Musing about wordcounts, and a question for Fear readers · 3:27pm Feb 2nd, 2013
Okay, so. Before we start, I'd just like to assure everyone that the next chapter of Fear is going well. I'm up to around 4000 words, so progress is definitely being made. Have no worries about that.
My question is this: how do you feel about chapter lengths? My personal standpoint as an author is that individual chapters should be short-to-medium length, outside of the context of oneshots. For me, chapters are a way of breaking up the story into manageable, logical chunks; they act as a marker that says to my reader, "Are you tired? If so, now would be a pretty good time to take a break." They're a basic courtesy, especially on an internet platform where you can't simply bookmark an individual page, and you have to reread a bunch of stuff you've already gone through just to get back to where you were after taking a break. In terms of how long I want my own work to be, I have always used the metric of a novel being 70,000 words and containing 25 chapters, which would make the average chapter 2,800 words. Sometimes I dip over or under that, depending on whether I can find a good place to end scene or not, but that's shop.
(In a sidenote, I actually have fairly strong opinions on the matter; I generally consider chapters over 7000 words in length to be too long, and if I see chapters of 10,000 words or over, on the internet in particular, I immediately assume the author is incompetent, no questions asked. Knowing when to cut off your work and give your readers a rest is just as much a part of being a writer as description or characterisation, and if you can't manage it, you need practice. Even if your work is something like 200,000 words in length, which would actually fit the ratio of 20 chapters above, you're still an idiot with no respect for your readers; stories like that should probably be 40 chapters of 5,000. Or, y'know, be split into terms of one story and a sequel, which would probably be a better solution anyway. Of course, all of this is just my own opinion, and all cases differ, but that doesn't change the fact that, in my mind at least, over-long chapters are a sign of both rudeness and incompetence.
That said, I generally consider oneshots to have different rules. I consider oneshots to be, in essence, short stories. Now, general opinion on how long short stories are differs; most people call the minimum 1,000 words; the upper limit is variously held to be between 9,000 and 20,000 words. The Science Fiction And Fantasy Writers of America, for example, list short stories as below 7,500 words. I tend to see 10,000-12,000 words as approaching the upper limits for oneshots I'll read.)
As such, I find 6000 words or so to be as long as I want my chapters; if they get longer, something either has to go, or I need to split it. I think the coming chapter of Fear will more than exceed that, but I wanted to see what the common opinion is before I continue. Would you guys prefer two chapters of around 3,000-4,000 words each with everything I want in them, or would you prefer that I write out all the events and then cut/condense things down into a chapter of an acceptable length? If it's split, I'll be able to update sooner since I effectively have one chapter ready to go in that case, but then I'll be moving back to Music in my schedule, so it'll probably take a little longer overall to reach the conclusion of the party. However, that'll give me space and time to put in various character moments and such, whereas it's questionable whether I'd have that luxury if I kept the chapter whole.
Tl;dr: do you want a shorter chapter now and then another one later, or one long chapter whenever I finish it? I'll reserve the right to make the final decision myself, but I'm interested in what you guys think.
I measure chapters using the pacing chart that I use for planning a story. Rise and fall of action. Some times that requires longer chapters, sometimes it doesn't. I try to ignore the word count entirely.
I find 4-6k is pretty acceptable without being straining, though if the story is good enough, then chapter length doesn't mean jack to me. ;P
I will read all the words. ALL OF THEM.
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785539
Hmm...There's a lot to be said for that approach, but I never personally found pacing charts to be any use. In my own subjective experience, pace has more to do with how the events are written than what the actual events are, so planning that kind of thing beforehand doesn't work, since the pace hasn't been established by the act of writing. That's probably more me being 'book dumb' when it comes to writing, however.
As for ignoring the word count...Eh. I kind've get the idea, but I've never considered it to be a good idea. Length is a very definite part of the composition of fiction, and whilst to a certain extent it's subjective, there's also limits to how long you can expect the average reader's attention span to last. If you can't effectively make use of length, then it's just the same as if you couldn't effectively use description or any other element of the story: you'll lose effect. Whilst wordcounts aren't the be-all and end-all, and shouldn't be, since the author should be able to use their own judgement on whether the chapter needs to be longer or shorter based on the qualitative characteristics of the chapter itself, I find the wordcount to be a useful yardstick for guessing my reader's attention span and when I should give them chance to mull over what they've read.
I guess what I mean to say is that wordcounts are like cooking times. You don't need to look at them; you can tell when something's cooked by colour or smell or any number of measures. But it's handy to know, on average, how long it takes for that thing to be cooked-- even if at the end of the day you'll still have to judge it qualitatively to account for various deviations. But, of course, all this is subjective and backed up by nothing.
Ah well. I'm not exactly an expert.
785543
"though if the story is good enough, then chapter length doesn't mean jack to me"
Ah, but for me, the quality of the story is directly affected by how long it is and how it deals with that. If a story has chapters that are too long, I don't consider it as good as an equally well-written story with chapters of the right length.
785599
It varies, sometimes. Sometimes I'll have issues making it through an 8-10k chapter, or I can be on the edge of my seat through an entire 20~k chapter like in The Immortal Game.
Just sayin'~. My dedication is vastly dependent on my interest in the story, much like this one. Hearing of Fear progress = internal screaming. :3
785599
That's true. And I definitely see authors who could separate their chapters better.
What I'm going to start doing with my longer chapters is beak them up just for this site. Mark them as the same chapter and what not. Only because you can't book mark progress and I know that I usually only have half hour to hour long breaks to read and you can't do that with a 30K chapter.
785621
Yeah, that's one of my main issues with long chapters. It's not feasible to expect viewers to read 30k, which is practically a novella by itself, in one sitting, no matter how good it is. There are limits to attention span, and also simply limits in how much free time people have. It's made worse by the fact that in digital mediums, like you say, you can't just pop in a bookmark at page 79 or whatever; you have to go back and find where you were. In some ways, that's why some professional authors (like, for example, Terry Pratchett, who doesn't use chapters as a matter of principla, but rather uses scene breaks for pretty much the same effect) get a free pass whilst fanfiction writers don't. If anything, I think that makes it even more important for people writing fanfiction on this site to seperate chapters well -- it's a demand of the site's medium, and knowing how to handle/adapt to the medium you're working with is pretty much entry level stuff for people doing artistic things. (I'll skip the debate on whether fanfiction counts as artistic/creative for now).
785606
Well, in the case of Fear, I'm leaning more towards splitting the chapters at this point in time, if only to preserve consistency. If the average chapter length for Fear is about 3000 words (with chapter 4 as an outlier), it's not really good to have an 6~8000 word chapter out of nowhere. It'll be jarring. But then, we've had outliers before.
You pretty much just described my feelings on long chapters. I prefer chapters to be under 6000 words, but can tolerate them without annoyance until they reach 7000. As for you question, I would go with the split idea, so, as you say, you can have everything you want in them.
For me the word count is less important than having a decent break in there. Granted you are in control of when you put a decent break but still I would rather a chapter be slightly long but have a logical stopping point. If you think you have a logical place to stop do it. I like the idea of getting a chapter now but only if it makes for a solid stand alone chapter.