Do you often ask yourself how long your book chapters should be? Think of a few books you have read recently that held your interest; how long were the chapters?

Did it take you 30 minutes or more to read a chapter?

Did it feel too short or too long? Or was it just right?

If writers have one luxury, it’s flexibility and, in general, when you are trying to decide the length of your chapters, put your reader first and consider their reading experience.

Does it Matter?

When it comes to fiction, the length of each chapter is affected by or will affect how your story is paced. If you are writing a fast-paced novel, you want the chapters to be shorter to build up suspense and keep your readers hooked – be aware; too short and you lose that momentum.

Long chapters tend to slow the pacing down and allow you to build up the tension gradually, adding anticipation and intrigue. However, readers will want a break after a long chapter so make sure you end it in such a way, they just have to come back and read more.

How Many Words?

The genre of your book will give you a clue or two as to how long your chapters should be but, generally, it will depend on what’s happening in the story. With non-fiction, it will depend on what information and how much of it you need to impart.

There are no set rules as to how long chapters should be and no doubt, in the books you have read, you’ve noticed that some chapters are longer than others. And much of it is down to the author too. For example, James Patterson prefers a chapter-length of around 640 words while The Target by David Baldacci has an average of 1,555 words per chapter. And In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J K Rowling had an average length of 4,50 words. And if you want a real extreme, take a look at The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – those characters average over 24,000 words.

And different genres have trends too. Sci-fi and romance books average 3,000 words per chapter while thrillers stick to between 600 and 800. In all fairness, a chapter should be as long or as short as the book requires it to be. And, while there is always room for change, on average chapters tend to be between 2,000 and 5,000 but that may be changing already with some authors preferring short chapters that are easy to read.

Authors face a huge amount of competition these days and it all comes down to what you have to do to keep your readers interested in your book. And 24,000 words per chapter is a lot for a reader to take in – while we want our readers to say that our book kept them up all night, the reason shouldn’t be so that they could finish the first chapter!

In part 2, we’ll look at what your readers are looking for in a book.