There’s no shortage of advice for indie authors these days. If you’re thinking of self-publishing a book, there are scores of professionals who stand ready to offer you tips on everything from cover design to pricing to social media advertising.
This abundance of free expertise isn’t just limited to marketing questions, either. There are so many writing resources available just a few clicks away that right now is arguably the best time in history to learn how to be a writer.
I certainly benefited from the wealth of information that the internet has placed at my fingertips. But one skill of the writer’s craft that a lot of sources are oddly silent on is the subject of chapters. You’ve got a book. According to established convention, it needs to be divided into chapters. How do you proceed?
Here I’ll share the bits of advice regarding chapters that I’ve learned from other pros, along with what my own experience has taught me. The following mainly applies to novel-length works of fiction. If anyone out there sees where my advice differs from SOP in non-fiction, feel free to let us know in the comments.
You can measure my experience organizing this book into chapters with a ruler. |
What chapters are for
Like every part of a book, chapters shouldn’t be simply ornamental (even a book’s ornamentation serves a purpose). Everything you put into a book has to pull its own weight. Here are some of the jobs that chapters do.
- Give the book an internal structure or “skeleton” to hang the story on
- Help to organize the writer’s ideas
- Aid in setting the story’s pacing
- Serve as guides for interweaving plots and subplots
- Provide readers with points of reference to mark progress and remind them where to start/stop reading.
- Stay on the shorter side. Few people these days have the time or attention span to curl up with a book. Most will be reading your novel on their phones during the train ride to work or for a few minutes at lunch. I try to keep my chapters to 5 pages; 10 pages max (though no one’s perfect).
- Each chapter should be a self-contained movement of the story. A good rule of thumb is to have each chapter contain a complete sequence of events that take place in a specific setting at a particular time. In other words, one scene per chapter.
- As much as possible, limit your chapters to advancing one plot or subplot each. This is one rule that I break a lot, so I can’t blame anyone else for doing it too. Just make sure your decision to cut between scenes within a single chapter does some greater service to the story.
- If your book has multiple plots/subplots, it’s a good idea to alternate between them every chapter. Advancing plot A in chapter 1, plot B in chapter 2, and plot C in chapter 3 before getting back to plot A in chapter 4 gives readers variety and evens out the pacing. Bonus points for ending sections of plot advancement with cliffhangers that audiences have to read 2-3 more chapters to see resolved.
- Start and end each chapter as close to the action as possible. This is the famous “in late, out early” rule, and there are few better cures for bad pacing. If this chapter features a shootout at a warehouse, don’t bother writing the scene where the characters drive there. Similarly, skip the mundane details of the immediate aftermath; or save them for later.
Methodology
It’s easy to find the part you need to edit, but pasting them all together is quite a chore. |
I tend toward chapters that are less than 3000 words, with a bare minimum of about 1800. I don't like to change them up too much, since readers tend to expect certain lengths.
While the Wheel of Time are humongous books with terribly long chapters, I thought Brandon Sanderson's approach in the latter books was good for chapters and pacing. He would have each subplot have an arc to it, and the chapters would complete that arc, before another subplot is dealt with.
For example the chapters might look like this: Ch 1: Subplot A Beginning, Chapter 2: Subplot A Middle, Chapter 3: Subplot A: End, Chapter 4: Subplot B Beginning, Chapter 5: Subplot B Middle, Chapter 6: Subplot B : End, Chapter 7: Sublot C: Beginning.
And so on.
Each of these subplots furthers the overall mainplot, but readers feel like the subplots have progressed (by completing an arc) before the chapters go to another subplot.
One of the problems I've noticed with some books, and others have echoed this, is that changing to another character/subplot after the previous chapter ended on a cliffhanger can be quite frustrating, especially if the character/subplot that it's changed to is less compelling than the last one. One way to combat this would be to use small chapters ( < 3000 words). Still, I like the idea of having complete arcs for each character/subplot before moving onto another. I've yet to try it, though.
You make several excellent points.
I haven't gotten around to Sanderson's WoT books yet, but having read the previous installments, I suspect he may have used that approach out of necessity.
Sanderson explained his normal chapter-building method in a lecture from his creative writing class. (You can effectively audit the whole semester's worth of class meetings on YouTube.)
When Sanderson writes a chapter for one of his own books, he goes to his outline and picks out at least two elements that need to be advanced.
For example, let's say the outline specifies a character whose backstory needs more fleshing out and a subplot that needs to be introduced. Sanderson will write a chapter about these two things–preferably so that each pulls double duty by developing the other.
About the cliffhanger trick–yeah, it can get annoying, so use at your own risk. Dan Brown relies heavily on this method. Take that as you will.