Chapter conjecture · 10:36pm Feb 2nd, 2015
Hi Grey Arbiter readers (by that I mean literally anyone),
I had a thought while I was in the midst of writing chapter 3. I'm coming across quite a few points in the narrative where I think it would be alright to start a new chapter.
What I mean is: I'm around 7,500 words into chapter 3, and I'm at a point where the scene changes enough to warrant starting a new chapter.
For the sake of consistency, I'm still aiming for the 18,000 word ballpark for every chapter, but I thought breaking down my behemoth chapters into more bitesize chunks would make them easier to read (not to mention i'll update with more frequency, though you're getting the same number of words in the long run).
Which is the preferable format? I know a little about writing the damn thing (I'd hope at least, if not, bravo for reading 36,000 words of garbage), but next to nothing about where to break it off.
EDIT:
I have finally decided how it's going to end. That also came to me while writing some dialogue between Maddie and Anon. Ooh yeah it made me prickly with excitement and no small measure of relief, since I had very little idea where I was going with this before. Who said you needed a plot (hurr)? Perhaps that's a bad thing to admit. Ah well. Like Applejack, I'm nothing if not honest.
Stay gold.
It's really a personal choice about how you feel chapters should flow. Do you think chapters should make incremental progress or almost be self contained episodes? Basically, is a story arc to you worth multiple chapters (where the chapter in question may not make significant progress on the arc but be a single scene) or a single chapter that covers everything?
A scene change may mark the difference for the former but not be enough for the latter. Some of my favorite fics of all time are set on self-contained episode chapters which can range from pretty large to absolutely huge, depending on the flow of the story. Generally I find that stories with larger chapter counts, especially if they are small chapters, may lose focus on what it is trying to do as the story may stretch itself out.
Don't feel the need to make chapters hit a specific length. If a chapter does everything you want it to do, and is only half your usual size, just go with it if you can't think of a way to make it better.
It'll get you more readers if your story has more updates more often, that's for sure.
2764968 Cheers for the advice, you've been a real help these past couple of weeks.
I think I'll stick to what I've been doing so far. I set 18,000 as the upper-limit because I think asking anyone to make a start on such an imposing block of text is quite the request, rather than because my chapters absolutely, unequivocally, obligatorily (enough adverbs?) must be 18,000 words, lest I forfeit my soul.
As for more frequent updates, well, guess I'm out of luck. With my current writing schedule, it takes about 8 days to get a chapter done. Using a 2 day review period, that's 10 days per chapter. I guess that's how my week goes. Mornings are for being bleary eyed. Afternoons are for university work. Evenings are for writing and reading.
Once again, thanks for leaving comments. Writing can be such a lonely pastime.