I know this topic has come up from the writer's perspective, and the consensus I've heard in the past is that "chapter length is whatever the author decides works best for the story". But I've had several people suggest to me that my chapters are too long. That it is difficult to read through 12,000 words in one sitting. That there is often too much stuff happening in one chapter to mentally catalog it.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on chapter length from the reader's perspective. When reading a story, what do you feel is an "attractive" chapter length? I know when I see a chapter that's over 8k words long, something in my mind says "read this later". That's exactly the thing I'd like to avoid with my readers. Also, looking around fimfiction at popular stories, they do seem to have chapter lengths ranging from 2k to 4k if the story is novel length. For super-long stories, some go with long chapters such as 15k. The longest I've ever seen is chapter 37 of Fallout: Equestria at 51,539 words.

What do you think? Does a reader generally prefer something closer to 4k when it comes to chapters? People are busy and often want to sit down for a short read. Having to stop, bookmark, and pick it up later can be tedious or annoying. Is it wise to keep chapters short for the reader's sake?

I tend to feel that chapters should be divided where it makes sense. From a reader's point of view, I sometimes see long chapters and scratch my head as we come to the fifth or sixth scene. It seems to me that each chapter should have a main point to it. A hook, if you will. If there's too much information in the chapter, it can be difficult to absorb everything that is happening.

From a writer's standpoint, I try to keep my chapters at a maximum of three scenes for this reason. By counting scenes instead of words, I find that I can reach an appropriate length without worrying if I'm putting too much or two little into each chapter. Because of this, my chapters usually range from 2k (for chapters with one or two short scenes) to 10k (if the three scenes are longer). I'm doing this on my current main fic, which is novel length. It averages out to about the same words per chapter as most published novels. Incidentally, it also gives my chapter names an interesting theme as I take the main idea from each scene and make the chapter name into a list of what each chapter is about. This works well for me, and maybe it could help you too!

~Doc

4664111

Forgot to press respond when I commented.

4664111
It depends greatly on the reader. I, for one, like longer chapters. I think 2k chapters are far too short, and 8-12k is a reasonable length. Other people's opinions will differ.

4664111 Most of the time, about 2-5k is about right, although I also have to agree that chapters need to be divided where they make sense, and probably contain two or three scenes. I have one fic where I really break that rule hard, but it's the penultimate chapter, where several plot threads are tied up. There's a lot of action.

If a story does that, I'll go on ahead, but if it's nudging the 10k mark or going over, the truth is that I will skim.

4664127 I'm all for that.

4664111 The first few chapters in my story were several thousand words long, around 9-10. I slimmed them down more and more to an average of 3-5k in newer ones.

Since 'chapters' around here are periodically posted and not in one solid mass like your average book, I like them more as 'episodes'. So once the story feels like there's been a transition (i.e an important talk then them going to bed, followed by them waking up the next morning doing something else) I'd cut it into two chapters.

4664111 Unless I'm really invested in a story, 10K per chapter is about where my limit for jumping in is. But then, I'm an avid reader -if picky- reader and being on this site has made me consider 15-20K chapters as 'long'.

For a more average reader, I'll assume that 8K is about the upper limit of chapter length appeal. I myself am writing a non-pony fic where I'm kind-of trying to keep the chapters at 5-6K apiece.

4664127

I sometimes see long chapters and scratch my head as we come to the fifth or sixth scene.

Hahaha... Well, the chapter I'm currently editing in my story is 13,000 words long and has eighteen sections. The longest continuous section in my story so far is in chapter three and is 6184 words long. There's really no way to break it up because the whole section is an uncut moment from the main character's perspective. That's an unusual exception though.

I do break chapters thematically rather than arbitrarily. Each one has a meaningful name which fits the chapter's theme. I also dislike ending a chapter on a completely neutral note with no tension whatsoever. However, I can see how I've been writing chapters that are way too long. The first seven chapters in my story are an average length of 11k words each. I went through them today and figured I could probably split these into twenty publishable chapters with an average of 3800 words each.

I really like your idea of counting scenes rather than words. It depends of course, on whether the scenes are really brief or not. One section in ch7 is only 185 words. I definitely agree that chapters should have some sort of main point, or hook as you said. Sometimes, structuring this can be quite difficult. In one chapter I've got, for example, I cut back and forth between two highly contrasting settings. My main character was seriously injured in the previous chapter and the readers will be wanting to find out what happened to her. But this chapter cuts between Luna doing statespony stuff and the battlefield where the heroes are trying to deal with the aftermath of a fight. Each scene break adds to the tension on one side of the chapter while allowing me to fit in quite a bit of exposition on the other side of the chapter. This goes on for 12,400 words. I could easily break each of those scenes into their own chapters, I suppose. Or I could put two scenes in a chapter and keep moving it along using that contrast mechanism.

I suppose the worst part would be to have a section broke into its own chapter in such a way that there wasn't really any tension or 'main point' to that chapter other than to break it up for the sake of keeping it short.

Still - the main thing I'm hoping to discover here is whether the reader gets irritated after chapter length starts going above a certain point.

I greatly prefer medium to long chapters, at least for stories that are still updating. Less than 5k feels like it's too short; I barely have time to get into the story again before it's done and I'm waiting for more. Meh. Less than 2k is outright disappointing. I don't really have a "too long" length. If it's too long to read in the time I have, it might get delayed until later that evening, at most. Or, if necessary, I can read it in parts.

Honestly, the bigger the chapter in an update, the more interested I get. The only downside is when it takes too long for the chapters to come out.

That said, I prefer chapters to actually have the length they do for story-serving reasons, rather than to reach a certain number of words. Even when all the chapters are there and you can immediately move on to the next chapter, the break between chapters can do a great job in shaping the pacing of a story. Stories are much stronger when these breaks come at dramatically appropriate moments.

4664239 So, assuming the chapters break in logical, sensible places, how would you feel about a story which targeted roughly between 3000 and 5000 words, but published weekly rather than having extensive delays between chapters? So this would require having the whole story finished in advance, and then publish chapters like clockwork for an extended period of time until the end.

For structure, I'm thinking something like this:

Because the story chapters are named, themed sections of story, I draft them rather long and they go on until the story is ready to shift into a new overall situation. But since this produces very long chapters, I could break it up into parts for publishing.
[Chapter One Name] - Part I
[Chapter One Name] - Part II
[Chapter Two Name] - Part I
[Chapter Two Name] - Part II
etc.

That allows me to continue to use chapter names for the larger section of text, while adding part numbers so I don't actually have to come up with 75+ meaningful chapter names.

4664111

I think I'm in the minority with this, since -- having grown up reading obsessively -- I like longer chapters. It's actually something of the opposite problem some people here have pointed out, I get turned off from a story if the chapters are too short.

I'd say my minimum is 2-3K, depending on what the story actually is, and whether or not the premise sounds interesting. If the chapters are under that by a significant amount, then I feel there really isn't a satisfying way to convey whatever story you're trying to tell. Though part of that may just be my desire to spend several hours reading a really good (or at least interesting) story, so take that with a grain of salt.

Bottom line, as a reader, I like my chapters like I like my fics: Long and Epic.

4664291
You'd probably like my project then because it's the very embodiment of "long and epic".

I suppose, though, that it's important to remember that shorter chapters (at least for me) does not mean "less text". It simply means more chapters. So the nearly 80k words which currently spans the first seven chapters would be restructured to publish in 20 chapters instead.

So my specific question to you would be whether short (4k words on average) chapters bother you if they are published frequently and in great quantity.

4664365

See, that's something of a difficult question for me.

On the one hand, I could easily stomach the chapter length in that regard, but... well, as exciting as it is to wake up and see a new chapter after having finished the previous one a very short time ago, I think I'd start feeling a little burnt out due to feeling like I had to read as fast as possible.

Plus, for someone like me, fast updates aren't always something I can feasibly keep up with. My work schedule is hectic and I don't always know when I'm getting days off (or if I am at all); so, when I DO get such free time, I like to set down and read. That's probably where my love of the longer chapters comes into play; one chapter of, say, 20K words feels like less to catch up on than 5 chapters of 4K words and it gives me a lot to spend my time on.

4664374 Heh. Fair enough. I suppose it's a psychological thing. Truly, 20k words is 20k words whether it's broken up into segments or not. Mine do tend to gravitate toward the 12k length when drafting, but as others have mentioned above, it becomes kind of a mess if there are too many sections within the chapter and quite a few things going on.

I think mentally, we catalog events with chapter numbers naturally. I know when I write, I think of "chapter 5" as the chapter which ends with the massive cliffhanger. I think of "chapter 3" as the chapter with the long talk with Luna. I mean, it's an association, right? If too many different things happen within one chapter, does it get hard to track? Like I mentioned above, chapter 7 is 18 sections and 13k words. But... it's all the same theme. Recovery from a major injury after a battle, and developing relationships with the supportive people of this small town they find themselves in. I call the chapter "True, true friends" for this reason. It's thematically consistent through the entire chapter, but it's still long and I think it would overwhelm the average fimfiction reader who doesn't have time to complete the chapter in one sitting. That, of course, depends on reading speed. I know for me, I read extremely slow so I'm not a good example. It would take me a whole day to get through 8k.

4664395

There's also another factor here no one seems to have touched upon yet: Genre.

As much as it might annoy some people to hear, the type of story you're writing does matter when it comes to length. In a comedy, for example, you're going to want shorter chapters, if not an overall shorter length, so the humor aspects don't overstay their welcome. Sad can get away with longer chapters, since you need to build up why events are impacting the characters like they are, and to evoke the feeling of being 'stuck' like real people feel when something bad happens to them.

Adventure needs to be long, since the entire point of reading one is for the epic journey the heroes are undertaking and the trails they have to face on it. It can still be overdone, but it's a lot easier to fit in more scenes with a similar theme when writing adventure stories. Slice of Life, however, should never be a very long story; you're there to tell a tiny portion of the character's life, not give a detailed synopsis of it. I'd almost say that any Slice of Life story that actually has chapters it doing it wrong, but that's a bit too broad a statement for me.

What you've already mentioned about it seems to paint your project as an Adventure, but I still think you should consider what other genres you're trying to go for before you start thinking about chapter length.

4664111
12k is quite a lot, yes...

Personally, 1-2k chapters feel very very short to me. 4k is normal length. For my Fallout: Equestria sidefic, once I noticed the inevitable chapter creep you always get when authors simply get better at writing, I decided to take 8k as goal for the chapter lengths, and tried not to exceed that. I still got the occasional 11-12k one in there, though. It just happens.

Chapters are themes, though. Each chapter should be a related set of events, but if your set of events is, to take a completely random example, breaking into a building, then you shouldn't be forced to write out the whole heist in that one chapter. If that would get too long, it's perfectly dividable into the "getting in", "adventure hijinx while inside" and "getting out" parts, with some nice cliffhanger potential in the middle.

Mind you, in some diary or logbook styled stories, it's very possible for one chapter to be one short entry, or an entire day. That kind of format does influence chapter lengths. Heck, many writers don't bother with actually calling them "chapters" in such books.

4664402
That is a very good point. Since this is a long adventure story, it makes more sense why the chapters are not 1-2k. The story is primarily an adventure, but it is also a mystery and a character drama with sad and dark themes. There are long-term disturbing elements as well. The primary theme is valor. The main focus is on following a character's journey to where they discover their true purpose, or virtue. Through this process, there is an active problem to solve which is revealed in concentric layers over the course of the journey.

I'll have to think about this. I'm still mostly sold on the idea of 4k chapter length in terms if publishing, where the 2 or 3 published chapters would thematically join to form a named "story chapter" of 12k or so words. I think it would be rather important to make sure that all the published chapter endings had something distinct which was about to happen. Something which holds the tension and compels the reader to keep moving forward.

4664395

Heh. Fair enough. I suppose it's a psychological thing. Truly, 20k words is 20k words whether it's broken up into segments or not.

Art is applied psychology.
So no 20k words is not 20k words whether it's broken up into segments or not.

If too many different things happen within one chapter, does it get hard to track? Like I mentioned above, chapter 7 is 18 sections and 13k words. But... it's all the same theme.

So you could describe the entire chapter with a single sentence without using and?

Recovery from a major injury after a battle, and developing relationships with the supportive people of this small town they find themselves in.

You needed an And, that's at least two chapters.

That, of course, depends on reading speed. I know for me, I read extremely slow so I'm not a good example. It would take me a whole day to get through 8k.

Are you so selfish to not see the problem of demanding more than a whole day from your readers? That they drop everything and read your story for over a day?
Remember chapters as posted are also when you can put comments on those sections due to the nature of the site.

4664603

Are you so selfish to not see the problem of demanding more than a whole day from your readers? That they drop everything and read your story for over a day?

WTF is with the hostile attitude here?

Selfish?
Not seeing the problem?
Demanding?
Drop everything?
Wut?

Remember chapters as posted are also when you can put comments on those sections due to the nature of the site.

And what does that have to do with the subject of chapter length?

So you could describe the entire chapter with a single sentence without using and?
...
You needed an And, that's at least two chapters.

Where did this come from? Are you citing some rule of literature here? If so, please provide a link.

4664111 In books, chapters can be pretty much any length they want to, and often times had a single 'happening' for each chapter. Great for books, but we don't deal in books, do we?

Bookmarks don't work so well on a screen. Well, you can bookmark things by leaving a tab open and marking the paragraph, but it's much more difficult to, say, remember a page number or slip in a scrap of paper to find where you were. Chapters are also a way of knowing where I am if it's a long story, and I absolutely hate having to leave a story for a bit in the middle of a chapter. It's highly irritating. Not to mention, my attention span is only so long.

So, what you really want is for a reader to complete at least one chapter per sitting. If we take my short attention span (which lasts about half an hour before I have to start concentrating) and the average reading speed of a person (200 words per minute, although mine is a bit lower) that means the longest chapter for that attention span is around 6K words. That is what an average person should be able to read in a half-hour sitting, which I think everyone can agree is nice and comfortable. Half an hour is a nice length of time.

Of course, if your chapter is particularly gripping, or if your reader is particularly adept at reading, this becomes less of a factor. There are a hundred and one reasons why it's perfectly fine to have longer chapters: maybe there's more that needs to be told in order to fit comfortably in a chapter, etc. But, if all those other factors are satisfied, I'd strongly recommend that you aim at a maximum of 6000 words per chapter. For me, (and, I assume, other average readers) that is what is going to be most comfortable to achieve in a sitting.

4664717

Bookmarks don't work so well on a screen.

Fimfiction's persistent bookmark feature is actually pretty impressive. Knighty is a coding wizard!

Chapters are also a way of knowing where I am if it's a long story, and I absolutely hate having to leave a story for a bit in the middle of a chapter. It's highly irritating. Not to mention, my attention span is only so long.

I'm finding this to be a very compelling argument. I too find leaving in the middle of a chapter irritating. It's especially tedious when I'm editing because editing takes so much longer than simply reading. I can chew on a 10k word long chapter for weeks.

6k words in a half hour

*sigh* I read soooo slow compared to others.
When I read, I am there for the experience and the immersion. If I try to force myself to read faster, it breaks me right out of that experience. But I realize that most people do not have this problem.

I very much appreciate your advice, thanks. I think it's probably wise, for the sake of my fan base, to keep the chapters at the length you suggest at the upper limit, with rare exceptions.

4664765 We have a bookmark feature?!

4664642

WTF is with the hostile attitude here?
Selfish?
Not seeing the problem?
Demanding?
Drop everything?
Wut?

One sec, it's not hostility, it's pushing you out of comfort. lemme get to the next part to explain.

And what does that have to do with the subject of chapter length?

Quite a bit because if people want to commentate on a part of your story, they have to comment per chapter, and most discussion happens only within a day or two of a chapter being posted.
Remember you aren't writing a novel, since you post things per chapter rather than all at once and have a handy comment box you have a lot more participation with your audience than a novelist does.

Your format has a big big impact on how you give your audience the best experience.

Where did this come from? Are you citing some rule of literature here? If so, please provide a link.

It's the whole reason we have chapters, to divide up distinct thoughts and parts of the work. It's one of the unspoken rules.

4664111 I once read a one shot at about 15-16k, and it's one of my favourites.

When I'm looking around for authors I don't know, though, I tend to go for about the 2-4k chapter lengths.
When it comes to long-fics, though, I'm looking at less than 15k per chapter. And if you do make chapters a bit too short, there sometimes isn't a reason for them being singular chapters in the first place.

4664111
For me, personally, the word count for any given chapter in the stories I read is irrelevant. I'll read anything short, medium length, or long so long as I enjoy the story.

I've read a few things were the word count for the chapter is just a couple hundred words at best as well as a small handful of things that had a few chapters here and there reaching 15,000 to 20,000 words.

4664811
Yes, we do have a bookmark feature, but I've never bothered to use it.
I pretty much just leave a tab open on my phone (sometimes too many tabs ), so if I get interrupted by anything IRL, all I have to do is unlock my screen.

4664831

One sec, it's not hostility, it's pushing you out of comfort. lemme get to the next part to explain.

Except I'm not in a comfort zone to be pushed out of. I came here asking this question with an entirely open mind, to get a consensus on the topic at hand. Nowhere did I suggest that I personally needed it to be one way or another. I'm just gathering data. Suggesting that I'm being selfish or forcing my readers to stop their lives to read my story is more than a little ridiculous.

Quite a bit because if people want to commentate on a part of your story, they have to comment per chapter, and most discussion happens only within a day or two of a chapter being posted.

Remember you aren't writing a novel, since you post things per chapter rather than all at once and have a handy comment box you have a lot more participation with your audience than a novelist does.

Yes, that's all well and good. But you still haven't explained what this has to do with chapter length. Yes, people can leave comments. That's great! And having audience participation is one of the highest goals, although I have found it to be much less of a thing than I initially expected. I've seen some pretty sad stories out there with very active comments sections. And a lot of times, those comments happen quite a long time after the publish date.

If anything, your reminder that comments are sorted per-chapter is a good case for shorter chapter length because it becomes more clear which specific part of the story the reader is commenting on.

It's the whole reason we have chapters, to divide up distinct thoughts and parts of the work. It's one of the unspoken rules.

What rule, precisely? You said the use of 'and' makes for a requirement of multiple chapters? Or... something. You realize I could have just as easily said "while" instead of "and" there. I'm not sure by which criteria you've come to the conclusion that the chapter needs splitting (although I've already decided to split it into four pieces due to length).

Coming up with the partitions is a bit challenging though, because the chapter was designed as a single theme despite being too long and having too many important things going on. If the partitioning technique is simply to splice along tension zones and scene breaks, that technically works, but it doesn't cause each new chapter to have its own main point. This might not be too bad though because I plan on retaining the major groupings via their common chapter titles - meaning a chapter which was split into four parts would produce four chapters with the same name, suffixed by "Part I" etc. This suggests to the reader that the "parts" all go together somehow.

4664811
Yep! If you mouse up to the top of the story text where the pop-out bar appears, one of the buttons activates the bookmark. Every chapter can have its own bookmark and it will be persistent to your account indefinitely. Great for... *cough* long chapters where you have to set it aside before finishing, and might not come back for days or longer.

4664992 Cool.

I don't think it changes much, though. It's still a pain if a chapter is so long you lose focus/concentration/whatever. Although it helps in terms of having to move, getting forcibly interrupted.

I mean, I've read chapters that are longer, and they've been, on the whole, fine, but it's been more of a struggle especially near the end for me to pay attention. I guess I have a goldfish attention span. It's kind of like, near the end of a lecture, when even though the material at hand is fascinating, you tend to drift off a bit, y'know?

4664111 I'll write as much as needed for a oneshot, but for multichapter stories, I like to keep the chapter length anywhere from 2k words to 6k, maaaaaaaaaaaybe 7k if I wanted to push it.

4664283

So, assuming the chapters break in logical, sensible places, how would you feel about a story which targeted roughly between 3000 and 5000 words, but published weekly rather than having extensive delays between chapters?

I would consider it a little on the weak side, as it only gives me 10 minutes or so of story between week-long breaks. It's one thing if I have the next chapter right there, but even if it's just a week between chapters, it can take time to get back into the flow of the story. With short chapters in an updating story, I barely have the time to get into things before it's gone, and previous events that the chapter might draw on are further removed.

But since this produces very long chapters, I could break it up into parts for publishing.

This, however, I really dislike. If the events of both parts should be one chapter, they should be one part. If the events of the two parts should remain two parts, they should be two separate chapters. Breaks between chapters/parts should be done to service the storytelling, not because an arbitrary number of words have been written. Breaking things up more than they have to be weakens the story just as much as trying to pack too many things into a single chapter.

As for the "and" guideline someone suggested earlier, while it has a good deal of truth to it (that is, you want chapters to each have a focus and not spread out too much), I'd warn heavily against using it as a hard-and-fast rule as phrased. It's easy to rephrase something to add or remove an 'and'. Most stories can be easily described without using the word 'and', but that doesn't mean they should be one chapter. On top of that, 'and' can just as often refer to concurrent events as well as consecutive. To use the example given:

Recovery from a major injury after a battle, and developing relationships with the supportive people of this small town they find themselves in.

It can be read two ways:

Recovery from a major injury after a battle, and then developing relationships with the supportive people of this small town they find themselves in.

or

Recovery from a major injury after a battle, and while doing so, developing relationships with the supportive people of this small town they find themselves in.

The latter looks ideal for a single chapter, especially as it's going to be hard to separate the two when they're intermingled. The former might be better as two chapters, but that entirely depends on how significant the two elements are. If either are brief and/or minor then that element might serve better as a 'flavor' element in a chapter that's really focused on the other. Even more so if the two elements are closely tied together or otherwise hard to separate.

4665163

This, however, I really dislike. If the events of both parts should be one chapter, they should be one part

Hmm... this puts me in quite a bind because it's really difficult to tell whether the sections should be one part. I mean, as I have written it, I've got some mighty long chapters. Too long for the average fimfiction reader. In some cases, I think there could be parts of the story removed from a chapter and into its own. In other cases, it's quite unclear because I'll have 12k or more which really does serve a single main theme.

On top of that, 'and' can just as often refer to concurrent events as well as consecutive.

Yes, that's one reason why I got irritated with that advice. In my example, it was definitely the latter interpretation:
>> "and while doing so"

The issue is that this covers a span of a couple days and tons of character dialogue. There is also some important overarching plot advancement which is going on during this chapter.

It's difficult to explain without a bit of context, so I'll give you a synopsis of ch7 as an example of the dilemma.

Ch5 ends in a major cliffhanger while on a mission our hero gets seriously injured in what is essentially a tactical nuclear explosion. A whole lot goes on in that chapter, but the cliffhanger is how it ends. This is a major focal point in act one.

Ch6 focuses on the urgency of finding the hero, who has been knocked unconscious, blown out of the battle zone and into a pile of debris. This chapter cuts back and forth with an exposition scene back in Canterlot showing some of the developments which will become important later in the story. It builds tension by teasing the reader with finding out what precisely has happened to the hero and then cut away to unrelated things.

Ch7 is the one I just finished cleaning up for my editors to go over. This is currently the longest chapter, and again, it's 13k words and 18 sections. The theme of this entire chapter is "recovery". The magical medical technology allows for serious injuries to be healed in a day or two. I'll break down the 18 sections quickly. You can tell me if you think this would be appropriate to split into multiple chapters.

1: (781 words) Chapter opens up with a secret meeting between an unnamed pony and an unnamed zebra discussing evil plans that are already set in motion which constitute the main problem the hero must face in the story.
2: (506 words) The scouting team sends a pegasus to the nearby town to tell the mayor what happened and come back with her response.
3: (472 words) The pegasus meets with the mayor, who is most certainly suffering from some sort of sudden insanity.
4: (323 words) Cut back to the heroes, who will be splitting up. The pegasi will airlift the hero back to base where she can recover. The ground ponies will have to walk several hours through the dangerous wetlands at night.
5: (547 words) Hero is dropped off at the base by the three pegasi.
6: (712 words) Hero wakes up after dozing off from exhaustion. Town nurse shows up and learns of what happened during the mission.
7: (756 words) The ground ponies make their way through the wilderness at night on their way back to base.
8: (997 words) Cut back to scene with the main characters and the town nurse. Lots of relationship building here.
9: (993 words) Main character has a nightmare related to the day's failure. Wakes up, takes a walk and meets with the Commander to talk.
10: (185 words) Main character is dreaming of an intimate moment with her husband. Wakes up to find the kisses are real.
11: (388 words) Town nurse is searching through her house to find an important journal entry which sheds light on the main mystery.
12: (902 words) Nurse meets with hero at breakfast. Hero comforts nurse who is grieving over her lost husband. Nurse shows hero the journal.
13: (1326 words) Hero meets with nurse at her house along with the Commander. They examine the journal and discuss.
14: (743 words) Hero's husband visits her in the infirmary where she is resting. Hero is given the all clear to test her physical recovery.
15: (725 words) Heroes have a talk with the daughter of the nurse, who has shut herself away because of losing her father.
16: (676 words) Hero and her husband go for a flight and watch the sun set while talking about starting a family.
17: (1020 words) Morning comes and kids are playing outside heroes' tent. Nurse's daughter is a new CMC member and recruiting her friends.
18: (1190 words) Heroes are invited to go fishing (this is a river community) and later a BBQ. Heroes are uncertain about eating fish, but end up enjoying it. Chapter wraps up and heroes fly off to continue with the next leg of the mission.

Of course, these section summaries are terribly simplified. Each section is quite meaningful and profound in its own way. They all tie together to provide a continuous narrative on the hero's recovery from the battle of chapter 5. The chapter includes significant exposition and revelation into the main plot of the story. It further establishes existing relationships as well as builds new ones. Importantly, it gives the reader much-needed respite from what has been a few chapters of tension and action.

Breaking this into "parts" would make it more digestible to the average reader, as 13k words is quite long to go through in one sitting. But it is fairly obvious that those parts would not be thematically different from one another. What to do?

4666221

Yes, that's one reason why I got irritated with that advice. In my example, it was definitely the latter interpretation

That was the impression I had gotten

You can tell me if you think this would be appropriate to split into multiple chapters.

Hmm... it's a tough call to make from a fairly vague summary. It does have a big overall theme to it, so it works well as a single chapter. I suppose if you want to, you could break it up into smaller themes. Perhaps the recovery, awakening, and initial reactions as one chapter and the dealings with the nurse and the matter of her husband, etc, as another. I suppose if you really wanted to cut it up you could have the recovery as one, the waking and growing the relation with the nurse as a second, and the issue of her husband and subsequent matters as a third.

It's hard to tell exactly from a summary. I think the best question to ask would be, where would be the most impacting and/or dramatic moment to have a break?

4664111

The big issue is that fanfiction is different from normal books. for a published book chapter length doesn't matter very much and even within a single book chapter length can, and has, varied between 4k-18 words. Note that I said 4k. Books don't often have chapters smaller than that because chapter breaks can effect immersion.

Fanfiction is different because with fanfiction you tend to deal with a couple of factors.

1) The average reader is at a lower reading level. WAIT! Don't get angry yet. I'm not saying fanfic readers are stupid. However, the average age of a fanfic reader is a lot younger than the average reader of a hardcopy book. In fact, for teen and kids hard printed books chapter length still tends to be a bit shorter and more consistent. The fact is a younger audience tends to be less experienced with reading and as such reader slower and can't read for as long of a period of time. Nothing wrong with that, but with practice people will read faster and longer and as they do they also tend to make more money as they come of age to work or move onto decent jobs, and they will invest in professional level books by buying them.

2) People tend to read electronic stories for convenience. Let's face it. You're waiting at the doctors office, or at the DMV, and you just aren't interested in 2-year old magazines on gardening. You pull out your phone and read for the 5-10 minute you wait (827 for the DMV). Generally in these situations a person isn't looking for something long and engaging. It's one of the reasons why magazines in waiting rooms sport shorter length articles. It's the same for newspapers and comics. No real commitment is needed to finish the story so it's an easy entrance point. Items read for convenience are generally things that are short and fun but not very immersive.

Also known as clickbait.

3) A lot of people who read fanfiction are in it for the lulz.

That's right, short, sweet, sometimes a bit vulger, fanfiction is often read because its silly and fun and you don't need to care or give a damn. Thus, people don't need the extra character building, the well developed plot, twists and turns. They just want something basic and fun that doesn't take itself to seriously.

I personally do this from time to time. I don't want to think, I want to laugh and generally not care. It's the reading equivalent of vegging on mediocre TV as a detraction vs marathoning a thought provoking immersive series on Netflix.

So, back to how long should your chapter length be? Well, it depends on what you are going for. if you want straight views a short clickbait story is more likely to do better, and a long form story is more for the serious author who wants to be super proud of their work. However, it also depends on your writing style. If you like to explore character, and the world, and throw in puzzles and thought provoking arguments you probably want longer chapters. If you want something simple, maybe a bit more one dementia (nothing wrong with that), then go for shorter, and enjoy it.

The trick is to be honest with what you want to do, what the story wants to be, and your audience. Finding the balance can be challenging but it can definitely be worth it.

4666982
Heh. Well...

Point 1: I dunno, I think an 18 year old has an excellent vocabulary (if they are intelligent and take their education seriously). Really, the demand on one's mind is much greater at that age than at double that age when a person is operating more or less on autopilot and past experience.

Point 2: Kindle. "Real" books are electronic now.

Point 3: *sigh* Fimfiction is definitely a lot of this, isn't it? But those types of authors/stories are not what we here in the Writer's Group are talking about. I am by no means an advanced author. Far, far from it. I've only been writing for a year. And it's been that same story for the entire year.

Many of the veterans in this group are seriously picky when it comes to proper literary rules. I've seen such an enormous range on this site ranging from the pathetic to the nearly perfect. Some authors have such horrid prose that it would make anyone cringe. But I've seen critics so harsh that they'll look at an absolutely beautiful story and rip it to shreds. This range all in one site makes for a difficult situation.

As for me personally, I am writing a long-term, serious story. We're talking 300k words at least. And perhaps additional side stories within the same universe. My subject matter is mature (read: grown up - not clop). It is meant for adults, not children. Its vocabulary and overall tone is meant for those who have experienced life to a degree beyond high school. That is my target audience. It's a wartime adventure story, not a kid's story. It deals with very serious topics.

So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that for that target demographic, chapter length has little bearing?

4667001

the demand on one's mind is much greater at that age than at double that age when a person is operating more or less on autopilot and past experience.

The problem is that past experience. 18-20 is the average for fanfiction readers, meaning a lot of readers as 10-18. And to a lot of kids and teens life sucks. Some grow up in places that don't get consistent power, and some don't even have access to books that progress evenly. One of my personal friends had always been an avid reader but he had class mates that were a half dozen grades lower than him in HS. The US had a dropout rate of 7.4% in 2010 and rates 45th for literacy in the world.

The fact is that there is a lot of people who read fanfiction because they don't have access to good literature.

Also, physical book sales are still higher than electronic. It might not seem like that to you because you are ingrained in an electronic culture with friends and family who are tuned in. But a lot of people aren't like that and only 87% of Americans even have internet access.

4667033 Agreed that America in particular has a massive problem with education. I suppose it's possible that my own vocabulary and compositional skills are due to there being higher standards back when I was in school. Though, I distinctly recall back in 8th grade getting an A in English Composition and then proceeding to get an F in English Literature in the next semester - from the same teacher. She was quite perplexed why I would have failed literature, having such a grasp of the rules of the language. The truth is, literature bored me silly. I absolutely hated everything to do with it. I never in my life would have expected to be writing fiction! To this day, some of my worst memories of class assignments were being forced to read books such as Tom Sawyer and the like. Poetry absolutely confused me. Still does, mostly. But I guess I've come to realize something. When one gets to be in their mid-forties and has quite a few major life experiences, it becomes easier to write literature because you can relate a lot of your personal experiences and points of view into the story. When I was half my age, there would have been no way I would be writing any work of fiction.

Still, I'm rather out of touch in terms of what the youth are up to these days. I see a fair bit of it here on fimfiction, and it's rather sad, to be honest. There is such a huge disparity between people who take the time to learn a subject and those who simply ignore it. It gets back to what I was saying with so many critics being quite harsh and strict with their standards, and yet the vast majority of content, even here, is quite poor.

4664111 For me the "Goldielocks Zone" is about 3-5k. No less than 3,000 but not more than 5,500. This is the standard I follow 99.9% when writing my own chapters, unless I feel that a chapter absolutely needs to be longer because splitting it up would ruin the momentum. As for my own tastes in reading, I feel that anything less than 3k is too short and anything longer than 8k is too long.

I was kind of curious to see how my own chapter lengths compared to the average, so I did some digging around. Found a fun little article where someone measured a good number of fantasy stories to figure out what they averaged.

The result ended up covering a very wide range. The smallest averaged chapters of just under 3k, the largest averaged chapters just over 11k, and the overall average was just over 6k. The largest chapter in each book ranged from just over 5k to just over 23k. 95% of chapters were under 11k, though just over half the samples had at least one chapter larger than that.

Short version: basically anything from about 3k to 11k is pretty well within the norm, and outliers are not terribly uncommon.