Young Writers Society

For all of the novel writers out there what do you think is more important: word count or chapter length? I know that consistency is relatively important when writing a novel but what's more important the amount of words per chapter or pages per chapter?

I'm asking because my first four chapters are each seven pages long and around 3,000 words but I don't think my fifth chapter will have as many pages. I think the word count will be close on 3,000 because there is a lot more description in this chapter and less dialogue but I'm just wondering if I should add more.

So, is it important to be consistent or is it up to the authors discretion?

I actually think it's a mixture of both. Perhaps word count more than page length. Then again I've seen some books that have perhaps one page for a single chapter (I'm looking at you James Patterson).

Hahaha, he is the master of one page chapters! That's part of the reason I love his books so much, I can read like 6 chapters in 10 minutes!

First off, you should probably judge by word count, not number of pages. Because the number of pages will change depending on the size of the text (and possibly the size of the paper). But word count is just the number of words, and not matter what you do to these words there is still a set number of words. The only way to change the word count is to actually go and add or remove words. So it is a lot more reliable when trying to gauge length.

As for constancy, I don't really know. But I can't for the life of me think of a reason why it would matter how long one chapter is in comparison to another. I mean I can see wanting to keep them similar (don't have one chapter be 2k words and the next chapter be 20k words), but it doesn't really need to be all that close. I mean who will care if one chapter is 5k words, the next is 7k, and then the next is only 4k? Yeah they might be able to see the difference, but so what? I can think of several books where the chapter length would jump all over the place.
Now as a reader, I like having a general length, just so that I can gauge how long it will take me to finish a chapter based on how long it took me to read past chapter. But I would never say anything specific, so you don't need to be specific.

So basically what I'm saying is that measuring length by word count will be more accurate/consistent then pages because there are less variables.
And that unless there is some reason that I have never encountered, chapter length in comparison to other chapters is not a big concern.

Personally, I think it's important to be inconsistent when it comes to chapter length ;] But that's just a personal preference. Some chapters will end up shorter and some longer, it's the content that's more important.

From the top of my head CSLewis is the only writer I can think of who keeps his chapter lengths consistent within 500 words. And maybe Patterson because half of his chapters are 500 words >.<

Short chapters can have a huge impact in the same way that poetry can. They're simple and concise, but you need to make them matter. If you fall short on word count just because you lack substance to put in it then you might want to rethink what its purpose is.

Long chapters give you the chance to buff things out, use descriptions, monologues, and anything else you want to add in, but remember that you need a variety of things. If more than a third of it is dialogue then it might just be that your conversations are too long or diluted, and your word count is relying on that.

I'm half with Tenyo on the size of chapters thing. Honestly, I think it just depends on the work. Fantasy will need a combination. Domestic fiction (yes I've dubbed that a thing), in my opinion, is also more relaxed feeling when it's longer chapters. Everything else? Totally depends on the individual plot, the formatting choices of the writer, and the characters involved.

I'd say that word count is definitely more important than page number or page length. Your book will probably be published in multiple sizes over the years, with multiple different font sizes (if it ever gets popular enough, I mean). If you judge the length of your novel based on the number of pages, that length will change depending on who's holding which copy of the book. Word count is always consistent, and if you say your book is "fifty thousand words", then it's 50k words. If you say your book's 245 pages, that's subject to change.

I actually asked an author that I have on Facebook and she said the same thing, that it doesn't matter about how many pages because that's subject to change and while consistency is somewhat important not every chapter needs to have the same word count.

Thanks for all the help <3