In the old days, a chapter was a kind of milestone or guidepost, if you will, in the novel. It sort of led you from one major point to another, often depicting sequential events in time or points of view of different characters in the story. They were fairly long and usually of varying length. Recently, I came across a very different treatment of what I imagined chapters would be in James Patterson’s “Cross Country”
Prem Rao : Stories from a Story Teller 