Someone proposed a question to me earlier. Let's say you were writing a 200,000 word book. That's a little on the long side for what would be considered the standard novel, but for the sake of this argument, let's ignore what publisher's allegedly prefer (specifically on first-time publishers, they say to get a novel published it needs to be right in that 80-120k sweet spot). Let's just say you're not going to chop out 80k words, this book is your masterpiece.

So, you start thinking about how you want to structure the book, and you can either write 100 chapters with around 2,000 words each, or 50 chapters around 4,000 words each. Which size is better? With 3,000 words being sort of the gold-standard on chapter size, either word count could be considered fair game. Four thousand words sits right over that 3,000 word reader fatigue barrier, while many would consider 2,000 word chapters to be rather short. While thinking over this question, it got me contemplating the implications of chapter sizes and how it affects your book as a whole. I'm now going to pass those brain-thoughts on to you.

First things first, there is no reason a book should be limited where every chapter is 2,000 words or 4,000 words or whatever. You can have lax goals to shoot for, but you don't need to stress out to make any given chapter reach a word count. It's completely reasonable to see a 4,000 word chapter in a book that averages 2,000 word chapters. And averages are just that, averages, which means a 1,500 word chapter followed by a 2,500 word chapter followed by a 4,000 word chapter back to a 2,000 word chapter is not that disagreeable.

As you write your book, you're going to create the story the way you want it to look. Once you've already finished the book, your decision has already been set. It would be incredibly difficult to chop up a book into more or less chapters without the book feeling like that's what you're doing. Usually, your first instinct is the right one, and a scene should end when the scene ends. This isn't to say you shouldn't think about when chapters end, and when you feel like the story would be better if a certain scene ended earlier or later is just all part of the editing process. Still, I need to assert that in general, how long you want your chapters to be is a decision you shouldn't be making after you've already written most of the book.

I described books once like you'd describe a play. A word conjures up a single still image. You hear 'dog' and you can come up with an image. A sentence ascribes a single action, description, or detail to that image. That image is the subject, and the rest of the sentence is there to add a detail to that subject. The subject is either doing something, saying something, or being described.

Paragraphs are an idea. It's a grouping of still images detailed to the point that you can imagine something happening. A paragraph might be the description of a house, the act of a boy catching a Frisbee, or a girl eyeing the hot bad boy in her life. Combine all of these ideas (paragraphs) and you end up with a scene. A scene is a chapter. The chapter is a scene.

All of the scenes together make up your story, but likewise, that entire story is made of scenes. Have you ever watched a fight scene in some crappy action movie? Do you notice all the cuts the movie makes during a fight? You may be surprised how many times the camera jumps. In a single throw, you can have 4-5 cuts just for your hero to flip someone over. Then take a movie like John Wick, where the camera doesn't cut away. Isn't the feel of those scenes different? One might feel frantic and nerve wracking when the camera is wobbling and jumping. One might feel calm and professional like an assassin when the camera and people move smoothly.

What point am I trying to make? The length of your chapters is going to affect how your story is perceived. You may think it's just a matter of ending the chapter on a "high note" and leaving it at that, but in reality it gets a lot more complex.

Just like with the movie example above, the more you cut your story, the faster the story is going feel from a pacing point of view. Imagine the play example above. Imagine a normal play. Each scene lasts what, 5-10 minutes? Let's imagine that someone redoes the play, except each scene is accompanied by a scene change (lights go out, people switch places), every 30 seconds. Wouldn't the play feel frantic? Everyone would be running to their places and it'd feel like the story was going a mile a minute.

The same kind of thing happens in your book. The longer your chapters are, the less chapters you have. Then, you'll have less scenes to show the same information ... and the mellower your story will feel. I will go so far as to say that by writing a story in fewer chapters, you'll create a deeper and more immersive story, "in theory".

This hits you in two strangely unexpected ways. First off, the kind of readers you attract with longer chapters will differ from shorter chapters. Longer-chapter books will attract the kind of people who have the time to sit down and read those longer chapters. They'll want to become more immersed in your story. They're likely to read it in only a few sittings, and thus gain a greater amount of retention to ponder and think about what happened as a whole unit.

Thus secondly, they'll be more attracted to a strong, cohesive story. They can get more invested in the details, and will likely actively read more. This means they'd be more conscious of plot holes and quickly grow angry at inconsistencies in the story that might not be noticed by the casual reader. A mystery novel or a fantasy epic, for example, might benefit from having longer chapters with less scene cuts.

A quick aside, this can be a cop out, because if you're publishing novels, your usual expectations is that people are reading it as a single unit. This is why many novels tend to have chapters over 4,000 words. The likes of Lord of the Rings sports 6k – 10k word chapters, consistent with my "more for the more complex" statements. However, even the likes of Twilight sported 5k word chapters. Hunger games averaged 4k. Then again, Huckleberry Finn only had about 2k word chapters, so take that however you will.

Most of us are writing books online here, and an online book typically is released in serial. When you choose a book with shorter chapters, you're creating a book with more bite-sized pieces. It attracts a different kind of reader, the kind that isn't looking to bunker down with your book. In some cases, they can't. Desktops are rarely hooked up in front of a comfy couch.

Your story will feel faster paced. It'll also attract a shallower audience. This isn't an insult. It's simply the nature of the beast. When you have people reading a story in 2,000 word or smaller increments, they're probably not getting as involved in the writing. They won't remember what happened five chapters ago. If the release schedule is low, they might not remember what happened a chapter ago. As a result, they're much more concerned by the now. Immediate payoffs, or just more consistent action, would serve better in a shorter chapter novel. Long, exposition-heavy parts can work with long chapters, but could kill a book written with short chapters.

In a shorter-chapter book, you may find that you need to repeat yourself more. To this kind of reader, an easy to swallow and simple, derivative story goes down better. Stories that make them think might go over their heads. It's not a matter of intelligence, just attentiveness. If you need evidence, just look at the typical fan fiction stories, which typically lean in the 1,000-2,000 word count range. (Not to say there aren't a few long ones) They might stick to known characters and easy to follow plots. They don't suck you in so much as fulfill your immediate needs.

And there is nothing wrong with that. Please don't think I'm talking down on shorter chapter stories. A lot of my stories are shorter chapters. Then again, I wrote them that way because I wanted them to be fast-paced, frantic, and a tad shallow. And when I say shallow, I'm not speaking to the quality, just the depth. A shallow story isn't necessarily a "bad" story. A deep story doesn't instantly become good. Also note that I'm not saying short chapters create a shallow story. Quite the opposite, in fact. I'm suggesting that creating a more shallow plot might take advantage of the shorter-chapter format.

And, even though it's too late to stop you from making a comment, yes, there are many exceptions to the rule. You can have a slower, laid back story with short chapters. You can have a shallow, frantic story with long chapters. There are many, many factors that affect how your writing is perceived. This chapter specifically looks at how the chapter length can have unexpected effects on how your writing is paced. You can embrace chapter length, using it as another tool to create the pacing, atmosphere, and feel you want for your story... or you can fight against it, creating one more exception to the rule... or just as easily create an uneven mess. That's always possible too.

Good Luck, and Happy Writing!