Novel Writing – Chapter One
In another lifetime I used to be a member of the Australian Romance Writers. Since then I’ve had two nonfiction books published by a traditional publisher and seven non-fiction books self published on Smashwords and Amazon. While I love reading fiction, it’s non-fiction that I’m comfortable with when I’m writing.
Recently, while doing some spring-cleaning – as one does – I discovered a manuscript packed away at the bottom of a box and long forgotten. I realise now that as a member of a Romance Club, somewhere along the way I must have decided to at least givewriting a romance a try. The result was a romance that I must have written and then packed away never to see the light of day until now.
Rereading it 20+ years on, it doesn’t seem all that bad. And the other interesting thing is that now that I can barely remember writing it, I’m beginning to look at details that make up the manuscript rather than the story itself.
For example, the manuscript is approximately 55,000 words long, and has twenty-two chapters. This makes the average chapter 2,000+ words long. According to writing gurus the 2,000 to 4,000 words is a standard chapter.
Believe it or not, over the many years of fiction writing, people have worked out the length a chapter should be for an adult novel. I’m not sure whether it’s for the benefit of the writer or the reader.
Anyway, here is what one writing guru says.
A chapter consisting of 1,000 words or less is too short. I have read books that have had short chapters, and which ended with 60+ chapters. After a while you do tend to recognise that this is the author’s technique – for better or worse.
One that runs between 1000-1500 words is very short. Very likely, if the book is short to start off with, your chapters would be inclined to be short also.
Between 2000 to 4000 words is the standard.
A chapter that that runs over 5000 words is getting too long.
What I found about my romance novel is that while my first two chapters were around 4,000 words, the rest were 2,000+ words.
Reading through my manuscript I realise that the first two chapters were more or less setting the scene - the rest were the story tellers. In the end, a chapter stops when you’ve made your point, and you begin the next chapter when you are ready to make your next point.
And so, as far as number of chapters are concerned, I think I’m doing all right with my romance.
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What about you? Trying your hand at novel-writing. Tell us your story.
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