene chapters move. There is a logic to each. And an alternation in the pov characters. Builds to a satisfactory ending to the often slow middle volume, and ramps the whole up.
I have this sense of pace when I’m writing the scenes, in the back of my mind, and it helps get the right stuff in the right places AND take advantage of position – the first scene in each chapter has a role, and the last one should make it impossible not to turn the page.
This is my version of pantsing – from a very orderly and planned main stalk. I think it developed from reading everything I could get my hands on. Stuff that worked (The Guns of Navarone, Ice Station Zebra) sticks with you.
The first volume had a similar ‘feel’ to it – but a completely different pace at the end. The third volume, which I’m writing now, has its own complementary pace because so many things will need to conclude by its end (this is NOT the beginning of a series).
Since the story worked well in roughly thirds, I’ve had a chance to plan the effect of overall pacing in a fractal way: over the whole story, each volume, each chapter, each scene – they have to feel right together. There seems to be some sort of internal compass that tells me when I have to speed up or slow down – so far so good! Probably all those books I’ve read.
I don’t have a pre-planned strategy for chapter length, though I naturally lean toward short chapters. I also break it up with a longer chapter to give the reader a little breathing room now and then. Like you, I also write in scenes and mix it up with jump cuts to keep the reader flipping pages late into the night. 🤗