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I just read about a novella that's 25,000 words and 15 chapters. That works out to roughly 1,667 words per chapter or only 4 pages per each. Does that seem to few words per chapter or not?
I don't think there is a standard rule. Personally I've read both, and depending on the situation I may or may not be okay with it. Sometimes short chapters can be annoying for me, just because i feel like they're jumping around to much. And ridiculously long chapters make it harder to find easy points to stop at.
These days short chapters are popular because readers like to come to a stopping point, to pick up reading from later. Example- The Davinci Code has really short chapters, which is nice. I'd say 1000 words a chapter should be the minimum, which is a few pages.
Hm, ok, thanks. So far I was trying to keep things to 15 pages for some reason (neurosis, I think, over wanting everything to be uniform). I'll try to break it up into pieces that 'fit' better than a predefined limit and see how that works. Thanks!
