I'm shortening my overlong chapters but they now look too short to me. They're ranging between 4 and 15 pages double-spaced and my instinct is to join some of them back together again. My chapters were previously 30-50 pages each and I know that is too long, but to be so short seems wrong. Help!
No, the long chapters are definitely out. All my beta readers have complained about them as it means at least an hour's reading before bed to the next chapter. I don't mind having to make new chapter breaks, it's just that some of the chapters are now the same length as the prologue and I had so wanted to double the size of that prologue. Can you have an 8 page prologue followed by a 7 page chapter 1? Maybe I should just call the prologue chapter 1 and be done with it.
Victoria, funny how you read my thoughts, I was agonising over chapter length as well. I think a chapter can be just two pages long or about 2000 words. My opening one is.
It is essential for the pace of my story, though it even has a little back story, but it plunges the reader (I hope) straight into the action and ends with a cliff hanger. I thought that 2000 words was too short, but none of the people who read it (5-6 experienced people) have ever commented on the length of my first chapter, having read at least 20,000 words of the novel.
If the opening chapter is one page long perhaps it qualifies as a prologue?
Short chapters following the first chapter don't seem such a good idea
How long is a piece of string? Both short chapters and long are valid, whereas Terry Pratchett has none. Whatever feels good to you, the expert of your own work. Perhaps the pace of the story may help you decide, or some other aspect of the story.
Since my own book is about the sun, I purposely kept to 24 chapters, the number of hours in a day, and so chapter length was reliant upon the material for that hour (Even though, and similar to biblical style where a day may last a 1000 years, whole days and nights may have passed in a chapter).
I suspect that doesn't help one bit, does it?