Is my first chapter too long or too short?

Yay I finally finished the first chapter of my story and about time to. It ended up being 2714 words in length.

Would you say that's too long or too short? I really have no experience with this stuff.

I'd say that's a perfectly fine first chapter length. Other good books have done much longer, and they're still successful.

edited 16th Oct '10 7:43:22 PM by Five_X

It's fine. Mine is far shorter, but it's a prologue, so the length is perfectly acceptable. Besides, there's no set length as long as it works.

Cool thanks, I just read somewhere that the standard novel has 3000 words per chapter. So that seems cool .

I'd say that's a massive guideline. My chapters jump from 500 words to about six thousand easily, and so far I've gotten mostly good responses.

Depends on whether it conveys what you want it to. Wikipedia simply states that a chapter is merely a "division" in a book, so it seems that it's all fairly arbitrary anyway.

Incidentally, I'm currently reading a book whose last chapter (minus the epilogue) is over a hundred pages - i.e. probably around 36,000 words - long. If it weren't for all that plot beforehand, it'd be a novella in its own right.

My chapters are always quite short. The shortest one has 191 words. The longest is about 6500.

So basically, just make the chapters however you feel your story is best divided.

"My mother is a fish"

was the entirety of a chapter in As I Lay Dying. That book is now a classic. So, you're at least not too short.

And in The Life Of Pi:

The ship sank.

edited 17th Oct '10 1:12:59 PM by jewelleddragon

This is not a contest to see how Beige of Beige Prose we can find.

Technically, it's not beige prose. It's perfectly descriptive enough.