I just regret writing a 10k words worth of Prologue chapter

DaisukeHanashi

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I just compared my own work to some other Latest Series work... and they immediately have some favorites and numbers of "Plan To Read". Even it is written by just newly-registered author, and they just get two-digits on Readers count.

I don't know why, but the reason for writing a 10k word chapter is because I want to introduce my latest series as an epic with lots of occurrences around the world... and perhaps I might turn off a lot of potential readers with short attention span.
 

TheTrinary

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Yes. 10k words is beyond insane.

Even past that, you generally want to keep your opening chapters focused and then expand out into the wider world. And you mention the world. . . your reader doesn't care about the world. Make them care about a person and their conflict, and then expand that out to the world at large once you have a foundation.
 

Syringe

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You could split that 10k chapter into 5 2k chapters. You'd get a huge boost to visibility as well if you spread them throughout the day.

Also keep in mind that not everyone can sit through 10k words. Sooner or later someone's going to stop reading, do something else, come back and scratch their heads wondering where they left off.

For online books your chapters become your bookmarks.

The biggest issue with a huge amount of words is pacing and story focus, and my previous book suffered immensely from it. 10k words is absolutely too much, especially if you're trying to get a good first impression.
 
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Iamnotabot

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I recomend you these two if you want to try long prolouge. They are very good at it.
 
D

Deleted member 54065

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I just compared my own work to some other Latest Series work... and they immediately have some favorites and numbers of "Plan To Read". Even it is written by just newly-registered author, and they just get two-digits on Readers count.

I don't know why, but the reason for writing a 10k word chapter is because I want to introduce my latest series as an epic with lots of occurrences around the world... and perhaps I might turn off a lot of potential readers with short attention span.
Well, from my experience, 3k to 4k is considered long enough, with 3k the border for the maximum 'mainstream' length of a chapter. 4k is...well, my usual limit for a main chapter nowadays, though I did reach 6.7k in one chapter back in my first arc.

Most 'on-the-go' sites (those who cater to busy people who loves to read) recommend 1k to 1.5k word lengths per chapter (like Inkitt and Tapas). A regular fantasy novel with proper story-telling usually has 2k-3k words. Seldom will you read stories with 10k to 20k words per chapter in the 'Western' sites, though I've read JPLNs with that kind of setting, but is only limited to 4-5 chapters per volume.

For prologues, it is recommended to write around 1k-1.5k. Don't put in too much, since a lot of words can be intimidating to the reader, especially those whose attention span is short (not insulting them, I'm just saying). Try splitting that prologue, or rewrite it to shorter parts.

Or you can take an unorthodox way: split your prologue and upload it by parts.
 

J_Chemist

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Same boat. Shit happens. You'll live.

Also- those other books might get better/more traffic because of a different premise from yours. It's not always linked to word count.
 

CupcakeNinja

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I just compared my own work to some other Latest Series work... and they immediately have some favorites and numbers of "Plan To Read". Even it is written by just newly-registered author, and they just get two-digits on Readers count.

I don't know why, but the reason for writing a 10k word chapter is because I want to introduce my latest series as an epic with lots of occurrences around the world... and perhaps I might turn off a lot of potential readers with short attention span.
meh, one of my stories has a first chapter that long and it did pretty well when i was still active. The problem is people just dont like to read prologues anymore, so if its TITLED prologue they usually just skip it. Its cuz a lot of authors treat the prologue as a fucking huge spoiler or clickbait so they dont wanna read it.

People dont really care about the length of a chapter and usually even PREFER longer chapters. What matters to them is that they find it entertaining. If they dont, a long chapter is gonna be left unfinished
 

Jemini

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I just compared my own work to some other Latest Series work... and they immediately have some favorites and numbers of "Plan To Read". Even it is written by just newly-registered author, and they just get two-digits on Readers count.

I don't know why, but the reason for writing a 10k word chapter is because I want to introduce my latest series as an epic with lots of occurrences around the world... and perhaps I might turn off a lot of potential readers with short attention span.

I took a peek at your prologue. It was frankly shit, and it's not because of the length of the chapter. It's because you keep head-jumping and this makes it so the reader cannot get invested in any one character, and every scenario you present is shallow and uninteresting.

You say you want to present an epic world that is vast with several things going on. What I saw was a whole lot of confusing nothing going on, and that became extremely off-putting.

This looks to me like terminal world-builder syndrome. You built up your world and you want to present the world to your readers, but you forgot the most important point to all of this. You are absolutely failing at presenting a story.

You're going to need to back off with the world building and present us with a single character and let the reader know why it is we're supposed to care about that character within the first 5 seconds of opening the prologue. And then, after you have successfully pulled that off, you need to stick with that one character and only that character for a minimum of 10K words worth of story content. Only after sticking with that single character for 10K words, you can maybe head-jump to another character for around 2K words (preferably less), but then you have to return to that character you started with.

----

Also, learn how to world build by subtlety. Don't shove it in the reader's face. I do my own world building by way of slow and methodical culture building. I present a group of people, slowly work my way through the cultural norms of this group of people, use that culture to spring-board into a part of the threat being faced by the main cast (creating a man Vs. society conflict), and have the conflict resolved. I don't specifically focus on the greater world-building, but the culture is a reaction to the world, so the reader is able to take a lot of implications as to what the world must be like just by seeing a single isolated culture within the greater world. And then, I repeat the entire process all over again by introducing another facet of society.

Ascendance of a Bookworm is known for being the absolute crowning modern-day example of a fantasy story with deep and very involved world-building. The way that series did it's world building is the EXACT method I just described. Same for other famous series like Mushoku Tensei. They start small in isolation, just showing the smallest little bit of the world that's relevant to the MC of the story, before slowly expanding the reader's view of the world. They let the reader discover the world at the same rate as the MC (thus part of the reason the Isekai genre lends itself so well to world-building), and this allows the reader to become so much more immersed in the world.

EDIT: A good example of a non-isekai series that also has truly excellent and deep world-building would be Avatar the Last Airbender. It also does the world building by subtlety approach well, using the culture craft presentation as well as some rather subtle visual world-building, especially during part 2, with the episode called "Zuko Alone" being one of the best examples of visual world-building as Zuko walks down a trail and in the background you see several stone wheels that you have previously seen earth-benders throwing around as weapons. This shows there was a battle here at some point without anyone ever having to say it. Just the visuals alone are enough for the viewer to understand it and fill in the gaps.

(That's another high-tier world-building trick. World building by what isn't said.)
 
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Jaysanerd

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You could split that 10k chapter into 5 2k chapters. You'd get a huge boost to visibility as well if you spread them throughout the day.

Also keep in mind that not everyone can sit through 10k words. Sooner or later someone's going to stop reading, do something else, come back and scratch their heads wondering where they left off.

For online books your chapters become your bookmarks.

The biggest issue with a huge amount of words is pacing and story focus, and my previous book suffered immensely from it. 10k words is absolutely too much, especially if you're trying to get a good first impression.
hey this is random but i love ur cover art!
 

DaisukeHanashi

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I took a peek at your prologue. It was frankly shit, and it's not because of the length of the chapter. It's because you keep head-jumping and this makes it so the reader cannot get invested in any one character, and every scenario you present is shallow and uninteresting.

You say you want to present an epic world that is vast with several things going on. What I saw was a whole lot of confusing nothing going on, and that became extremely off-putting.

This looks to me like terminal world-builder syndrome. You built up your world and you want to present the world to your readers, but you forgot the most important point to all of this. You are absolutely failing at presenting a story.

You're going to need to back off with the world building and present us with a single character and let the reader know why it is we're supposed to care about that character within the first 5 seconds of opening the prologue. And then, after you have successfully pulled that off, you need to stick with that one character and only that character for a minimum of 10K words worth of story content. Only after sticking with that single character for 10K words, you can maybe head-jump to another character for around 2K words (preferably less), but then you have to return to that character you started with.
So just cutting off some parts will help?

I can definitely see that my head-jumping method was just poorly done in my book. Maybe i should have leave them in side chapters while giving my two main characters a strong focus. Or perhaps even better to just present them in a certain right time.

Well, looks like I need some re-work to do.
 

Jemini

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So just cutting off some parts will help?

Help? Yeah, it'll definitely help. You're also going to have to work on your hook though. I am not exactly sure who even was one of your main characters in that prologue, but what I do know is that the 1st character I saw was not really all that appealing to me. You didn't have a good hook there. There was nothing in that first few vitally important paragraphs of the story that resonated with me.

It looked like it was just indulging in "mysterious words syndrome." That is to say, tossing out some things that are supposed to sound vague and mysterious, but really just come off sounding pretentious on top of being dull and uninteresting. Get rid of that and replace it with something more interesting.

I started my own series with my MC in a mental fog trying to piece together what just happened after having been involved in a car-crash, and then he looks over to his passenger seat and notices his granddaughter is seriously injured from that same crash.

Basically, a cold open directly into a very high emotion situation. More importantly, a high emotion situation that is very easy for the audience to sympathize and identify with.

It's stuff like that, stuff that's more tangible, that actually helps you build a connection with your character. Give them something the reader can sympathize with.

In Ascendance of a Bookworm, which I mentioned earlier, Urano is absolutely obsessed with books and the story's prologue opens with Urano as the narrator describing just how much she loves books. Books are something tangible we are all familiar with, and if you are reading a lite novel or web novel then you can easily sympathize with her love of books. She just takes it to a little bit more of an extreme compared to most people, and that extreme takes something familiar we can identify with and adds a strange twist to it that makes it interesting and engaging to read about, that twist just being the simple fact that Urano is several times more extreme about her love of books than the reader will ever be.

You need to find your hook. It needs to be something simple, tangible, and relatable. Not some guy's mysterious fanaticism toward people with strange and unfamiliar titles.
 

mitkopom

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From my personal experience i know that prologues must be as short as possible and just long enough to introduce the mc and their current situation.
People tend to dislike the prologues
 

DaisukeHanashi

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You need to find your hook. It needs to be something simple, tangible, and relatable. Not some guy's mysterious fanaticism toward people with strange and unfamiliar titles.
Hmmm... I see.

Apparently, I just thought of it at first through the same way that Brandon Sanderson did on his prologue in Mistborn. He started with a character that has just unimportant pagetime by explaining what the fk is going on with the Inquisitors at that time iirc... and then presenting a scenario by looking down on their slaves at their utmost misery.

It was kind of reason why I hook with it, not because of the character, but the setting he just presents.

And that's what I tried to do the same in my book as well, but it just turned out to be... a poorly-done slam onto the reader's face.
 

TheEldritchGod

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I just compared my own work to some other Latest Series work... and they immediately have some favorites and numbers of "Plan To Read". Even it is written by just newly-registered author, and they just get two-digits on Readers count.

I don't know why, but the reason for writing a 10k word chapter is because I want to introduce my latest series as an epic with lots of occurrences around the world... and perhaps I might turn off a lot of potential readers with short attention span.
SHAME.
 

DiscoDream

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More than attention span, there's also the time investment to consider. That's 15-20 minutes if I'm taking my time. All that for a series which is overwhelmingly going to be dropped. If you're going to write such long chapters, you have to either release a bunch of them, or accept that growth will be slow.

+longer chapters force the reader to focus more in your writing, making it more likely that they'll pick up on whatever your bad at, further slowing down growth. As a new writer, shorter chapters are your friend.
 

Yairy

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I just compared my own work to some other Latest Series work... and they immediately have some favorites and numbers of "Plan To Read". Even it is written by just newly-registered author, and they just get two-digits on Readers count.

I don't know why, but the reason for writing a 10k word chapter is because I want to introduce my latest series as an epic with lots of occurrences around the world... and perhaps I might turn off a lot of potential readers with short attention span.
My prologue chapter for Sleeping Princess is pretty long and it's doing well. I say, write your story. Those who are intrigued will stay. Chin up, fight! Have a wonderful day.
 

Love4NovelGuy

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That isn’t a prologue, that’s a news article. A prologue is supposed to be focused on the meat of the story from maybe another perspective from the MC. Like how in A Song of Ice and Fire the prologue introduces the ice people that won’t be relevant until later.
 

mitkopom

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While speaking about prologues I need some help as well.
The Prologue being a crucial part of the work and the opening face of a novel needs to be perfect.
So I need HELP of native speaking author to polish it.
Will someone give me a hand with this? It is only about 1k words and many of the grammar mistakes have been already fixed thanks to an enthusiastic reader.
I still feel that it needs a little bit of gentle touch thou!.
So If you bored and you are willing to spend 20 minutes of your time to help a fellow amateur author, please contact me.
 

RetGod

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I would also make 5 chapters or so out of it.
 
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