Discussion: Should Chapters Be Getting Shorter?

Photo credit: Siddy Lam on Flickr

While discussing the tendency of e-readers to influence people to buy and read more books, one of you wonderful readers asked an interesting question, namely, whether or not long chapters are becoming less desirable in a world with decreasing attention spans.

I found this question particularly interesting because I hadn't thought much about the connection between decreasing attention spans and chapter length, but I do think the two are somewhat related.

Like many things in the writing world, I think the answer to the question largely depends. You see, I don't believe that there's a magic one-size-fits-all chapter length that works in every situation. In a sense, chapters are like paragraphs in that their length depends largely on their content.

Yes, decreasing attention spans are an issue, but I think they're less correlated to the physical length of the chapter and more to the writing itself—most readers, I imagine, would have little problem reading a thirty-page chapter as long as the writing keeps them interested. On the other hand, a five-page chapter could be unbearable if the story is boring and the writing simply doesn't grab the reader.

In my experience, at least, I've found that chapter length is often influenced by the style and tone of the book—some books are filled with fifty+ short 2-10 page chapters, while others are divided into significantly larger (and fewer) sections. Furthermore, I suspect that average chapter length is also probably affected by genre, although I unfortunately wasn't about to find any statistics on that online (although if you find any, please feel free to leave me a link in the comments).

So what does this mean for writers?

While working on your story, I would worry less about chapter length and more about keeping the chapters interesting. Chapter length tends to come somewhat intuitively to writers—we often have a good idea as to when it's time to start a new chapter, and when we get it wrong, there's always editing. If your story calls for longer chapters with many sections within the chapters, then so be it. Short attention spans don't matter as long as you keep the reader interested.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear from you: do you think long chapters are becoming less desirable over time? How do you decide how long to make your chapters?

Paragraphs: A Little Rant

Maybe it’s my short attention span or maybe it’s the high school AP English teacher trapped in my skull saying, “Guess what? You were lied to: all paragraphs do NOT have to be five sentences. In fact they better NOT all be the same length OR ELSE!” but I take issue with long paragraphs.

Now, you’re probably wondering what defines a long paragraph. Is it five sentences? Ten? Thirteen? TWENTY-FIVE?

With exception of that last one (because I pray you never write a paragraph with twenty-five sentences), I’d actually say that depends. Yes, yes I know, diplomatic answer, but hear me out.

If you write a paragraph with three ridiculously long sentences (as in thirty or—God help you—more words), then guess what? You have yourself a long paragraph.

If, on the other hand, you write a paragraph with five or six telegraphic sentences (one without any embellishments such as “The cat meowed.”), then my long paragraph alarm will probably remain silent.

The best and easiest way to tell if your paragraph is too long is simply by looking at it. Does it look like a brick sitting on the page? Yes? Then it’s probably just that—a brick on your page.

Now, that’s not to say that all long paragraphs are evil. I won’t completely discriminate here, I know the value of having a long paragraph or two, especially if the pace has slowed down and you’re giving the reader a bit of a breather. In that case yes, longer paragraphs are acceptable. Necessary, even.

But just as I would advise against having a page full of uniform short paragraphs, I strongly advise against the same with long ones.

Now again, I’m not claiming to be any expert because I’m not. But I’ve found that varying paragraph (and sentence) length not only helps set the pace and create a nice flow, but adds a little extra dynamic element to the writing. 

It might be a subconscious thing, or it might just be the all-too common ADD nature of readers like me nowadays, but when I see paragraph after paragraph of the same length (albeit long or short), my eyes tend to glaze over. It becomes monotonous. The voice in my head goes dull and flat and—zzz….

Varying paragraph and sentence length helps fight against that. Rather than a steady, flat reading experience a long paragraph followed by a short paragraph breaks up the page and harmonizes with each other. It acts like a chord in a song rather than the same single note over and over again.

It works. And it keeps us interested.

So what do you think? Does paragraph length make that much of a difference, or am I just crazy? J