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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42783
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/42783
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

# Shorter chapters for shorter books, but you don't have to.

I mostly read novels on longer side, epic fantasy and similar. In these chapter length varies widely from author to author. The most common would be to have chapter lengths between 3000 and 4000 words. Some though use far longer chapters, with section breaks rather than chapters. And some use far shorter, chapters don't even have to cover the entire page.

I have read novellas without chapters at all and novellas where the longest chapter was ~1000 words.

In general I would say the shorter the overall work the shorter the average chapter length. If you want to use long chapter in shorter works you will need to do more with each chapter. 5000 word chapters in a novella may only give you 3 or 4 chapters to tell your story. However this isn't a bad thing and many good books have this structure.

In writing this answer I realised a lot of what I was saying was a better fit for the more general [sizing of a chapter question](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/36349/sizing-of-a-chapter-and-how-many-should-i-use/42781#42781) so a lot of [what I said there](https://writing.stackexchange.com/a/42781/33442) also applies here. In summary, use chapters for pacing and don't worry about actual word count.

Original score: 5