Attempting first novel

[JesusDontWantMeForASunbeam]

It's women's fiction. I've just written the first 1227 words (5 year old DS has been up vomiting since 12am and I needed something to do!)

How many words am I looking at per chapter? I'm aiming for 80-100,000 words for the book (I think that's right?)

Any advice would be great. Or if anyone wants a writing buddy

Aim for 6000 per chapter. I think that's about right. Word count should be max 90k, try your best not to exceed this.

Perfect. Thank you!

What I did was got hold of the sort of book I wanted to write and analysed it. I looked at the number of chapters, worked out the approximate number of words, looked at where the story peaked, where new characters entered, etc. It stood me in really good stead.

6k word chapters are on the longer end and are more appropriate for fantasy doorstoppers and historical fiction.

2k-4k word chapters are more appropriate for women's fic.

I thought that, too, zonoverlords. I write psychological suspense and the chapters are around 2,000 words long.

Yes, nice bite-size chunks for readers to easily get through. Helps make the book unputdownable!

I would advise not to dwell too much on chapter lengths in your first draft - end your chapters where a natural break occurs or on a cliffhanger. When you come to redraft it, you might find you want to make changes to the structure anyway; and at that point you can address the chapter lengths if they seem wrong. The first draft is all about getting your story onto the page, so give yourself permission not to be perfect.

I agree with the advice not to dwell on chapter length, especially on the first draft. Essentially the perfect chapter is one which is as long as it needs to be. That could be a single page in some cases.

Thank you all for the advice

Does it matter if some chapters are longer than others?

Does it matter if some chapters are longer than others?

No.

Not at all, in my experience as a reader.

It doesn't matter, but if eg one chapter is 10,000 words and the next is 1,000 words then it's going to seem quite odd to the reader. I agree with those who say don't worry about the chapter length in your first draft - just get it all written and you can make decisions like that later. If you polish a first draft as you're going along you'll find you really don't want to lose scenes - better to have it rough at first, then sort it into the order you want and add or delete bits, then polish it up.