Chapter lengths

pickarooney

Are there any kind of guidelines as to the expected lengths of chapters? Is it normal practice to keep chapters in a book roughly the same length or is it a waste of time trying to artificially constrain this?

I've written a chapter which is only 250 words whereas the ones surrounding it are several thousand each. I don't really want to add anything significant to what I have as it does what it's meant to already. It just looks a bit odd having this runt of a chapter on its own

I could maybe merge it with the previous chapter and use asterisks or something to separate them. The two scenes are closely linked but take place in different locations.

EileenG

It varies, and if you get published, your publisher will probably have views on this.

The closest thing to a standard chapter length seems to be about 3000 words, but many writers have more or less, and some do variable chapter lengths.

I wouldn't worry about it.

H. Flashman

I don't think there's any upper limit. On top of that they can vary wildly in length without any issue. Now, not that I'm a personification of literary perfection but just as an example, mine usually come in between 3k and 4k but the occasional 6k/7k chapter is not unknown. As for lower limit well I don't know really, but to put it bluntly 250 words is not a viable chapter. You should probably either expand it or merge it with another chapter imo.

The way it sounds to me is this 250 'runt' chapter follows directly as a result of an action by a character in the previous chapter. If that is the case merging it with that chapter should not be a problem. Just as a quick example say some dude dies in a battle a hundred miles away. There is nothing wrong with switching scene to I dunno - his wife back home who suddenly feels a shiver down her spine or whatever.

pickarooney

The second chapter is a quick scene in a village close to the one where the first one takes place. They're related, but there are no characters common to both. I could probably just use asterisks or something; I'm not all that bothered.

H. Flashman

yeah i would think a simple 'scene break' (be that asterisks or whatever seperation device you choose) would be sufficient without the need to put it in a new chapter. Otherwise you could end up in a situation where you finish the book and find 3 or 4 of these 'runt' chapters hanging around looking rather poorly.