How many chapters?

[ironmike]

I just finished reading James Patterson's Honeymoon, 390 pages and 117 chapters. 3 1/3 page average. He chopped up a six page scene into four chapters. Two written for the Protagonist in first person. The other two, third person and the Villain's point of view.

My manuscript, a survival tale, has a lot of short flash backs to help the Protagonist cope with his ordeal. I'm thinking about editing the present day chapters into shorter ones with different points of view.

What say you?

[zizban]

Don't worry about chapters. They are arbitrary anyway. I wouldn't change yours at all. In one book I used chapters, eight about 10 pages long, in a seocnd, shorter chapters and in my third book, no chapters at all. Whatever works for your tale.

[Mark]

I agree with Zizban. I am a big fan of Patterson and his short chapters, but that doesn't mean it works for you. Don't force someone else's style on your writing. Do what works for you.

You can always experiment and try it out, but if it reads or feels awkward, then keep your own style. You have to be comfortable with your own writing.

[Richard White]

One of my favorite authors is Glen Cook. He usually has fairly long chapters, but in his latest "Garrett" book, he had 80+ chapters, some only one or two pages long. It worked, although, I found it made the story a little choppy.

I always figure, when you need to radically change POV, there's a chapter break. Sometimes I've gone back and revised stuff, breaking a chapter into two, combining the first five pages of a chapter with the last chapter, etc. But, as the others have said, there's no hard fast rule that I've found.

[victoriastrauss]

The only time I notice chapter length is in books like Patterson's, where they're so very short, or when single scenes are broken up into several chapters without a POV change. I find that sort of thing incredibly distracting.

- Victoria

[Mistook]

When chapters are shorter than scenes... something's wrong. Patterson is very stylistic, and I salute that, but that's the kind of thing that's difficult to put into your toolbox without everybody knowing who you ripped it from.


If I wanted.

I could try.

To write paragraphs that were shorter than sentences.

But...

I'd have strayed into the realm of Poetry.

Trust the reader to be able to handle a scene change or a POV change without having to buffer it all with a chapter break.

[Jamesaritchie]

I just finished reading James Patterson's Honeymoon, 390 pages and 117 chapters. 3 1/3 page average. He chopped up a six page scene into four chapters. Two written for the Protagonist in first person. The other two, third person and the Villain's point of view.

My manuscript, a survival tale, has a lot of short flash backs to help the Protagonist cope with his ordeal. I'm thinking about editing the present day chapters into shorter ones with different points of view.

What say you?

I don't think number of chapters matter much, but I do think structure is very important. Patterson uses many short chapters, but he has a reason for each one, and each one has a distinct structure, along with an overall pattern.

Good chapter structure is seldom, if ever, abitrary. Many chapters or few chapters, long chapters or short chapters, there's almost always a pattern, a structure, a distinct reason for each chapter being a unit.

As long as you have a reason for each chapter, and as long as each chapter has an internal consistency, breaking them up as you suggest could work well. Just remember that chapters are units, just as paragraphs are, and while many lengths work for chapters or paragraphs, each is a unit and needs internal consistency.

[victoriastrauss]

If I wanted.

I could try.

To write paragraphs that were shorter than sentences.Ugh.

I hate that.

Too.

- Victoria

[Julie Worth]

The only time I notice chapter length is in books like Patterson's, where they're so very short...
- Victoria

One of my novels is like that. An editor commented that it would have been irritating, except that it went well with my narrator’s short attention span.

[gp101]

Not that there's anything wrong with short chap's; a lot of authors use them and a lot of readers don't mind them. But for me, they bug the hell out of me. When I find a chap that actually interests me in such novels it ends abruptly. Granted it's continued on the next page usually, but it's still jarring. I've started 2 Patterson novels but couldn't finish either one because I got annoyed (personal preference of course; thousands others LOOOVE Patterson).

I don't see the point in continuing a scene with no POV change as a new chapter, but authors can do what they want. I've always wondered, however, if prolific writers like Patterson include so many short chapters to pad page count so they can move onto their next project instead of fully fleshing out their current WIP's. A book that's 350 pages with 100 chapters might shrink a good hundred pages if the short chapters containing ongoing scenes were combined into longer chapters. The white space at the end and the beginning of each chapter adds up after a while. I think fewer people would plunk down $24 for a 200 to 250 page novel.

Then again, this is probably the conspiracy buff in me talking out loud.

[Mistook]

Not that there's anything wrong with short chap's; a lot of authors use them and a lot of readers don't mind them. But for me, they bug the hell out of me. When I find a chap that actually interests me in such novels it ends abruptly. Granted it's continued on the next page usually, but it's still jarring. I've started 2 Patterson novels but couldn't finish either one because I got annoyed (personal preference of course; thousands others LOOOVE Patterson).

I don't see the point in continuing a scene with no POV change as a new chapter, but authors can do what they want. I've always wondered, however, if prolific writers like Patterson include so many short chapters to pad page count so they can move onto their next project instead of fully fleshing out their current WIP's. A book that's 350 pages with 100 chapters might shrink a good hundred pages if the short chapters containing ongoing scenes were combined into longer chapters. The white space at the end and the beginning of each chapter adds up after a while. I think fewer people would plunk down $24 for a 200 to 250 page novel.

Then again, this is probably the conspiracy buff in me talking out loud.


As a fellow conspiracy buff, I have to concur, millions of short chapters in a row really have to pad the page-count. Then again, if writers are actually getting away with it, then more power to them. To deepen the conspiracy, I think perhaps Patterson and others are taking unfair advatage of the gruesome fatigue of slush-readers, who must feel, in the dark hours of the corporate night, that these short chapters are much longer than they appear.

heheh :)

I like a book that varies the length - a few long, a few short, a few which are very long, a few which are very short, and all the rest in the median. The same rules as apply to paragraphs, sentences, and scenes, apply to chapters - you want to have a rhythm and a pace that varies according to what's happening.

Incessantly short chapters across the board are just a stylistic convention constructed to "prove" the flexibility of chapter length. It's great that such experiments can make it into print, but I don't think it will (or was ever meant to) become the standard.