deciding chapter length
JD asks about chapter length:
“While reading Iron Hand, I developed a question. How do you decide on chapter lengths? And why do you not try to keep them pretty close in length? I noticed often in Frostborn that some chapters are notably longer (often the first chapter) than others. Curious how you came to this decision.”
Usually, I decide how long I want the book to be, and then I work out chapter length by that. Like, I want SEVENFOLD SWORD: WARLORD to have 24 chapters and come between 90,000 to 120,000 words long, so that means chapters that are 4,000 words long. I usually want the SILENT ORDER books to be 10 chapters long and come to about 55,000 words long, so that means chapters that are about 5,000 words in length.
When I start a series, I also decide how many chapters the books are going to be for consistency. The first thirteen FROSTBORN books were all 24 chapters each, and book 14 went to 26 chapters and book 15 to 34 chapters just because it was a huge story and I wanted to make sure that I hit the landing. So, I always plan to be consistent with it.
But…
That’s the goal, anyway. In practice, my chapter lengths tend to fluctuate wildly depending on what’s going on. Like, Chapter 9 in CLOAK GAMES: HAMMER BREAK was way longer than I planned, but a lot of important stuff happens in that chapter – there’s a bunch of action, and then Nadia has several conversations that are really important to the story. The longest single book chapter I ever wrote was Chapter 20 of SOUL OF SWORDS, which came out to 12,000 words. But a lot of stuff happens in that chapter! There’s an army of undead, and a dragon, and two wizards battling it out, and a huge battle.
I also sometimes have shorter chapters, but they tend to have only one important scene. Like Chapter 32 of FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON is short, but it is really important for setting up what happens in SEVENFOLD SWORD.
So, to sum up – I plan for consistent chapter lengths, but they turn out to be as long as they need to be. 🙂
In the end, that’s a good rule for deciding chapter length: as long as it needs to be.
-JM