I used to think that making short chapters would be easier

[Anonjohn20]

Just as the title says, I used to think that making short chapters would be easier, but sometimes there's so much to write that I can't fit it all in 1 chapter, and it feels awkward in 2 or 3 chapters. My plan of making the chapters 800-1,200 words and just posting often is turning out to be more tedious than if I had just tried to make long chapters and posted less often. I know I haven't started posting yet, but it's still something I worry about.

 

[Kalliel]

Nah.

 

[Arkus86]

You have run into the biggest drawback of short chapters for a reader (in my opinion). You can't fit enough into them to make them worth reading.

 

[Masked_writer]

I have no such weakness, all my ideas are perfectly fit with a 800 to 1200 words. Sometimes it's shorter than what i wanted so i have to add more in to fit the chap

 

[theInmara]

We're just barely managing to write 3K chapters for scribblehub and they're alright. But our ideal length, both as readers and as writers, is actually in the 5K to 7K range. And a good 10K chapter is a delight.

When we're writing for print, mind you, where it doesn't matter if the chapters are all the same length, we've written a 200 word chapter before, or possibly shorter. Those are rare, but sometimes a book calls for one or two of them for proper flow.

 

[miyoga]

We're just barely managing to write 3K chapters for scribblehub and they're alright. But our ideal length, both as readers and as writers, is actually in the 5K to 7K range. And a good 10K chapter is a delight.

When we're writing for print, mind you, where it doesn't matter if the chapters are all the same length, we've written a 200 word chapter before, or possibly shorter. Those are rare, but sometimes a book calls for one or two of them for proper flow.

There's something to be said for what @theInmara said. You write what you're comfortable with, and that's what you stick with...for the most part.

What I mean is that you shoot for an average amongst all your chapters instead of trying to nitpick that every chapter is of a certain length. It makes the writing process more comfortable for you and the reader, both, in that it all feels natural. Trying to cram everything to a set limit? That just sets the chapter (or novel) up for failure and the same is true for adding tons of filler to hit a "target".

For both of my shorts, I purposely wrote shorter chapters because of how I wanted things to progress and what I wanted to focus on. If I tried to stretch it out longer than I did, then I wouldn't have enjoyed the process as much as I did. Write for yourself first and worry about the readers in editing.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

We're just barely managing to write 3K chapters for scribblehub and they're alright. But our ideal length, both as readers and as writers, is actually in the 5K to 7K range. And a good 10K chapter is a delight.

When we're writing for print, mind you, where it doesn't matter if the chapters are all the same length, we've written a 200 word chapter before, or possibly shorter. Those are rare, but sometimes a book calls for one or two of them for proper flow.

In the novel Howling Mad, Peter David wrote a single chapter that was one sentence: "It seemed the polite thing to do."

 

[PancakesWitch]

as someone that updates like 7 novels with 1 daily 1k word chapter (sometimes two chapters), the trick is in progressing the story a bit as much as possible, make things happen, you have to do a lot of showing instead of telling, this way the story progresses as everything is being shown constantly, even if tiny bits, its more entertaining than telling. though boring chapters in between the exciting ones is inevitable even with long chapters. but quantity over quality is like that, at the end of the week the reader will have 7 chapters to read in a row, and it'll feel the same way as a long weekly chapter, its a thing of preferences.

Also when I write I usually write several short chapters of the same novel in a row (usually 7 in a row) so it feels like a constant progression to me. you should probably just write long chapters and cut them and edit them a bit so the cut parts make sense as the begining of a new short chapter. It's just a thing of having enough imagination

 

[ArlindoFrancisco]

To me, it is better to write 1000 to 1200 chapters but the story needs to progress in all of them; now maybe will progress in a way the reader might not like but it is progress. you need to push the story foward in every chapter for it to be easier to do.

In your case, I would just do longer chapters and edit them into smaller ones.

I edited so that there is no confusion anymore... thanks Nolff LOL

 

[Nolff]

To me, it is better to write 1000k to 1200k chapters but the story needs to progress in all of them; now maybe will progress in a way the reader might not like but it is progress. you need to push the story foward in every chapter for it to be easier to do.

In your case, I would just do longer chapters and edit them into smaller ones.

Holy moly, one thousand thousand words to one thousand two hundred thousand words??!

 

[ArlindoFrancisco]

Holy moly, one thousand thousand words to one thousand two hundred thousand words??!

View attachment 31898

LOL i saw it now, LOL

 

[Zinless]

1200k words

1000k to 1200k

Why are y'all writing 1 million word chapters?!?!

 

[Nolff]

LOL i saw it now, LOL

Why are y'all writing 1 million word chapters?!?!

It's him not me

 

[miyoga]

Why are y'all writing 1 million word chapters?!?!

Not why, how are y'all writing 1 million word chapters?!?!

 

[lambenttyto]

Just as the title says, I used to think that making short chapters would be easier, but sometimes there's so much to write that I can't fit it all in 1 chapter, and it feels awkward in 2 or 3 chapters. My plan of making the chapters 800-1,200 words and just posting often is turning out to be more tedious than if I had just tried to make long chapters and posted less often. I know I haven't started posting yet, but it's still something I worry about.

Maybe your style is too wordy. Short chapters lend themselves well to fast pacing, a la "thriller" pacing, or in the fantasy genre, the "sword and sorcery" genre, and no, S&S is not interchangeable for heroic fantasy or that stuff they call grimdark either. S&S is the thriller of the fantasy genre. If you want to try writing short chapters, you could read some thrillers. The Joe Ledger series is pretty fun.

All that being said, even War and Peace has really short chapters and it's a big fat epic, definitely not a thriller, so no hard and fast rules about chapter length being thriller pacing, but typically you wrote shorter chapters to move along. You have to get good at doing the cliffhangar.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

From my own observations and a discussion on Royal Road, it seems that most online readers prefer consistent lengths, and if the chapters are shorter, they prefer more frequent updates, say daily if you stay below 500 words, and at least three times a week if you never go over 1000 - and a majority of readers want between 1K and 2K chapters, two or three times a week. That said, the needs of the story generally outweigh the needs of the reader, so if you sometimes need to go as high as 10K or so, or as low as 400, just let readers know you're going long or short that installment.

 

[Anonjohn20]

Maybe your style is too wordy. Short chapters lend themselves well to fast pacing, a la "thriller" pacing, or in the fantasy genre, the "sword and sorcery" genre, and no, S&S is not interchangeable for heroic fantasy or that stuff they call grimdark either. S&S is the thriller of the fantasy genre. If you want to try writing short chapters, you could read some thrillers. The Joe Ledger series is pretty fun.

All that being said, even War and Peace has really short chapters and it's a big fat epic, definitely not a thriller, so no hard and fast rules about chapter length being thriller pacing, but typically you wrote shorter chapters to move along. You have to get good at doing the cliffhangar.

Less words, more cliffhangers? You're making me not want to write a short chapter ever again. lol

From my own observations and a discussion on Royal Road, it seems that most online readers prefer consistent lengths, and if the chapters are shorter, they prefer more frequent updates, say daily if you stay below 500 words, and at least three times a week if you never go over 1000 - and a majority of readers want between 1K and 2K chapters, two or three times a week. That said, the needs of the story generally outweigh the needs of the reader, so if you sometimes need to go as high as 10K or so, or as low as 400, just let readers know you're going long or short that installment.

Very true, I was planning on releasing the 800-1,200 word chapters 3 times a week. My backlog isn't big enough yet.

 

[lambenttyto]

Less words, more cliffhangers? You're making me not want to write a short chapter ever again. lol

It doesn't have to be a life or death cliffhanger, it can literally be as small as a line of dialogue the reader wants the answer to. The writer asks questions and withholds the answers--that's what keeps a reader reading a lot of the time.