Desiderius Price

I haven’t really counted, well, until now. If I look at Harry Potter (using google, rounding), I’m getting HP SS/PS 4500, HP CS 4700, HP PoA 4900, HP GF 5200, HP OotP 6800, HP HBP 5600, HP 5500 words/chapter. More googling, Hunger Games is about 3700 words/chapter. The Hobbit, 5000 words/chapter. Fahrenheit 451 is 15400 per chapter (only 3 chapters). Overall, my personal guideline, I find it useful to me, letting me know when it might be time to cut back, or divide a chapter, especially if I’m getting long winded/overly-verbose in a particular section that I’m not trying to make the focus to the chapter. In the end, I know when I read my material, they generally don’t seem too long/short, so it works for me.

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I go with word counts because page counts are so easy to manipulate (font size, page size, font type, spacing, etc) – I remember playing with those back in school when a teacher would specify “X” pages and I’d come up otherwise short. I’ve tried 3Kwords, I’ve tried 25Kwords, and I’ve settled on a general rule of thumb for 6k-8k. However, I’ll tolerate less/more if the chapter/circumstances demand it. At 10k I’m generally looking to see if there’s a good way to divide it. Below 5k, and I’m considering whether the chapter should be condensed with another, or something should be added. Too short, and nobody gets engaged to click that “next” button, and too long, well, both makes it more daunting to me as an author and gives fewer natural “resting points” for the reader to set aside and come back later (I mean, if it’s a really long story, they need breaks).

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For significant characters, I try to make sure they have hobbies, phobias, and perhaps an allergy or two. (Like names, I’ve got a random picker app that makes suggestions.) Culture/ethnicity is simply one piece to the character, not the full picture.

Every character you write will have, at its core, a reflection of you, after all, writing is a form of Schizophrenia that won’t get you locked up (well, normally).

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powder

marshmellow

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You can toy with the reader further by adding in some red herrings, misleading the characters and readers to the wrong conclusion, at least for a while. As to the level of hints, you can pepper both subtle and more obvious, as desired, as some readers will appreciate them, others, well, they’d gloss over them and be in for a bigger surprise.

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