Chapters and Storytelling.

All right, my favorite time of the year, copious amounts of salted caramel vodka and apple cider, mixed and sipped around the fireplace, good friends and time with family, is finally here.  A couple day’s back I got an e-mail from a gentleman who is in my science fiction and fantasy writers group.  The e-mail was short and to the point, he asked me if there are an average number of chapters in a book and the average number of words per chapter.  He stated that it seems like he starts a new chapter, without the previous one, written at completion and he feels that they are little short.

I sent him back my reply and I told him I would speak to him tonight about it at the meeting.  I broke it down giving him a mathematical answer; 20 chapters for the book, 75,000 words total, equaling 3750 words per chapter. With the average 250 words per page, he would need 15 pages per chapter.

That’s the mathematical answer, all nice and tidy, but as writers we know things are seldom that easy. I should have told him it really depends.  Since he is writing fiction, the length of the pages per chapter can vary from the 15-pages I calculated out, to five or six pages, or even less. I know this because in my own stories sometimes I have a three or four page chapter.

I told J. that the number of chapters he ultimately has in his story is directly related to the number changes that occur in the story. The first chapter is the protagonist in his normal world, then we progress along a number of scenes or chapters where the protagonist is taken from this world and the challenge or conflict of the story is thrust upon them. We then see a number of chapters where the character questions what they know as the challenges bring growth and understanding. New hardships arise that must be faced, and then the climax, followed by the denouement and ultimately the return to the normal world, where the protagonist has grown, changed  and learned from the experiences, either negatively or positively.

When I told him that, it was as if a light went on. J. realized that as long as each chapter moved the story along, it did not matter if it were two-pages or ten. He just needed to write the story and tell it as he envisioned it. Everything else, everything the editors want him to do comes later, he just needs tell the story now.