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What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

penguin.co.uk

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

#21

Post by fuzzfactor »

I like it best when a chapter takes between 10 minutes and a half hour to read through.

Textbooks you're surely going to focus on one chapter at at time and you don't want it to take very long to re-read, which most students will likely be doing, especially when you may have hours of problems to solve for a single chapter. You want to be able to re-read without a lengthy commitment compared to the problem-solving.

Regular non-fiction may not be as universally re-read but it would be more often than with fiction.

With fiction or storytelling a half hour is a good max so there will always be a stopping point within reach, with two chapters not being out of the question lots of times. People may not re-read a fiction chapter as they go along very much, but why not make it easier anyway.

Then again people probably like a chapter that takes whole hour or more but is such a page-turner that it seems like a half-hour or less :)

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

#22

Post by sambeau »

I am writing children's books. One mantra I try to keep to is to make my chapters ~15 minutes long when read aloud by a parent at bed time. This gives them the ability to be consistent in their bedtime routine.

This way children don't get short-changed and adults don't find they have committed to something they can't get out of. It also allows them to easily give in and do another chapter — after all, it's only 15 minutes.

30 mins reading out loud is about 4,500 words, so 15 minute half-chapters are 2,250 words.

A 2,250 word chapter is also very manageable by a child.

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

#23

Post by wongarsu »

jb1991 wrote: post #9

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…

If we take fanfiction as indication of how younger people produce and consume content then the effect is that chapters get shorter while books get longer.

Of course take that with a grain of salt because *waves wagely at the statement full of issues*. But it tracks with other trends in social media. Many people will be able to tell you more about their favorite tik-toker than their favorite long-form-content producer. The length of the snippets doesn't dictate the depth of the story

You could even draw a comparison to the rising popularity of series over movies. People now prefer 6 45 minute segments over one 3 hour installment.

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

#24

Post by trescenzi »

captn3m0 wrote: post #14
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…

A Memory of Light (last book in Wheel of Time) has a single chapter at 79000 words. Quote from the author about the chapter: > The chapter is just shy of 79,000 words. It contains (by my quick count) 72 scenes–but only 31 distinct viewpoints, as numerous ones repeat.

I need to actually finish these. Robert Jordan passing and, at the time, me having no clue who Brandon Sanderson was, meant I stalled out. But now that I know how incredible Sanderson is, and the TV show seems like it’s actually solid I’ve recently been toying with the idea of reading them all through.

I love the insanity of that quote. Sanderson has an awesome ability to write things like a chapter with a dozen viewpoints that still flow so incredibly well.

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

#26

Post by iambateman »

lumb63 wrote: post #16
jb1991 wrote: post #9

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…

I worry about the same thing. I will say, however, that I worry more about this in the context of news articles, conversation, and other shorter-duration activities. Books are a big commitment, and it is highly disappointing to find out someone stretched a 50 page book into 250 pages to get it published. Sometimes it helps to instill the idea, or provides useful elaboration, but sometimes it is filler with no discern…

This is largely an issue of trust and priority, not attention span, right?

The same people who fly through TikTok videos also regularly sit through a two hour movie or read the entire Harry Potter series.

I think that people can pay attention if they want to, and the cultural shift is _what_ we expect to give attention to.

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

#27

Post by sebastiennight »

When I was re-writing one of my books in 2016, I spent the whole summer asking successful entrepreneurs (my reader audience) what was their favorite business book, and why.

It turned out that the "favorite book" answer was fairly varied (aside from a couple of big-name bestsellers), but the "why" answer almost always revolved around:

- "bite-size chapters"

- "really quick read"

- "short and to the point"

- "one idea, one example for proof, and that's it, go to next chapter"

My book went from ~120 pages to ~150 during that rewrite, but also went from ~10 chapters to ~80.

Not only did the new version outsell the original by a 10x factor, but I'd estimate the completion rate also shot up considerably (based on reader comments about the final chapters).

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

#29

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

passion__desire wrote: post #12
jll29 wrote: post #10

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.

Humanities department generally / traditionally haven't believed in insights that come from mathematics.

I wouldn't say "believe" is the most accurate way to describe it.

They're just very skeptical of the insights from statistical analysis of works in the mediums because there usually aren't very good large data sources. Cinemetrics.lv was amazing before the domain was stolen and had a large community of film academics using it. In literature, a big problem has been the way that publishers do not allow access to any of their data, some public access programs are starting to try to overcome that though.

In general, though, most humanities academics aren't interested in statistical analysis or its insights, not because they don't believe in them, but because the insights generally aren't that useful or likely so general as to be not that useful for very specific research programs.

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

#30

Post by BeFlatXIII »

captn3m0 wrote: post #14
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…

A Memory of Light (last book in Wheel of Time) has a single chapter at 79000 words. Quote from the author about the chapter: > The chapter is just shy of 79,000 words. It contains (by my quick count) 72 scenes–but only 31 distinct viewpoints, as numerous ones repeat.

You could fit an entire novel in that chapter.
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