Must a novel have chapters?

I think chapters serve as a way to give a sense of pacing and progression to the novel. Off the top of my head I can only recall reading one novel that wasn’t divided into chapters. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, which I very much enjoyed. That said, it could have used a more active editor, but its issues aren’t because it lacks chapter divisions.

You play video games right? Imaging you are playing a game that goes on and on and on until it’s over, nothing to mark the stages whatoever, how do you feel?

Also, the chapters make it easier to look up certain pacing in the content.

I’ve read a couple of books without chapters. One reason that I think a lot of people like chapters is because it gives people a place to pause. I know that if I sit down to read, I find it really, really hard to stop until I tell myself “Okay, really, pause at the next chapter!”. Otherwise it’s like some invisible pull that will not let me put the book down. Which is okay at certain times, but at others, I have to take a break to do other things.

I also think it allows the author an opportunity to switch from one aspect of the plot to the next. Which is entirely possible without chapters, as well, but I think it’s just a way for brains to organize everything they’ve taken in.

I like milestones. I look at books as a game and like to see my progress. I use actual bookmarks to go “I am 60% done”. Chapters help with that.

If I was to read a book without chapters I would lose my mind. Please don’t delete them.

What everyone else said.

… Chapters aren’t strictly necessary to tell a story, but they do serve to chunk the story.

They also tell the reader about the structure—generally I think each chapter promises to have at least one significant development, and often something smaller that is resolved or complicated.

It’s also convention, and conventions aren’t bad; often, conventions let a reader look past the familiarity and onto the more salient, different, nuanced aspects of the piece.

On the other hand, sometimes a convention gets in the way of what you’re trying to accomplish, or makes it unnecessarily difficult. Then it might be best to ditch it (or modify it).

I had a professor who always said something to the effect: “it’s always okay to break the rule, as long as you have a good reason why you’re breaking the rule.”

If you want a more experimental form, go ahead and play with it. Or if chapters just seem to be interrupting the flow of the story more than enhancing certain moments/aspects/developments, maybe your story is one that shouldn’t have chapters… it could also be that since you’re in a revising mode with a complete draft, the places chapters belong have shifted from what the initial outline/plan had indicated. Or, it sounds like you might have titled chapters—if you’re not liking the titles, you could also experiment with just using numbers.

If you omit chapters (which is doable if it serves the story), I would suggest still having some sort of break. Many books that don’t have chapters still have natural transitions in the story, shifts in time or POV, or miniature conflicts resolved. They’ll usually put an extra carriage return between those moments for some sort of break or change of pace for the reader. Chapters serve the readers, so I would suggest just make sure you have a good reason to omit them, and then replace them with some other form of story chunking.

Btw congrats on the novel-in-progress!

Your book, your rules. Just write it good well.

I believe chapters are important, for all the reasons stated above, although as @CWOTUS says, you make the rules (not your critics or readers). Personally, though, I prefer writing (and nowadays, mosty reading) short stories, in which the action plows through from start to finish without taking grammatical breaths.

Yes, it should. If for no other reason than any reader needs a break, to digest the plot and think about what is to come next.

You use paragraphs, right? Think of a chapter as a meta-paragraph.

I should think that the matter would depend on your plans for the book. That word “ditching” implies that you already have the masterpiece formatted with chapters in place. So ditch the chapters in the rerewrite and compare the results. I suppose it’s like cooking. Which reminds me, you realize that you are doomed to be pressured by your fans here for “tastes” of your concoction.

Now I do think chapters are absolutely necessary for some novels. In the aforementioned The Road the lack of chapter divisions is unconventional, but chapters aren’t strictly needed to pace the action. There’s no significant shifting of scenes, no significant jumps in time, and no switching between different characters. The entire novel is from the standpoint of the two prime characters – “the Man” (a father) and “the Boy” (his son) (no real names are given for any character). Indeed, throughout most of the novel they are the only characters present. Also, again, no significant shifts in scene or time. The entire novel is an almost moment-by-moment account (relatively speaking) of their trek across the southeastern United States.

Contrast that with J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic The Lord of the Rings. Conceived and written by Tolkien as a single work, it was only separated into three individually titled volumes at the behest of the publisher (who at the time, mid-1950s, did not believe they would be able to profitably sell it as a single volume).

Beyond the usual chapter divisions each volume is further divided into two “books”. This isn’t particularly meaningful with the first volume (The Fellowship of the Ring) as that volume follows the group as a whole. Where the “book” division becomes important is with the second (The Two Towers) and third (The Return of the King) volumes. At the end of volume I the group is splintered into separate, smaller groups. From then on each “book” follows one group while ignoring the other (who’s adventures are then picked up in the proceeding “book”). Furthermore, sometimes when one “book” begins the point in time may be several days earlier than where the previous “book” ended.

So structurally the novel is very different from the films, and without this chapter and “book” division that novel would be confusing to read.

You’re writer too? Sounds gr8..) To answer your question i don’t think it would be a good idea not to have chapters. Otherwise it will feel like an endless story. It gives some sort of break mentally when reader ends chapter. Also it is helpful in increasing interest in of the reader by giving appropriate chapter names.

Aside from giving the reader a convenient way to break up the story, chapters often serve as a way to manage transitions – from one point-of-view to another, for example, or for flashbacks, introducing new characters, parallel story lines or even “alternate universe” scenarios (depending on how fictional or fantastic you want the novel to be) – but they also serve as a means to break the story into stories-within-the-story, to build tension and introduce cliffhangers and other elements of drama. Depending on the timeline of the story, they can also indicate something as mundane as the passage of time: the days, weeks, months or years over which the plot occurs.

But they’re not as necessary, I think, as paragraph breaks, or as vital as good sentence construction in which subject links to predicate with meaningful verbs – and tenses and forms – and every word advances the story in some way, however slight.

So my advice to you would be to just write your book. Write it as feels correct to you. Then edit the hell out of it, re-write it if and as necessary, and then talk to your editor and beta readers to get their feedback.

I would not recommend writing a book without chapters to a beginning author as a way to flout convention – though it seems like it would be a flouting of convention, of a sort – but if it works, then it works. And if it doesn’t, then you’ll hear that from your initial readers and your editor, and you can re-write again then if necessary, or just say “To hell with all of you!” and go ahead and do it your way, anyway.

I’m sure the first stream-of-consciousness writers or free verse poets heard a ton of negative feedback from their first efforts, too. Good thing they didn’t all listen too closely about “not doing things that way, because it just isn’t done.”

I think a book ought to have dividers of some kind, but they certainly don’t need to be numbers or chapter titles. The books I’ve read without them seem to have a sort of breathless quality, like a salesman at the door delivering a pitch all in one rush without pausing to let you have a word. I think the separators help the author control pacing and support the reader’s sense of the rhythm of the book.

Chapter endings may not necessarily mark stopping places, though. Many authors try to structure their chapters to end on cliff-hangers, explicitly to keep you turning the pages.

It’s truly up to you. The main thing is to use the structure, including devices and conventions, that most effectively accomplishes what you are trying to convey to the reader.

Thanks for that feedback. I’ll probably add them back in – great points all around.

I was just getting fed up with constantly second-guessing myself – “is this chapter long enough? It’s like half the length of the last one. Does that matter?” So I started just putting double carriage returns at major scene changes. I think what I’ll plan to do is just write the novel and then choose places for chapter divisions at the end.

Well, you’re supposed to have chapters because they help make things clear. Most readers would probalby be confused (or even bored, without the chapter titles) without the book being divided in parts. But it would be a great choice not to divide your text at all, if you want to give a weird feeling to it, maybe play around with punctuation marks?