Does anyone know how long a novel is supposed to be, how many chapters should be in a novel, and how long a chapter should be?
It depends on region you come from !!?
Not kidding.
literature from different culture sounds to portray the happenings in different way,Even though the ideology is same.
There are 40- chapters novel , 30, 20’s .
Most welcomed are 15-20 chapter novel in busy world.
Sometime , 40 - chapter novel has chapters typical 3-4 pages to end that particular content of the novel.
next chapter might go to 7-9 pages to end next particular content .
Some region , there are no CHAPTERS !!!
Some region accepts both style !!!
I wrote this note to for some one else who questioned why novel can never be good TV series.
The story below is good meant for novel(I thought to write) , but !!!
Why lot of content in novel changes when made to reach people through different media, especially TV audience.
My story note -
some 20’s white guy in college discovers his gene content is partly Native Americans.
Confused ,amazed ( ?) , shares the report with his family members .
Then his grand father reveals , Saying it was his great grand mother’s contribution
Grand father says - ‘It’s just matter of incident that my grand father’s look happened to be Ginger side.
Should I call it luck or just any incident ? I don’t know ?’
Then , he hands over the dairy written by his grandfather (auto biography-
who went in search of his parents
who got separated from him but was raised up by his father’s friend .)
Rest comes in series .
But real note happens and finishes ,even trailers keep showing gene report sharing action and
revelation of family background clip again and again for almost next 10 - 15 episodes (3 weeks).
Everything happened interestingly . Not boring .
The name happens to based on the Dairy writer,
Marshall’s Dairy .
Marshall Life story involves , description of love story between his parents and him getting separated from them in child hood , search/voyage for them , He meets interesting old lady while he is aborting his failed mission of search. He also states unusually pleasant time spend with her .
He has poetry book with him which was literature work of his father given by fathers friend , includes his fathers meeting/relationship with his mother that got noted as / into poems.
He returns , falls in love with lady of great family background like Boston Brahmins. And becomes part of them. His last wish to get his body buried where his parent / grand mother tribe had grave yard.
20’s guy and his grand father 's investigation in dairy and poetry , says that old lady might have been their real great grand mother .
They go to the same place , find graveyard .
Interestingly, white guy’s lady and white guy’s graveyard lies few foot away where marshal’s body was buried.
As stated in dairy and investigation states, it might be that she is their great grand mother.
DNA gene test proves it !!
Grand father says - ’ How pathetic ! he never knew she was his mother ’
It’s audience level of maturity and intelligence that decide what to stay or not in channel.
Certainly not Art . If art is part of show which has made it , then I call it merely a matter of coincidence !!!
Never make it a novel , It won’t be liked by huge number
More than anything , You won’t make living !!!
The style I have told can bring both money and name.
to get greater audience TRP , Native American link can be changed to other racial background , who got great number in watching American show.
Make marshall travel between continents of Europe /Australia/ (for his father side)
In ship , rain wreckage, disaster , they all look good .
May be Irish background be good. Because most of American are of Irish background.
His father enter America.
Marshal has got typical surname , it is nick name given by tribe people of native american when he was kid . It later becomes family name of Marshal family .
So… In a typical popular fiction novel, 12 font, courier new, a typical chapter would be about how many words?.. And there would be about 30 chapters?
Somewhere between 1 and 30 in a popular modern novel.
But it doesn’t really matter in this abstract way. Let your agent or publisher worry about that later. Way later.
Have you finished the novel?
A novel novel in its structure would have chapters that aren’t always labeled with integers. A novel so novel would even have sub-chapters that would at times fail to correspond with the base and would often follow subsequent (or even prior!) bases. Worse still, the chapters would be irrationally numbered and the pages would be ordered in a non-linear 5th dimensional hexahedron. Quantifying the book in any way would be excruciating, reading it more so.
There’s the wonderful writerJulio Cortázar who wrote
though I prefer his short stories which are very interesting, wild, and take some work.
Now I’m really confused…
What is the context for your question? ARe you worried about editors? Have you started a novel and want to do it ‘the right way’? ARe you simply curious about the number?
A quick peek at the best seller shelves of a bookstore will give you a sense of the usual range. But if you are writing literature, rather than a hoped to be best seller, you can do what you like. And you don’t have to have chapters either.
Ok, sorry, maybe simplification is in order. To distinguish the chapters within a book it’s best to base it on the number слабоумный, which is:
1.4847584889477365362147213438247837483247832137485506906689869578435157814747894567329848634263985938594358478751875847815715801059570195840957175901 (to estimate) X the идиот (generally 8.7764744784982784327 - also to estimate).
This number is neither applicable to pages, words nor letters, but the неграмотный, which is a systematic representations of applicable portion of the meanings inherent in each каприз presented in the proximity of the surrounding whole.
Relying on this formula is especially important should novelty be the only consideration available within the work. Precision is helpful for distinction, ask and I’ll provide the full decimalization of слабоумный and the идиот, assuming you have the disk space.
I think the length should not be predetermined but arrived at almost like coincidence. Not merely coincidence, though, but numerically convincing to the degree, that it ceases to be mere coincidence, as to become almost as a manifest certainty. A rapidly escalating probability curve, as that which foe some odd reason present themselves in certain numbers. A synchronicity may exist, for instance between the numbers 666 and 999 for instance, where there appears to be a mirror imaging, or perception and precept. Hope i am not digging for an amalgam which no longer exists.
No more than a few pages.
What do you means “supposed” to be?
James Joyce’s Ulysses, No Chapters; no headings, no punctuation.
The answer is not related to ‘typical’.
It’s about the content and the context.
Why not open a book?
I think you are mistaking a synchronicity of appearance for one of value.
It is utterly arbitrary the 999 and 666 seem reflectively synchronous because they only appear that way in Arabic numerals of base 10 which are purely culturally contingent.
Please observe the idiocy of mysticism and numerology.
Long enough to cover the subject; short enough to be interesting–like a woman’s skirt.
Suppose to, should, should. Give up those words and just sit down and write. You’ll know when the chapters are finished. You’ll know when the novel’s finished. Just like you know when it’s time to turn a corner, like you know when a journey’s reached its end. You’ll know when it’s that time. Even if you get lost, eventually you’ll find your way ~~ like every author has.
Maybe your question is more about postphoning beginning to write - that is, if you have that in mind.
Nice quote!
Just long enough, i.e., not too long.
And not too short.
In other words, the same length as a piece of string.