What’s a Chapter? And How Long Should it Be?

By Dario Ciriello

Part of the How They Do It Series

JH: Chapters are the typical way writers break up a novel, but what's the right way to handle them? Dario Ciriello shares thoughts and tips on handling your novel's chapters. 
I was recently asked by a writer how long a chapter should be, and how do you know where to end it. My first reaction was to smile and quote the old English saying, how long is a piece of string? In fiction, there really no rule, which set me thinking on what exactly a chapter is. Is it an organizing principle, or simply a device of convenience?

Chapters in fiction became common in the mid-eighteenth century. Novelist Henry Fielding, in 1742, gave a lovely description of the divisions between chapters as “an Inn or Resting-Place, where he may stop and take a Glass, or any other Refreshment, as it pleases him.” At the time, the average chapter was quite brief, perhaps 1,800 words, and typically encumbered with a mini-index listing its contents, such as, say,

CHAPTER TWELVE: Mr. Stevens woos the chambermaid, with interesting results

Or more – much more. Some nineteenth-century chapters in particular could contain several sentences in a list divided by semicolons.

Continue ReadingWritten by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com