Young Writers Society

Long. I hate it when I see chapters that are like a scene long. I think a chapter should have at least about twenty pages. That's about ten A4 pages. It seems a bit amateurish if you end up having like 56 chapters on a 123 page novel.

Having a long chapter lets you put a theme to it, have lots of stuff happen, and build up to a better cliffhanger. Short chapters seem inconsequential.

I think a chapter should only be as long as it needs to be. Not devilishly looooooooooooooooooong, and not one-scene-short.

I think it depends on you and the book. Some books have hundreds (OK, slight exaggeration) of little chapters, whereas others aren't split up at all - they're just one long piece of writing.

Personally, I like pretty short chapters. Not super long, but not super short either. Kind of the length of the Harry Potter chapters? (no, I'm not a fan, but that's just something that I can count on everyone reading)

But honestly, the length can change from chapter to chapter --if you think "oh, this is a really good stopping point, but the last chapter was three pages longer" So what? Just make it how ever long it should be to make a good chapter. Then, when you're editing and stuff you can add the kind of stuff that can go anywhere (like technical information and character background) onto the shorter ones if you don't like the different lengths and they'll even out.

So really, it doesn't matter, just don't do it tooo much and have one chapter be half the book then the other twenty crammed into the other half

~Azila