Short Is Sweet

While packing the books to bring on my holiday weekend, I had an epiphany.

My wife and I have books all over the house (of course), but each of us has a to-be-read shelf in our bedroom.  Each shelf is more or less full; when it gets down to about half, we start replenishing it with other books that have moved into our consciousness.  This weekend is going to be all about relaxing, and catching up on reading, so last night I started reading dust jackets/back covers to make my weekend selections.

And I did something that I don't remember doing much of in the past.  I flipped through each book to get a sense of its aesthetics: the type size, the leading (pronounced "ledding," a term left over from the old days of printing to describe the amount of white space between lines of type), and the chapter length. All the books I chose, I realized, had nice-size type, a good amount of leading, and fairly short chapters.

When I realized that these criteria made my selections for me, more than author, title, or plot description, I had to sit back and analyze my selection.  Is this really any better, I wondered, than kids who choose books based on the number of pictures in them?

Well, I do this for a living, of course, so I like my leisure-time reading to be a little easier than reading manuscripts.  And no matter how you slice it, a nicely typeset book is easier on the eyes than a manuscript.  Yes, I'm getting older, and my eyes are tired by the end of the day, so an extra point size in the type and a little extra leading is very welcome.  

And aren't those two factors relevant just about everywhere that people read?  Most working people read at night, when their eyes are tired and the light isn't so great.  Rarely is lighting good on public transportation such as buses or subways, or in public places. An active pursuit like reading requires more than passive entertainment like TV, so is it any surprise that many of us will look past the heavy-weight tome, with densely packed type, in favor or something with a little more air in it?

And about those short chapters.  I really believe they are one of the reasons for the success of writers like Mary Higgins Clark and James Patterson. Short chapters are terrific for suspense and allow multiple points of view to be juggled.  But for readers they offer a sense of accomplishment.  For fast readers, there's that satisfaction of having whipped through a good book quickly, even if that accomplishment is helped subtly by lots of pages only one half or one quarter filled with type.  For slow readers, there's the sense of being able to pick up the book at any time and get through a couple of chapters, instead of having to stop in the middle.  It strikes me, now that I'm writing this, that I sometimes see reader complaints on Amazon that the chapters are too long.  I used to scoff at such remarks, but I'm starting to take them more seriously.

I think there's probably an argument to be made that really short chapters may not allow for good, strong characterization.  I have to think about that a little more.  Do chapters of one, two, or three pages allow for the kind of depth that we like to see in our people, or do they necessarily require the novelist to write with very broad strokes?  I think the average chapter these days is about ten-fifteen pages long; too much more than that, and I ask my authors to break the chapter in two.  But I'm starting to think that, in some books, three 5-page chapters may be better than one 15-page chapter. I wonder what other editors and agents would say about this situation.  I think many of those looking to publish commercially successful fiction might agree with me.  I know that yesterday's epiphany is going to inform the way I look at book designs moving forward.  "Will I be want to pick this up to read at 10:30 p.m., or does it look too taxing?"

Just for comparison, I picked up some of my old college books (so old, they are printed in black and white) and some of the literature I'd had to read back in those halcyon days. No surprise--the pages are packed with unrelieved type and little "white space" to relieve the eye. No wonder reading those materials felt like such a chore.  Paper's more expensive than it used to be, as well, and adjustments in type size can save a signature (32 pages) or more, which brings your costs down and allows a wee bit of extra profit on the book.  But is tightening the book up a smart move when the purchase decision is being made in a bookstore, and Gentle Reader chooses book A, with its air and large type, over book B, with its tightly packed pages?

Comments

[Jersey Jack]

An excellent epiphany; now if I can get you to try first person, present tense again ...

[Doug Riddle]

Great post. I have even gone so far as to go to the library and pick up a large type ed. of a book if the chapters are long and dense. By the end of the evening, my back can usually take the stress of a heavy book easier then the stress on my eyes.

[carolyn]

I never feel compelled to finish a chapter be it three pages long or fifteen. And there's generally a sufficient amount of double-leaded thought-breaks within each chapter where one might stop reading for whatever reason.

[K. M. Mutch]

I tend to do my recreational reading at night before going to sleep. Last night, at the end of a chapter, I found myself looking ahead to see how many pages were in the next one before reading on even though I find the particular author addictive (Lee Child). Too many (maybe 15 pages) so I stopped where I was - until tonight. So your reasoning is persuasive to me.

[Suzanne H. Patton]

I don't think something with long chapters has to be a "huge book". I write long chapters, but I stick within the genre fiction word range. If I wrote 5 page chapters, things would probably be too broken up in certain places, it wouldn't have the flow. But I also have specific scene breaks, for when POV changes, so that helps.

But more than anything, I think if the chapter draws you in and you forget that you even read 15 pages, then that's a good book. If the chapters are short, but boring, it might sell, but a second book won't.

[michael]

Does this mean you will change the format of your blog and replace the tiny size letters jammed together in single line format with larger size letters and more empty space between lines?

[Karina Chiodo]

There is also a tendency to scan rather than read when looking at type-packed pages. But by choosing books with a more convenient typesetting, you may be missing out on good books available, too. Maybe change your reading habits, or the distance of the page from your face? Whatever it is, don't strain your eyes too much.