Chapter breaks in novels are like the Becher’s Brook jump in National Velvet. That’s where the bodies pile up. Many a book has been declared dead to its reader and cast aside never to be remembered–and all because the reader reached a chapter break and didn’t care enough to keep reading.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that when chapter breaks are done right, many a reader has kept scrabbling through the pages, deep into the night, because he simply couldn’t look away from the enticing hooks the author kept planting at the ending and beginning of each chapter.

That’s not enough good news for you?

Storming (Amazon affiliate link)

How about this: Any writer can learn to write amazing, can’t-look-away chapter breaks. Why? Because the necessary techniques are all completely learnable and completely practical. Welcome to the fourth installment in our month-long series featuring important writing techniques I used or had reinforced for me while writing my soon-to-be-released historical dieselpunk novel Storming (coming December 4th).

What Is a Chapter?

I bet I’ve gotten this question half a dozen times this year alone. Lots of writers want to know exactly what constitutes a chapter. What are the guidelines? Is there an optimum word count to shoot for? How many scenes should be included?

The short answer is that there really aren’t any guidelines for what makes up a chapter.

A chapter in a novel is an arbitrary division in the text, put there for the sole reason of breaking the book into “sitting”-sized chunks for readers. As such, you can pretty much put that break any ol’ where you want. But first…

Important Facts About Chapters

1. Chapter length influences your story’s pacing

Shorter chapters equal a faster pace; longer chapters equal a more leisurely pace (and also sometimes a more daunting challenge in convincing readers to read on).

2. Chapter length varies according to genre

Literary fiction gets away with more unusual choices for chapter length. Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer-Prize winner Gilead contains no chapter breaks. William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying contains perhaps the shortest chapter in literature:

Suspense and YA books often get shorter chapters (James Patterson routinely uses chapters of a single page), while other genres tend to use more standard-sized chapters.

3. Most chapters average between 2,500-5,000 words

This is the length readers generally expect from chapters. Between 4-5,000 is pretty average for me. Although not absolutely necessary, it’s usually a good idea to try to keep all your chapters around the same length. This allows readers to fall into the rhythm of your story and helps them know what to expect whenever they begin a new chapter.

4. Chapters can contain multiple scenes or only part of a scene

Chapters are an arbitrary division within the story, based on word count and pacing needs. Scenes, on the other hand, are never arbitrary. Scenes are based on a solid and set structure. This structure can be contained in or divided by chapters, but is internally unaffected by the chapter breaks.

With those guidelines out of the way, let’s take a look at how to successfully break–and begin–your chapters. We want to make the chapter breaks an integral part of your story, rather than a stumbling block between your readers and the rest of your book.

How to End Your Chapters: Disaster!

Here’s the only thing you need to know about chapter endings: they must contain a hook.

What? You thought the hook only belonged in the beginning? Not a’tall. There are hooks all over the place in a good story. Every scene should introduce new elements and raise new questions that draw readers deeper and deeper into the web you’re weaving.

The story itself should be interesting enough and the reader’s investment deep enough that he’ll keep reading even past muffed chapter breaks. But you can’t take that chance.

As with all hooks, the essence here is a question. We need to pique reader curiosity and make them want to read on to find out what’s gonna happen. (Click here to discover ten different types of chapter-break hooks.) This absolutely does not mean that every chapter should end with a cliffhanger, especially a “false” cliffhanger in which you lead readers to fear an outcome at the end of the chapter, only to have them turn the page to a “Whoops, gotcha! Don’t worry the protagonist is really fine.”

How to Use Scene Structure to Create Solid and Gripping Chapter Breaks

My absolutely favorite way to end chapters is a technique I used over and over again in Storming. It relies entirely on scene structure. Remember, scene structure is based on the idea that scenes can be broken down into two halves: scene (action) and sequel (reaction). Those halves are then further broken down into three more parts apiece:

Scene (Action):

Goal

Conflict

Disaster (Outcome)

Sequel (Reaction):

Reaction

Dilemma

Decision (which leads right into the goal in the next scene)

At a glance, what do you think looks like consistently the most interesting part of the structure? The disaster, right? This is the “big” moment in the scene. This is where the conflict explodes. This is where new questions are raised. And what are questions except hooks, right? This is why I almost always end my chapters with the disaster part of the scene.

The great thing about this approach is that it allows you to begin your next chapter with the character’s reactions. Don’t be fooled: despite the fact that the reaction part of the scene isn’t focused on action, the sequel is always one of the most intriguing. Do it right and readers will eagerly read right through your chapter breaks just to see how your characters react to what just happened in the disaster.

For Example

One of the chapters late in Storming ends with a scene disaster in which the protagonist, biplane pilot and reluctant hero Hitch Hitchcock, is bashed on the head by the bad guy after a sneak attack. His options are dwindling rapidly, and he knows it:

Hitch might be dizzy and hurting, but he wasn’t that far out of it. Throwing Jael at Zlo’s mercy and then turning Zlo loose sounded like the worst idea yet.

He closed his eyes again and blocked out the murmuring and shouting of the gathering crowd. For just the moment, he let himself wish he and Jael were far away, some place where no one knew where they were—not Griff or Nan or Campbell, and definitely not Zlo.

It was a fruitless wish and he knew it. No way he was letting her sacrifice herself, no matter how stubborn she decided to be. But there was also no way, this time, that he could run away—which meant he could hardly take her away either, even if she’d go.

How to Begin Your Chapters: In Medias Res

When we think of the challenges of chapter breaks, we usually think of chapter endings. But that’s just the half of it. The beginning of the next chapter is every bit as important. How many times, as a reader, have you been hooked by a great chapter ending, only to take a peek at the following chapter’s opening and put the book aside anyway because the new chapter’s opening failed to pull you in?

In a lot of ways, chapter openings are even trickier than endings. Like the beginning of the book itself, the beginning of each chapter has a lot of stuff it needs to juggle. It needs to reset the scene, establish the setting and the characters’ whereabouts within it, subtly reference what just happened in the previous chapter, and hook readers right back into the story.

In short, a good chapter opener must begin with a hook of its own, just as the previous chapter needed to end with a hook. But even a good hook can’t save your new chapter if you get lost in all that other stuff you have to do in setting the stage. In short: don’t clear your throat.

How to Cut the Filler From Your Chapter Openings by Beginning In Medias Res

This is one of my favorite writing tricks of all time. Beginning your chapters in medias res–or “in the middle” of things–offers countless benefits. It slims your word count (sometimes by a lot), it unburies your best hooks, and it follows Elmore Leonard’s classic advice to the letter:

The basic guideline here is simple: Begin your chapter at the last possible moment.

Often, our instinct is to fill in all the gaps between chapters. Especially when there’s a significant passage of time from one chapter to another, we feel like we need to catch readers up to speed. I often find myself doing this whenever I start writing a chapter:

Two days passed since last we saw our intrepid hero. He spent those days gathering his resources and healing his wounds. He’d gotten a secret communique through to his commander, letting him know what had happened [insert summary of previous chapter] and what his plans were [insert summary of everything that’s going to happen in this chapter].

Even in the most leisurely of novels, readers don’t ever need to be dragged through that kind of meandering throat-clearing. Really, all that’s happening there is you, the author, trying to get your bearings in this new chapter. Nothing wrong with that. Just make sure you cut those paragraphs once you actually get down to the hook.

My favorite trick is to begin the chapter with the action already rolling, then briefly break to set the scene and refer to the previous chapter’s events. Then I just keep right on going.

For Example

After the chapter closer quoted above, I opened Hitch’s next scene (or, more properly, the reaction “sequel”) with him already deep into the next day’s events:

The top of Hitch’s head felt about like a hard-boiled egg someone had smashed in with a spoon. That didn’t do much to make him hungry for the two sunny-side-ups staring at him from his plate. He hunched over the counter at Dan and Rosie’s Cafe on Main Street and cradled his mug of lukewarm coffee.

What he needed at the moment was a plan. Any plan. Even a stupid one would do—so long as it didn’t involve Jael finding that consarned pendant and turning herself over to Zlo. He growled.

Bonus: How to Bridge Your Chapter Breaks With Connecting Images, Symbols, and More

The two above tricks for ending and beginning your chapters are really all you need to know in order to write can’t-look-away chapter breaks. But here’s a little bonus trick my editor CathiLyn Dyck and I worked on in Storming to seamlessly bridge chapters by harmonizing the ending and beginning with subtly connected imagery and symbolism.

She wrote to me:

Cliffhang Hitch’s [chapter] closing into Walter’s [chapter] opening—really, the cliffhanger is just a hook that happens before the next chapter’s opening. A hook can be anything—plot, mood, prose device, character reaction. Here I’d suggest a prose device, because the plot does follow through very nicely and the character of Hitch isn’t going to be in view when we turn the page. The moon is silent, and Walter is silent. The moon hides this mystery of falling, Walter hides the mystery of his silence…. You can create a segue through parallels with just a couple of lines of light sketching.

This idea is akin to what is called “match cutting” in movie editing. We see this in scene breaks in which the movie cuts from an image in one scene to a similar image in the next scene, such as in this example from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

The options here are endless and should certainly be used with a gentle touch, since this technique can easily become on-the-nose and over-the-top. But it’s a nice little way to help readers subconsciously segue between scenes.

For Example

Here’s the segue I ended up using between the chapters my editor was talking about above.

Hitch stayed where he was and looked up at the moon. Seemed like the old girl was winking at him. Might it be she knew something they didn’t? What secrets did she hold within all that silence?

[Chapter Break]

Walter liked the early mornings, especially in the summer—with the full moon still hovering near the horizon, on its way to setting. It nestled, white as a heifer’s face, against the blinding blue of the morning sky. He craned his head back.

Use these three simple and immediately practicable tips to become the master of your chapter breaks. Instead of risking your chapter breaks being a stumbling block between readers and the end of the book, make those breaks work for you in keeping your readers fascinated by your story all the way through.

Wordplayers, tell me your opinion! How have you been using your chapter breaks to hook your readers forward? Tell me in the comments!

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