I fielded a question earlier today about the right chapter length for novels. Others answered the question saying that there’s no right length. It depends on what the material calls for.

While that’s true, it’s not particularly helpful. There’s a saying about not breaking the rules until you understand the rules, and I think that goes for chapter length too. It’s eventually fine if you have short and long chapters, but until you have some writing experience, it’s good to have a rough outline of what’s appropriate.

My chapters tend to be between 5,000 and 7,000 words. They are usually composed of three scenes, because I tend to intertwine three different point of view (POV) characters. So my scenes tend to be anywhere from 1,200 words for a very short scene to 4,000 words for a very long scene, with most being in the range of 2,000 to 3,000 words.

(Since pages are arbitrary based on page size, font size, etc, it makes the most sense to think in terms of word count.)

If your chapters are short

If you find that your chapters are short, that doesn’t mean that you should add filler.

There shouldn’t be anything you think of as filler in a book. A good book is defined by having every word there for a purpose. Preferably two or three. Each scene should move the plot forward, or reveal something new about a character, or both.

Now it is possible that if you find your scenes or chapters to be very short that you need to practice getting more description down on the page. When I first started writing, I have a very vivid picture in my mind, but I only captured a tiny portion of that down on the page. So to a reader who didn’t already have the full picture on their mind, it seemed like all the action took place in a white room. Check in with your senses: are you describing what characters can see, hear, feel, smell, and taste? Does the reader know what the characters are thinking?

If your chapters are long

On the other hand, if your chapters tend to be too long, look for natural breaks in the action. Each chapter should have an arc: a problem, a journey to resolve the problem, and a resolution, or more commonly, a new problem. Of course, this is at a much smaller resolution than the arc of the book as a whole.

Recently a friend mentioned that they were interested in a writing critique group, and I was inspired to share my experience with them. I’m in two writing critique groups, both focused on novel length work.

Formulation

One group is small (three people, including me), and we meet every two weeks, and everyone is expected to bring a chapter. We haven’t missed a day yet in the three month’s we’ve been meeting, although we did drop from five members to three. The three that are left are very committed and all very much oriented on getting published.

The other group is larger (five people), and we’ve been meeting a year. We review two chapters every time we meet, and our intention is to meet twice a month, although we probably average 1.5 times per month. About half the group seems very serious about being published.

I think it’s great to have people at or slightly above your own writing level (this is paradoxal, as it’s clear not possible to achieve this for all members). But clearly you can benefit from strong writers who can offer the most accurate and constructive feedback. I also think it’s beneficial to have people who have a similar level of commitment to publishing. If there’s too much of a mismatch, it can be discouraging to people who aren’t producing as much, and not constructive enough to the people who are producing a lot.

I think critique groups benefit from writers of different genre, because you learn more about different ways to do stuff, from revealing character to handling dialogue, etc.

Approach

I think it’s good to be able to share something at least every two weeks. Less often than that, and you can’t really get an appreciable amount of feedback from the group.

That being said, one thing that makes critique groups work well is trying to learn as much as possible from critiquing itself, so that you improve as a writer by the act of critiquing. For whatever reason, I find that I’m more likely to research things like grammer, dialogue, and structure when I’m reading someone else’s work. (I suspect it’s because if I am going to say something critical, I want to be sure that what I’m saying is correct.)

My writer teacher says that it’s easier for the new writer or non-writer to know when something is wrong than to know what is wrong, let alone how to fix it. It can be tempting to suggest how to fix things to others, but as a beginning writer, I’d hate to think I’m giving bad advice. So I try to stick first and foremost to identifying where there are problems, especially in my written comments. (“I got lost here.” “This sentence confuses me.” “I’m surprised the character is acting this way.” “Something is not right.”) Then I might verbally expand upon that during the actual meeting.

We have a rule in my smaller group that you must send material to be critiqued at least three days ahead of time. I think this works well to ensure that everything is given it’s proper amount of time and attention.

I critique either on paper or electronically. Then we discuss. In one group we allot half an hour, and the other group, forty-five minutes. I suspect it could be done in twenty, if you pay close attention to the clock. After thirty minutes, it’s usually diminishing returns.

Process

We use this process during the actual meeting (this is somewhat hypothetical, as my two groups use slightly different processes):

• Author can provide an intro, specific what feedback specifically they are looking for.
• Author is then silent, doesn’t contribute anything, but can ask clarifying questions.
• Someone summarizes the action of the chapter. We check to see if everyone agrees.
• Someone (or all) identify what they see as the “center” of the chapter.
• Go around the circle twice, each time a person talks about something they liked about the chapter, usually reading a line or two aloud.
• Go through issues, from large to progressively smaller.
• When people are nit-picking grammer, you know the structure and plot is essentially fine.
• As we near end of time, author is allowed back in to comment on what they heard, ask other questions.

Ah, commas before “and”, you are my nemesis! But now I think I understand you better.

There’s the whole debate on Oxford/serial commas, which I will skip. Suffice it to say it’s the situation where you are using commas to delineate a list. Some say to put the comma before the “and”, some don’t, but either way, it’s a style thing and as long as you are consistent, it’s OK to do either.

But the problem I had when what to do when we’re not talking about a serial list.

From Get It Write I found this description:

• [Miguel took piano lessons for sixteen years], and [today he is an accomplished performer].

• Miguel took piano lessons for sixteen years and today is an accomplished performer.

I was recently asked, “How much editing should a writer do themselves?” It’s always hard to answer any question with a “should” in it, because the answer is different for everyone. We also need to know what the goal is? To send the work to an agent? Or to self-publish?

I’ll describe what I do when writing novels.

1. I write my first draft. For each book I’ve written (I’m wrapping up my third), my first draft has become much better. 
2. Then I make a first editing pass on screen. I’m looking for a bunch of different things, including:
1. obvious typos and grammer mistakes
2. places where I did too much telling and not enough showing (one of my chronic issues)
3. obvious continuity errors: I changed a characters name, or their occupation, or where some characters were, etc.
3. Individual chapters are shared with my critique group after my first pass. On average, my critique group sees about a third of my chapters for any given book. I fix any issues the critique group identifies, which can be about clarity, character motivation, excessive exposition, etc.
4. Then I print the whole thing out, marking up the pages with corrections to small errors and identifying bigger issues to address. The things I tend to notice on the printed page:
1. More typos and grammer errors
2. Repeated use of words
3. Continuity errors. 
4. Flow of the story.
5. Then I let it sit for at least a month, and work on other writing.
6. Then I reread the whole thing again, primarily focusing on bigger story issues and more places where I need to show instead of tell. I’m also addressing plot issues here, character motivation and development, etc.
7. Somewhere around here, I pass it around to my beta readers. They are a half a dozen people who read it and give me feedback. I correct issues they identify. These are different than my first readers: I have two or three people I give it to very early on, just for encouragement. They do give me some feedback, which I welcome, but I’m not dependent on. By the way, unless your mom has some special credentials as a writer or teacher, consider your mother a first reader, not a critical reader.  Of course she’s going to say it’s great. 🙂
8. At this point, I’m comfortable sending it off to agents/publishers.
9. If it’s not accepted by anyone, and I’m going to self-publish, then I keep going:
10. I then send it to a copy editor, and correct issues they identify. I don’t have the budget for a professional copy editor, so I pay a friend who is a creative writing major with about six years of solid writing experience.
11. Lastly I give it to a proofreader. Again, I don’t have the budget for a professional, so I pay a different friend, someone who is extremely detail oriented and focused with a good command of English.