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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32525
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/32525
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The number of pages is as many as are needed. As Bryan shows, a chapter can be as short as a word, or a sentence. it can be very long.

In general, most chapters are a continuous narrative (a combination of exposition and dialogue) of sequential action. It could be exposition that covers the highlights of a thousand years, or it could cover a single conversation with a stranger in a parking lot.

The chapter ends when you need to "shift gears", a break to something else, when you can't write any more useful things for the reader to have in THIS narrative, and you wish to start another.

For example, the chapter ends when they board the train, there is zero plot development or character development you wish to do on the train, nothing you want to reveal in dialogue, no scenery worth describing that helps with the plot or foreshadowing or anything else, so the chapter ends. The trip is uneventful in the literal sense. The next chapter begins, _"They finally found the Knightsmark hotel in Tragerton, where ..."_.

(IMO) Your writing should always be concise and not wander into sideshows much; everything I write is to advance _something_ about the plot or characters. So I do not write about spans of time in which _nothing_ advances, like when my main character is asleep, or traveling alone, etc.

Such spans of time are generally good times to break the chapter, and/or POV. Readers may not exactly be expecting a chapter break to cover a large span of time, but they are at least _accustomed_ to that happening, and the next chapter beginning _"[some\_time\_span] later, ..."_, whether that is minutes, days, weeks, months, years, a lifetime, whatever. One chapter ends with a baby being born. The next begins _"John grew into athletic young man, unfortunately already balding at twenty-five."_

The time span is certainly not necessary, just a POV change is fine. "While Allen was doing that, Bill was still puzzling on how to get into the safe."

You change when the setting changes, the POV changes, or uneventful time needs to elapse.

Do not cut or add words to try and reach some "good length".

Original score: 4