Directing Novel Reader Attention With Words Per Chapter
by Mary Kole | Former literary agent, now a freelance editor, writing teacher, and IP/story developer for major publishers and creators.
Catching a reader’s attention is an art, no matter how many words per chapter you spend on this all-important task. As a writer, it’s your job to decide where the reader’s attention should go and how long the story should be—in other words, how many words per chapter you devote to certain elements over others. Are you doing a good job? How many words per chapter is enough to highlight and draw reader attention to the important elements of your story?
It’s your responsibility to show the reader what matters most in your story. They don’t know yet—you need to show them the essential pieces of your character and plot. Telling vs showing them is a bad idea, so instead, you need to demonstrate what matters. But how?
Curate the Story By Allocating Words Per Chapter
Pick out the items that are important to your story and leave everything else behind. Writers often ask us how many words per chapter they should use, how many chapters, how many sections per chapter, etc. But these are the wrong questions to ask.
How many words per chapter do you need? Only enough to tell the story. And the more important something is, the more words you can devote to describing it or having the protagonist think about it. If something is mentioned once, in passing, readers may not pick up on it or think of it as important. Not a lot of words per chapter were spent on this element. But if you spend many words per chapter on characterization or action sequence or setting description, readers will intuitively know that they are meant to pay attention.
How do you pass this information along to your audience in a clear way? It helps to think of yourself as a spotlight operator in a darkened theater. You can't use a spotlight, but you can still use other tools—including the amount and type of description, the number of words per chapter, and the emotion woven into your narrative voice—to direct the reader’s attention where it needs to go.
If there's a love scene going on downstage, don't focus on what’s happening upstage. Use most of your words per chapter to aim the spotlight of the reader’s attention on what really matters, whether it’s a character or specific moment or bit of dialogue or a character’s interiority (their reaction to events in their stream of consciousness).
Drawing Reader Attention Through Description
One thing to consider when you’re attempting to get the reader's attention to important elements is the words per chapter that you use to get your message across. For example, if an amulet is significant in your fantasy worldbuilding, it should not just be mentioned in one sentence and left alone. Though you need to be careful not to go overboard with description so as not to give away any major information. Keep it noticeable, but brief.
On the other hand, if something isn't important there's no reason to discuss it in detail. For instance, if you take time and many, many words per chapter crafting the description of a man at the bus stop and his five o'clock shadow only for him never to appear again, that's a waste of time. He was merely background characters. Although the details may have been interesting, he was not deserving of a significant role. Those are wasted words per chapter.
Adjusting Reader Attention With Detail in Words Per Chapter
When you think about how you will describe certain aspects of your narrative, consider the emotion in writing attached to the description. Vital elements should have a voice connected to them and not let them sit passively on the page.
Compare these two examples:
The dog came over and sat on my lap.
The dog ambled over and reclined into my lap, his head heavy on my knee.
We might not know a lot about the dog yet, but the second description makes it clear that there is more to know about this dog and its relationship to the protagonist than the generic first description. It paints a more accurate picture with interesting words and sensory details. It’s longer, requiring more words per chapter, but you can reclaim some of those words by cutting description that you don’t need.
To make it even more emotional, you could say something like:
The little pup jumped into my lap and cuddled his chin into my hand. I couldn’t be mad, even if Mrs. Turner was going to be angry about another missed assignment.
This clearly conveys an emotional bond between the narrator and the dog. It also provides context for how the dog fits into the story. All three descriptions are valid, but the third one stands out for its length and emotion. When revising for descriptions, you should act as the spot operator and steer the reader’s attention with your words.
(Also, for those of you who prefer hard numbers, 2,000 to 5,000 words per chapter is a fine rubric for most modern fiction. Manuscripts for younger readers, like middle grade, tend to have fewer words per chapter. But this is just a jumping-off point. What you do with those words per chapter is what really matters!)
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