Where should you end them?
I feel that every author ends their chapters differently. A lot of writers end on a "break". They end where you would think that a chapter should end--somewhere that something has been completed, and somewhere that they can side into the next chapter with ease. However other writers, like myself, like to end on a revelation. This way the reader wants to read more--find out what happens next. But how should you end your chapters?
There is basically one thing that you need in a section of writing to separate it from the other sections and call it a chapter:
1.) Something has to be accomplished. If not, then chapters will just seem like breaks in order to have a break...like you, as the writer, forced them in there because you felt like you needed to. Have each chapter have a point to it. Do something productive--or unproductive if you're digging your protagonist into a hole--but do something.
With either of the two examples of ending chapters, both end with having accomplished something. In the first example, something was obviously accomplished. In the second section, something was revealed, accomplished. As long as something that furthers the plot of your manuscript is completed during the duration of your chapter, then you've successfully reached the meaning of a chapter.
How long should a chapter be?
This is also very much so up to personal opinion. How long does it take you to have something important accomplished in your novel? For some people that might be ten pages, and for others it could be sixty. As a rule of thumb, have a big something, or a few little somethings get accomplished in the length of your chapter. If you find that you have an eighty-page chapter, then you might want to look into your novel and see if you conjoined large plot-revelations into one chapter.
And that's that! Chapter break. See you guys next week! (Figuratively, of course.)
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