My completed manuscript stands at 83,000 words and is divided into forty chapters. My average chapter length is about 2,000 words, that's six or seven pages. I do have shorter chapters and a few that are longer.
My completed manuscript stands at 83,000 words and is divided into forty chapters. My average chapter length is about 2,000 words, that's six or seven pages. I do have shorter chapters and a few that are longer.
I tend to go for one chapter per scene, so they vary considerably. In the last novel, I think the longest was about 10,000 words and the shortest about 1700. I tend to cover one main topic/objective per chapter and advance most/all story threads within it.
Well, since you ask the average length turns out to be 19.5k. Like Malcom Richardson, I don't worry too much about it, there are subdivisions in the long chapters that encapsulate narrative elements or reading chunks.I could have had a higher level division (such as "Book", as the whole thing is 2/3 LOTR length) but that would have been lunpy too. I'm not sure that "chapter length" is very meaningful without a reasonable set of criteria for what constitutes a chapter... change of POV, time, place etc. might be elements but there must be many more; Wikipedia doesn't really say much about the nature of a chapter... From my perspective, the underlying question is, how one divides up and marks the divisions of a narrative - as long as the divisions don't jar by being too frequent or infrequent the absolute length is relatively unimportant.
Hmmmm........... i haven't tried my hand at long novels yet, so till now it is usually 1500 - 2000 words per chapter and totally 25 - 30 chapters.....