Chapter Length

[Commander Argus]

In longer, multiple chapter stories, do you prefer shorter chapters that can be easily digested or do you prefer longer, more in depth chapters?

[captainkodak1]

I judge by number of pages. A one shot can be about 4 to 9 pages. A regular chapter for me is around 2 to 14 pages for a normal continuing story. The average "Bloom" chapters were that long. However, sometimes my chapters can go as many as 20 pages. It really depends on what I want the chapter to say.

[Commander Argus]

I used to judge my writing by chapter length until I started posting at FF. I 'typed' just as I learned to 30 years ago on a manual and the chapters of my 'novel' were 8-20 pages long, single spaced, paragraphs indented instead of divided.

Page length, espeically in really talky chapters can be decieving. With a rapidfire dialog, 500 words can more than fill a page.

Personally, I like the more slowly posted works like LB or KP:TNG to have longer chapters. Faster writers, like Bubbahotek, the shorter chapters work for me.

[Nightspade]

Difficult question. Too long, and it gets increasingly difficult to hold reader's interest. To short and it's not enough to get them interested enough.

[zaratan]

I find a balnce of 2,000-3,000 works best to keep the attention spans of most readers to the optimum degree. Sometimes I go shorter or longer, but I tend to keep within that range, and generally like reading at that length too. It also helps that I can comfortably write that much in just 3 hours, which is usually all the time I have in a day to pump out a chapter.

Of course, there are some stories that just work better with a long chapter format. G-Go's UNION, and MrDrP's works in particular spring to mind. I've never written one that long before, my longest is only 3,800 words, but I'm going to be trying the much longer way for my 2 chapters of The Darkness Within, probably exceeding the 10,000 word mark.

So, for the most part, I prefer the 2,000-3,000 range, but if a story calls for it, and works well with it, the longer chapters are definitely worth it!

[Ezbok58a]

I usually work in word and go off of a combination of pages and words. What I usually write is usually what I like to read, and my chapters are roughly 9-14 pages long, or 2800-4000 words long. Or something like that.

Recently my chapters have been growing slowly in size, before they were just barely 10 pages, now they are usually 11-12 pages long. If it keeps me interested in writting it, then I feel the readers will feel the same way. At least I hope they do.

[Ashley Benlove]

captainkodak1 said:

I judge by number of pages. A one shot can be about 4 to 9 pages. A regular chapter for me is around 2 to 14 pages for a normal continuing story. The average "Bloom" chapters were that long. However, sometimes my chapters can go as many as 20 pages. It really depends on what I want the chapter to say.

I am the same way. I do not go by# of words, but rather the number of handwritten pages there are. And even then, it doesn't matter. I tend to try to keep my chapters about 4 to 8 and a half pages in length.

[fieryfalcon]

I prefer 6000-8000 words per chapter.

[JuPMod]

Well, I prefer chapters between 1500-8000 words. Less than 1000 words a chapter is just too small, but I'm not going to read something that takes too long to read either.

Most of my one-shots are between 1300 and 10000 words. If my story gets too long, I divide it into chapters for easier reading and downloading.

For example, I know my story "Tis the Season" is roughly 18000 words long. So I'd divided it into two 9000 words chapters. 9000 words maybe still a bit big, but it's far better to read than posting a single 18000 words chapter.

[surforst]

Tend to average around the 2000 - 3000 word mark. Mostly I measure it though by page numbers on word. I try to aim for above six pages and usually cut it off sometime after ten. Don't want it too short and if it goes too long my attention span tends to wander off.

[Scoutcraft Piratess]

I usually don't aim for a certain length when I write--it distracts me from the actual writing of the story when I'm overly worried about whether it fits a certain chapter or not. Besides, many of the novels I read vary their chapter length greatly... in a single book. Really, whatever defined novel chapters as thirty-forty pages? I find that to be more up to the author and editor than anything. On that note, what defined a novel as 500 pages?

I don't like super-short chapters, but I also hate long ones. We are not publishing novels here, we are posting stories online! The format doesn't need to be the same. Many people do not have four hours to sit down and read. Especially me; I do fifteen minutes here and there. I speed read, but that still doesn't give me time to read lots and lots of long chapters.

My process has actually changed for me. I do have one or two novel-sized stories that I began before I got into the habit of putting things online. Those have chapters of quite healthy lenghts, but they tend to be posted in smaller chunks, and most of my readers prefer that. I like to cover one or two scenes in a post-- I find it more organized that way, and it allows me to pace things so much better.

[FLiP]

Never tried to aim for a specific length, doesn't make much sense to me. All I strive for personally is to get what I wanted accomplished for that chapter. So it might take a couple thousand words, or seven to eight thousand.

[Quin Separable]

Well, for me, it depends on what type of story it is.

A fanfiction, well then, between 2000-3000 words.

An original story, well, my latest chapter was about 4500 words, so I don't mind reading that much.

But then again, it really depends on what's contained in a chapter. If there is a large fight sequence or something like that, well then longer is better IMO. However, if the chapter contains more of a "typical" day type deal, well then a bit shorter is better.

[fazhou]

The length doesn't matter as long as it's very well-written. If I'm riveted I can sit through a ream of pages, but if it's rough it can be difficult to get through just a few paragraphs.

[Panther]

I prefer 1000 to 2000. It's easier to read for me if it's in shorter parts.