Hi all. I am about to begin chapter four of my story. At the moment I am working on approx 7-10 pages per chapter. I know there is no hard and fast rule about how many pages per chapter. But if I a story line only needs five or six pages or less would it be ok to put shorter chapters between longer ones? Also if I work on the whole of the m.s. being 10-11 chapters long will this be enough to be classed as novel length? Thanks Elsie
I've used mixed length chapters. In fact one was so long it became a part, rather than simply a chapter. Must admit I tend to work on word, rather than page, count when thinking out chapters. I aim for 3000 words or ten pages, and 90k words overall or thirty chapters.
Of course these numbers are all approximate. I don't believe you shouldn't be pedantic about word count or chapter length because, on a very basic level, a story needs to be as long as it needs to be. And even though word count is considered somewhat genre-specific I don't think a reader or publisher would be concerned if a novel were slightly shorter or longer than a 'norm'. Publishers don't like very long, apparently, especially from non-established authors, because print costs have more impact on potentially low sales.
An 11 chapter book at 3000 words per makes it more novella than novel, the latter having roughly at least double that, I'd say.