Chapter Length

 This was something I tried to lean by teaching myself when I decided to writing a novel. I read what books the prison library had on writing novels; they were unsatisfactory. Then I paid attention to what I was reading. 

The reading was much more of a help, but then I had read Aristotle's Poetics a long time ago. James Jones divides his novel The Thin Red Line into sections for each day of the battle (three or four, I cannot recall right now), and Tolstoy uses short chapters (almost as short as James Patterson, whom my writing group and I had no use for) in his long novels. What I came up with was two rules of thumb - follow Aristotle in keeping the time and place together in a chapter, and keep them around 20 pages.

Janet Reid, Literary Agent offer advice in her post, Chapter length, which deserves to be read in full, but I will offer this for from it springs the rest of her post:

There is no one answer to this because like a lot of things about writing: it depends.

sch 12/3/22