Activity

It’s a question I see people asking quite a lot around the place. “Should my paragraphs be long or short?” Closely followed by “How long should my chapters be?”

I also see people around the place saying “Your chapters should be at least 5 thousand words long” or “don’t write short paragraphs.” Or sometimes people will go the other way and say “don’t do chapters any longer than 4k, no matter what.”

Now, 5k chapters are okay. 1k chapters are also okay. One sentence paragraphs are okay. Longer paragraphs are okay. But none of them are okay all the time.

 

The length of your paragraphs and chapters—and even sentences—will depend on your genre and target audience.

If you’re writing epic fantasy, your predominant audience is going to be epic fantasy readers. All the epic fantasy books I’ve read are incredibly long, so I’m going to make a generalization here: most of your readers will be expecting and ready for long paragraphs and long chapters. Because that’s what most of that genre books have.

YA dystopian/futuristic, your audience is predominantly teenagers who want a lot of action and short sentences, paragraphs, and chapters.

 

All genres have their own unique variations.

 

Six of the nine novels I’ve written are YA dystopian or sci fi, and my chapters average out at about 1.5 thousand words. I like using short paragraphs, and sometimes one-sentence paragraphs too, because I like the punchiness and impact those can have.

If I was writing a different genre for a different age group, those statistics would look totally different.

 

The activity: take a look at the genre and target audience of your own book/s. What length paragraphs and chapters do those genres predominantly have? Are yours matching those basic patterns?

 

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