of or relating to the outside or outer part; outer: an external surface. 2. Medicine/Medical. to be applied to the outside of a body, as a remedy: for external use only. 3. situated or being outside something; acting or coming from without: external influences.
New writers tend to assume that a chapter must be a certain set length in order to maintain the average novel length of around 80,000 â 95,000 words, but in truth, chapters can be as long or as short as you need them to be. There is no formula.
Now, that's good advice. But I don't like to do things half-heartedly, so here is the bigger picture of length in fiction... A novel is anything over 50,000 words. A novella is between 20,000 and 50,000 words. A short story has a word count of under 20,000 words.