As I continue working on Penumbra Part II, I’ve been having some thoughts concerning chapter and overall book length. You would not believe how difficult it is to find good information regarding average chapter/book length.

It seems like no matter where you go to look for average quotes, you find a number of people advising against “paying attention to such things.” That “your story will be written the way it is written” and “page numbers don’t matter.”

I’m sorry, but that’s completely wrong.

Ok, no. To be fair, that’s not completely wrong. When you are writing a first draft, your focus should be on putting your story down on paper. Formatting and breaking it up can come later if you prefer. But for me, I prefer to break up the story in chapters as I write. My chapters are very loosely organized, I often will cut large portions and move them between chapters or insert new chapters between others, but that’s personal preference.

Once you begin working through that draft though, word count for individual chapters and your manuscript as a whole is something you should absolutely keep in mind.

As much as I would like to tout that creativity is the most important part of writing, it simply can’t be, if you want to make a living doing it. I understand the idealist perspective (I’m an INFP after all!) but at some point I had to come to grasp with the fact that I have to keep my audience actively in my mind.

So what does that mean for chapter length?

Well I’ve seen arguments that your chapters can be any length. Some authors will have chapters with only a single word. Dan Brown one author in particular I’ve read about lately who has chapters that are a single page. If they can do it, why can’t anybody have chapters be any length they want?

The key to remember, I think, is that authors will insert very short chapters for a purpose. They either fit an aesthetic or a practical purpose for the story they are telling. In general though, you want your chapters to be a meatier length, so that they can serve the scene you are writing. There’s a reason the average chapter length is something like 8-12 pages, it allows a good window to describe a scene and it also allows the reader to compartmentalize what they’re reading.

You shouldn’t rely on your chapter length to keep your reader engaged. Reading 120 chapters in a 300 page book gets exhausting believe it or not. Just as trying to read 10 chapters in a 300 page book is. Finding a good page count, per chapter point is important. Your writing/story should be what encourages your reader to keep going, not because they can read another two page chapter.

To change subjects, I purchased a license for Scrivener today, which is something I was hesitant to do. Specialty writing software isn’t something that seems necessary to me. If you’ve got Microsoft Word, or anything similar to it (heck even just notepad) you should be able to write.

I can see the trap of novice authors downloading fancy, special writing software to try and motivate or propel themselves into their work. But the software is irrelevant it’s just a tool that you use, the writing really comes from your own dedication. I know you know that, everybody knows that, but we like to trick ourselves sometimes with a thought like, “Well, I’ll buy this software and then I’ll really write that book.” Forget the software. Open up notepad if that’s all you have and just get to work.

With that all being said, it’s on sale, and I’ve been reading that others find it useful, so I’m willing to play around with it a little bit to see what I think. I probably won’t get around to playing with it for a few days, until I’ve got a little bit of extra free time. Or maybe I’ll for myself to wait so I don’t immediately prove my own previously mentioned bias wrong to myself. Who knows.

For those interested in the INFP reference, look into the Myers Briggs Typology Indicator… a minor obsession of mine: http://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/

You can find a bunch of free assessments online, this is the one I’ve used the most: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp

More about Scrivener can be found here: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php