Chapter Length

[Bromo Sapien]

So I'm in the middle of another reread of the series and am currently about midway through CoT. One of the things that has struck me about this one compared to the others is the length of the chapters. I, like most people, use the chapters as a breaking point; if I have to do something that isn't immediately pressing, I'll finish the chapter and then go do it. I feel like I can't realistically do that for CoT simply because each chapter is so immense. Obviously a big part of that is the reduced number of storylines being followed in the book, what with Rand recovering from the Cleansing and many others waiting for the rest to catch up. But just for something to do, I decided to find out which books had, on average, the longest chapters and see if that made a difference in the books. I used the WoT Wiki page for page and chapter numbers.

 

NS - 334/26 = 12.85

tEotW - 782/53 = 14.75

tGH - 681/50 = 13.62

tDR - 674/56 = 12.04

tSR - 1001/58 = 17.26

tFoH - 963/56 = 17.20

LoC - 987/55 = 17.95

aCoS - 855/41 = 20.85

tPoD - 672/31 = 21.68

WH - 766/35 = 21.89

CoT - 822/30 = 27.4

KoD - 837/37 = 22.621

tGS - 766/50 = 15.32

ToM - 864/57 = 15.16

 

Those are the numbers. As you can see, I was right about the extreme length of CoT chapters and the lengths got longer as the series progressed. What I found interesting, and why I decided to publish this, was that the most popular string of books (tSR-LoC) all landed in the 17-18 pages/chapter range and the books most often seen as less favorable all hit 20+ pgs/ch. A lot of people seem to complain about the pacing of some of these later books; maybe it's not the progression of the storyline that these people disliked but just that RJ focused more on one character at a time as opposed to bouncing through the storylines like he did in the earlier books.

 

Thoughts?

[RandA lThor]

That's either a really weird coincidence or something that was happening without us knowing it. It could have been that, but it might have been a combination of long chapters with boring story lines that seemed to go on forever. that might have been it. Not saying that all or even most of the story lines were boring, just that some were.

[yoniy0]

That's truly interesting. However, I believe NStN and TGH were just as compelling as TSR, and I'm not sure what that would mean in these terms. Perhaps it's a threshold; you can't cross some level and retain the same level of immersion in the plot.

[rand4747]

Well as he got into his story he wrote more for everything that happens I think, and each chapter basically brings a change, of major POV or another event or something else, so each is being made longer than before. So Its just a bit of waffling that happens when people get into the story I guess, thats why his 6 book series became more and more to become eventually 12 and now 14.

[Manscher]

One thing I noticed with the later books is how he would write pretty much all the chapters for 1 person in succession, and then basically forget about them rest of the book, while in the earlier books he bounced around between various characters and story arcs all the time.

 

Example is the Shaido - Faile arc with Perrin, he would dedicate the first chapters of a book only to that, and then basically forget about it for the rest of the book. So if an arc was already a bit slow or boring, you suddenly had to endure 100+ pages of it in a row, whereas earlier you might only get 20-30 pages and then a relief in form of another story arc.

[XoMeltdownoX]

One thing I noticed with the later books is how he would write pretty much all the chapters for 1 person in succession, and then basically forget about them rest of the book, while in the earlier books he bounced around between various characters and story arcs all the time.

 

Example is the Shaido - Faile arc with Perrin, he would dedicate the first chapters of a book only to that, and then basically forget about it for the rest of the book. So if an arc was already a bit slow or boring, you suddenly had to endure 100+ pages of it in a row, whereas earlier you might only get 20-30 pages and then a relief in form of another story arc.

 

Agree!

[TristanWebb]

He was a victim of his own success towards the end. When every book you write gets the number one spot it is alot harder for editors to tell you that you need to pare down something. Probably doubly harder when you are married to said editor. On rereads I find myself skipping all of the Faile chapters when she is captures simply because nothing happens. Elayne in Camelyn is a skim for the same reason, but I like Birgitte so they get a bit more attention. There is no excuse for them to be so long IMO, especially the Fail/Perrin/Shaido arc that lasted 3-4 books. If there were timeline problems why wasn't it simply skipped for a book and we come back to it with Perrin all scraggly and heading to the Seanchan for help?

[Terez]

I wouldn't read too much into those numbers, since, for example, the font size for books 4-6 is much smaller. Compare one page in TSR to one page in COT (hardback) and you'll see what I mean.

[Terez]

Here, these comparisons are more accurate, by word count per chapter:

 

NS - 4685

TEOTW - 5771

TGH - 5341

TDR - 4489

TSR - 6790

TFOH - 6323

LOC - 7077

ACOS - 7195

TPOD - 7312

WH - 6822

COT - 8762

KOD - 8517

TGS - 6072

TOM - 5719

[yoniy0]

Probably doubly harder when you are married to said editor.

I don't know. Has it been your experience that marrying a woman gets in the way of her telling you what to do?

[Maleshub]

Has it been your experience that marrying a woman gets in the way of her telling you what to do?

 

That would fit perfectly in any of the books!