Young Writers Society

Hi so I need some tips or just general advice on how to make my chapters longer. So I am currently writing a novella and I am having major issues making my chapters longer than 2500 words. I looked it up and google says the average chapter length for a novel is 4000 words and so I am half way there but I need to get the rest of the way there. If anyone has any thing to add please do because I need help. Thanks so much everyone!

Hey Zee!

I don't think you have to worry about your chapter length much for a few different reasons! First off, there aren't really set rules to writing, you don't need to make something longer than you feel is necessary. If you're finding that your chapters work better in 2500 words segments, don't try to force yourself to go over that! And even if you're not happy with them in that length, you can always come back and revise them later, and then maybe you'll feel a little more inspired to move some of your sections around (maybe one part of chapter five works better in chapter four- for example. Or maybe you have a better idea how to expand a scene when you go over it again).

If you are really set on 4k a chapter (or around that), you could even try writing two chapters and then combining them together (provided that works with the storyline).

But really, I wouldn't stress over how many words you have in a chapter. Write it first, you can worry about the details later. Just because the average novel chapter length is 4k doesn't mean yours has to be (and to be honest, since your writing a novella, the chapter length would most likely be shorter than a novel chapter anyway, but like I said, there aren't any written rules. If would be a little more worrying if you chapters were, say, 400 words ;P). Since your writing a novella, you don't even have to have chapters if you don't want to. Or you can write it all out, and then separate it later, or maybe you'll decide you just want scene breaks rather than chapters (though of course, it makes it easier to put them in if your novella is on the longer side).

I hope this could help you out!

Thank you so much,this helped me a lot!

A little bit of math on how averages are calculated, because an average isn't actually that solid of a datapoint:

It's a combination of the total number of everything in the sample divided by the number of things in the sample. Which means you can have 6 works with chapters of 2,500, and 2 works with chapters of 12,000, and the average ends up at 4,875. (39,000 divided by 8 )

As you can see, none of the works in the equation even came close to the average.

More important questions to ask:

- Are my chapters long enough to establish proper setting, character relationships, etc?
- Does the story and/or character development move forward in a tangible way in each chapter?
- Have I padded/neglected anything in the chapter in order to reach a number I have arbitrarily picked?

As Scribble said, don't worry about it. Average is a collection of data that gives a general ballpark of the middle ground, which means there are poles at each point that can be navigated in. I've read novels where the chapters are a paragraph or two!

Focus on creating chapters that accomplish something, and let the numbers fall where they may.

Thank you and those number make a lot of sense

Personally I prefer shorter chapters. Most of the time when I'm reading, I'm reading aloud with someone, and short chapters are really convenient because the author is providing natural stops in the text where we can pause and talk about what's going on. It's really tough to do with longer chapters because they often don't have that indicator of when to take a break.

If you do particularly want to make your chapters longer, the easiest way is to combine shorter chapters. By trying to lengthen them for the sake of word count you risk damaging the pace of the scenes, but there are plenty of authors who have really long chapters comprising of multiple scenes.