Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A Is 7000 words too long for a chapter?

I put a paragraph break in your question as an edit, but it's still a huge block of text (now two huge blocks). Chapter dividers are a grander version of that. They give your reader a chance to...

posted 5y ago by Cyn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-20T00:40:47Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46653
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T12:27:37Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46653
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T12:27:37Z (almost 5 years ago)
I put a paragraph break in your question as an edit, but it's still a huge block of text (now two huge blocks).

Chapter dividers are a grander version of that. They give your reader a chance to catch her/his breath. Don't make it hard for them to take a break. A lot of people like to stop at the end of a chapter.

Some books don't have any chapters at all. But a lot of people will choose not to read them for that reason.

So what's a reasonable range? Well it varies a lot. One [comparison of well-known novels](https://blog.reedsy.com/how-long-should-a-chapter-be/) has a range from 942 words to 7226.

But...the 7226 (_One Hundred Years of Solitude_) is an outlier (and written in a language with a lot more use of articles than English). The next closest example is 6023 words, 3rd is 5294 words. The ones with the shortest chapters are young-adult/middle-grade or unusual formats.

## The basic range seems to be 2000-5000 words for adult novels.

Sure, you can go over or under this as you wish. But I would break up your first chapter into two.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-07-15T20:54:53Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 5