Paragraph, Dialogue, Chapter Lengths: How Do You Do It?

[Heliotrope]

https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Rangers-Vastlantic-Armand-Baltazar/dp/0062402366

Is it Armand Baltazar? I'm so jealous of this guy right now. I just hold his book in awe and realize I have no business pretending to be a writer

I have a friend who got a seven figure advance for an middle grade book...and is having no problem living with the literary disrespect while counting his money.

 

[Russ]

Literary disrespect comes in many forms. Someone out there will always be a naysayer. Someone out there will always tell you how they would write your story. Someone out there will always be a jerk and call you not a writer for not rewriting, for not plotting, for plotting, for using a developmental editor, for not attending critique groups, for not sacrificing your first born in order to sell books...whatever. Who cares, right?

When it comes to stuff like that I am a "consider the source" person. If I respect the person and what they are saying seems thoughtful and designed at its core to help me be a better writer, I listen closely. I believe that to continue to grow as a writer you need to embrace quality criticism and advice.

But if I have no respect for the source, it is water off a duck's back.

And on the original topic, when I write straight fantasy my chapters are around 3000-4000 words or so. On the thriller with fantasy elements I am also working on my chapters are shorter 2-3k words tops. That is by design. Each book has a different pacing and I think chapter length plays a role in that.

 

[Russ]

https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Rangers-Vastlantic-Armand-Baltazar/dp/0062402366

Is it Armand Baltazar? I'm so jealous of this guy right now. I just hold his book in awe and realize I have no business pretending to be a writer

Sent you a pm response, not that guy, but he looks cool too. Don't you just hate writers that are that good?

 

[Heliotrope]

I don't hate them, per se... I want to hate them, but instead I just buy their stuff and wallow in self pity, lol. Mostly it motivates me to be better. Push further, stretch my own ideas past what I think the boundaries are. But it sure hurts as hell.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

I don't hate them, per se... I want to hate them, but instead I just buy their stuff and wallow in self pity, lol. Mostly it motivates me to be better. Push further, stretch my own ideas past what I think the boundaries are. But it sure hurts as hell.

me: *reads great book*
THAT BOOK WAS SO GOOD *cries from happiness*
I'LL NEVER BE THAT GOOD *cries from despair*

 

[Sheilawisz]

With most of my stories, I avoid performing word counts before completion.

I have been working with the same structural format since 2003, and it's something like this: I divide my narrative in sections, and each section is measured by its number of paragraphs instead of words. A section covers one or several scenes of the story, with or without dialogue, and they can vary a lot in their length.

Some sections can be as short as twelve paragraphs, while others have been 37. Most of the times, I set a limit of 30 paragraphs per section and sometimes I have split a section in order to form two instead when it gets too long.

A chapter is composed of multiple sections, even though I do not have a precise definition for its length.

In my first ever Fantasy trilogy every chapter has a name carefully selected for it. The same happens in the novella collection that follows it, and I did the same in my Joan of England trilogy. This tradition was repeated for a very personal story of mine called Entre el Hielo y el Cristal, but I had to try something different for my Showcase stories here in Mythic Scribes.

It was impossible to post real chapters thanks to the size limitations for each post, so I started to post sections instead!

I called this system Flash Fiction Series at first, even though it was nothing but my old Sections system adapted to a Forum. I continued to use it with great satisfaction and fun, and more recently I started to call the sections chapters anyway... then, I got into Wattpad and I had to adopt yet another format for my stories.

In Wattpad, my chapters are rigidly composed by either three or four sections each depending on the story.

About word count: I know that my 47k words El Camino de Gracia would be sixteen chapters long, so that would be an average of 2937 words for a chapter. In general, I am not worried about the word counts while I work. I do it sometimes out of curiosity, when a story has been completed in particular, but the number of words normally has no place in my mind.

Dialogue: My dialogue is often simple and casual, and even in the case of important conversations my characters do not speak too much. A conversation can sometimes be long, especially when they have important things to say, but not with only one character speaking for entire sections while the others just listen.

Paragraphs: My paragraphs are short, and I love them that way. I think that having short paragraphs helps my narrative to create a fast and easy flow, which is something that many of my readers appreciate. This is curious, because I love Quijote and in that book paragraphs and dialogue alike can be incredibly long.

My 38k words The Arendelle War fanfiction is 50 sections long, or roughly twelve chapters I think.

 

[Insolent Lad]

One problem with my tendency toward short chapters and paragraphs is that there ends up being a higher percentage of empty space on the pages and, therefor, more pages in my books. That makes them slightly more expensive to print!

 

[Sheilawisz]

I also print my stories some time after completion, it's one of my favorite things to do =)

My printer is very old, but compatible with my iMac anyway and it works very well. The necessary paper sheets are low cost, but the ink cartridges for this printer model are quite expensive where I live. On top of that, the ink does not last very long and it takes at least two cartridges to print one of my stories.

I love printing, because it's the moment when a story transforms into solid paper and ink instead of being just an electronic file.

At the start of The Neverending Story, author Michael Ende talks about the wonderful nature of printed stories. It's true that a book is nothing but paper, glue and ink from a physical point of view, and yet it also contains a story and that means characters and adventures and so many great moments to enjoy while you read with the paper in your hands.

If you think about it books are magical indeed!

 

[Insolent Lad]

I haven't printed out one of my own books in ages, other than a page or so to check how the type looks. But they are all available in print editions, and printing cost is a factor there.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

^I have to print in order to go over and redraft. I like being able to scribble haphazard notes and highlight to my heart's desire.

 

[pmmg]

I cant say as I pay much attention to the paragraph and chapter lengths. Sometimes I feel they are not long enough, but I don't fret it. When I get to the rewrite phase and really start to hammer and polish it out, I will make a decision then as to whether it gets to stay or it goes. And then I will trust I made the right call, cause the story will tell me what it needs. On a whole though, I am fairly minimalist with description, and don't waste a lot of space on mountains and trees and such. Sometimes I go back and add though. I think it works out that most of what I write that would be a chapter amounts to about three pages of text. I would guess that is roughly 1500 words.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

I honestly don't worry about paragraph or dialogue length. I just try to tell the story as best I can.

 

[Vvashjr]

Hmmmmmm.... I'm not sure I qualify for this, but here goes:

I actually purposely make sure my chapters clock in at 3500 words or less. That means I will heavily rewrite and edit a chapter until it fits those parameters.

I do this because most middle grades books need to be digestible by kids 9-13, and so clock in under 70,000 words.

If I divide up my novel that means all the acts must be no more than 17,500 words each, which means each act is about 5 chapters of 3500 words each.

If I can't fit my set up, catalyst, inciting moment etc into those 5 chapters then I have to roll up my sleeves and do some serious work.

My paragraphs tend to be really short and concise. Lot's of dialogue, though the sentences are brief.

Like you, I do a clock but I use pages to determine instead. However the word count, on average each chapter yields to 4500 words at the lowest, and highest at 6000+ words. Too much?

 

[Michael K. Eidson]

The completed first draft of my WIP has 83 chapters, with an average chapter length of just under 1500 words. My longest chapter is just over 5000 words. My shortest chapter is under 200 words. I start a new chapter for every change of POV character.

 

[Chessie2]

I just thought of this thread. One of my chapters is 1500 words long. But I can't add anything else to it because it feels right just the way it is. Will readers complain that chapter is so short when all the others are 2-3k? Doubtful.

 

[FifthView]

Like you, I do a clock but I use pages to determine instead. However the word count, on average each chapter yields to 4500 words at the lowest, and highest at 6000+ words. Too much?

I don't think it's too much. The general consensus seems to be "whatever works, works."

I have been a little amazed to see that respondents in this thread seem to have trended to the lower side, and from my own perspective, quite lower heh. My current WIP only has 4 chapters, and they are all over 5K. But I began it for Nano (which I've given up on for this year), and I have no doubt that the first and second chapters will need major reconsideration. I think I'll probably try to lower the word count per chapter to under 5K during revisions, and I expect that tightening the prose alone will have a major natural effect of lowering the word count. But who knows? I'm a long time away from doing that kind of revision.