That convention means that as soon as the reader has flipped the page, they know to wipe the slate clean and prepare for some new scene to get going.Īnd that’s also why you need to be a little bit careful here. The story is continuing, but that last scene has now ended.” The chapter break, in effect, tells the reader, “OK, you need to hit the reset button and prepare for something a bit different. ![]() They’d need to read the section two or three times to figure it out, and that would (paradoxically) cause a weird slowdown in momentum. You need a pause to avoid confusion. If you simply continued from one paragraph to the next while implementing a major switch of character / time / place / action, the reader would be perplexed. Put like that, it’s kind of obvious why you need a pause. A major sequence of action has just been completed.There is a change of point-of-view character.The purpose of a chapter is to allow the reader to pause, and those pauses are most essential when: To answer that question, we need to figure out when a reader is likely to demand a pause. Moments when the story – and the reader – want a moment’s pause. So the question of how many words there ought to be in a chapter is really a question of: how much text should a reader be asked to read before you give them a break? More important is why is a chapter? Why have them? Why do books need or want them, even after the concept of an actual printed book has become a bit blurred out by e-books and audio books?Īnd the answer is that any story has beats in it. (Part 1 might include 10 chapters, and so on.) Individual chapters may have minor separation breaks indicated by an asterisk, or similar.īut you knew all that. In terms of scale, some books will also be divided into parts. The new chapter may be numbered or titled or even both. You know what a chapter is. A chapter is generally the major (and often the only) sub-division to be found in a book or novel. It’s marked, almost always, by a page break. Ducks, Newburyport has no chapters and it’s 400,000 words long. Kids’ books will have chapter lengths that vary by age range. ![]() Getting that right is what this post is all about. Your story’s most obvious beats. So, it makes sense to use those beats to enhance everything else you’re doing. That said, chapter breaks are one of the key rhythmical features of a novel. No manuscript has ever been rejected by an agent or neglected by a reader just because a chapter was too short or too long. Honest truth? Chapter lengths don’t really matter too much. And then – you hit a pause.ĭo you create a page break and start a new chapter? Or do you just do the three little asterisk thing? Or just crash straight on?Īnd what if your chapters are too short? Or too long? Will your readers laugh at you? Will you cause literary agents to spill their lattes with laughter?
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