What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

> There is no magic button when it comes to chapter length: the 'right' one is a blend for each novel being written. There's no point in worrying about the length of your piece of string if the string itself isn't useful or compelling.

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#5

Post by novosel » Sun, Aug 11, 2024, 9:17 AM UTC

jayski wrote: post #2

20

I bid you 21 good Sir.

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#6

Post by Conscat » Sun, Aug 11, 2024, 9:23 AM UTC

Slightly tangential, the longest single chapter of anything I've read so far is Fallout: Equestria chapter 37, at 51.5k words. Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons is the longest single novel, at 1.8m words, but in terms of chapter count (which seems to be what the article means by "length"), I doubt either of those come close, since they merely have 50-odd chapters. Counting the number of chapters seems like a strange measurement to me, in light of that.

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#7

Post by amateurCoder5 » Sun, Aug 11, 2024, 9:37 AM UTC

Chapter 11 in the book Gremlins was just (spoiler) "Pete forgot."

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#8

Post by 082349872349872 » Sun, Aug 11, 2024, 9:50 AM UTC

Conscat wrote: post #6

Slightly tangential, the longest single chapter of anything I've read so far is Fallout: Equestria chapter 37, at 51.5k words. Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons is the longest single novel, at 1.8m words, but in terms of chapter count (which seems to be what the article means by "length"), I doubt either of those come close, since they merely have 50-odd chapters. Counting the number of chapters seems like a stra…

  Why does clover keep on growing
  Why are there flies in my hay
  Don't they know it's the end of the world
  It ended when you clopped away

    -- "Horsefly" Davis (as heard on DCR)

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#9

Post by jb1991 » Sun, Aug 11, 2024, 10:07 AM UTC

The larger question for me is the long-term effect of rapidly vanishing attention spans in our population. The short-form format across tweets, tiktok, much on youtube, instagram, SMS vs. voicemail -- even email is often considered "too long" for newer generations -- what is the likely consequence of this? It seems dangerous in the long-term, but maybe not. Is it just a temporary cultural shift, or is it resulting in a permanent shift to humanity's ability to concentrate?

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#10

Post by jll29 » Sun, Aug 11, 2024, 10:07 AM UTC

I was hoping for some statistics about avg. (mean, mode) chapter length, and changes over time, given that this post comes from Penguin, who have plenty of data at their fingertips.

Still, an interesting blog post.