Surveying opinions: chapter length

(It looks like few are visiting the Smithy these days, which I think is kind of a shame because I like meta discussions about fic... So I'm posting this topic because I'm interested, and hope I'm not boring the board too much. )

What is the ideal length for a forum chapter? What do you consider 'long' on a messageboard?

Ultimately the answer's going to be that chapters need to be as long as the writer thinks they ought to be in that particular story. Terry Pratchett has scene breaks instead of chapter breaks; mostly the scenes are above some minimum length, though occasionally very short for emphasis. I have a vague memory that Dan Brown's chapters are rather short (and really don't want to dip back in to check). When I'm reading novels I don't pay a lot of attention to chapter breaks; I just like to go on to the next and then the next as soon as I can, and I usually stop myself based on page number rather than chapter number.

But what I'm interested in is if the format of a forum has its own effect. Does the Attic forum format make chapter length in general shorter than it might be on a story site like FF.Net or Archive Of Our Own? Does the forum format influence how you in particular write, post, or read? On archive sites where you can see both the number of chapters and word count in a summary, does the ratio of words per chapter influence you in deciding whether to read a story? Personally, I tend to assume that an average of below a thousand words per chapter is more likely to be from an inexperienced author, although there are many bad fics with long chapters and some good fics with short chapters. (The epistolary format is one reason for shorter chapters--if there are any Emily of New Moon fans, here's a good diary-format story from the viewpoint of Evelyn Blake.) I've seen a couple of fanficrants posters go overly dogmatic in insisting that a chapter average below 500 or 1000 words can never, ever be a good story, but I do think it's preferable for chapters to be more than a single quick gulp of a scene unless there's a particular stylistic reason.

When browsing the Attic archives I've seen '[long]' used on stories that I didn't consider particularly long by my reading standards, so I was curious as to where others draw the line. (Perhaps ten thousand words, I think, would be my personal standard for a long one-shot story; a long chapter would depend on the average length of the other chapters in the story. By the SFWA's Nebula standards, a short story is under seven-and-a-half thousand words.) In the old board, I ran into trouble about the post size limits with a twelve-thousand-word one-shot, but the new posting limits seem higher than that.

I haven't really paid much attention to it before. Only recently when I started posting my Dragon Age 2 fic on ff.net as well, I actually noticed the word count. Seems my chapters are generally between 3-6k words, though it's not some magic interval I strive for.

Usually I just draw the bare bones for a chapter at first, like what I want to cover: handle this issue, have those characters discuss this and that, etc. Then going from there, it'll take as long as it takes, not like I'm going to cut it mid-scene because yikes it might be growing too long. If it really seems to go too long then I might split it in two, but only if it makes logical sense. As for the length depending on which site I'm posting, I don't know, I get the feeling mine might be a bit too long for ff.net, but I don't really intend to change that. I write for myself, not for a forum.

I think you've asked a good question.

Several years ago - before Kindle and similar devices - we had this discussion. A number of people commented that long stories were challenging to read on a computer screen due to eye strain and ability to maintain focus. In my own experience, I find it much easier to read looking at a book or a hand held device than looking at a screen sitting on a desk. So the overall consensus of the time was that anything more than about 3500 words (roughly a screen and a half) constituted a bit too much (i.e., was harder to read, maintain focus etc.)

I tend to write about 5-7 pages a chapter although I do have longer chapters (12-15 pages) occasionally. Much of it has to do with what feels right/natural in terms of the story and maintaining reader interest.

Edited by Jeannette, 08 April 2011 - 04:51 PM.

Usually I just draw the bare bones for a chapter at first, like what I want to cover: handle this issue, have those characters discuss this and that, etc. Then going from there, it'll take as long as it takes, not like I'm going to cut it mid-scene because yikes it might be growing too long. If it really seems to go too long then I might split it in two, but only if it makes logical sense. As for the length depending on which site I'm posting, I don't know, I get the feeling mine might be a bit too long for ff.net, but I don't really intend to change that.

My hypothesis was actually that this site's upper quartile is smaller than some of FF.Net's offerings, because of what I've noticed from doing line-by-line reviews of others' fic, quoting parts to comment on. It's simply easier to do that on shorter chapters than longer chapters. It's true, of course, that FF.Net has a lot of fic with very small word count/chapter averages. But as well, The Zenith would be a serious contender for the longest Baldur's Gate fic ever at 827K and 98 chapters, and Lalaithe's A Fragment of Substance is longer than Gone With The Wind at an average of about 5K/chapter (and also really good!). Likewise, in other fandoms, a lot of the fic that is considered 'good' also tends to have longer chapters. Whereas it seems that a lot of fics I've read here, such as Silrana's and Jeannette's, tend to have shorter chapters.

A story has natural breakpoints, and those depend a lot on the particular story and the chosen style. A point-of-view character like Skie is going to be more self-focused and succinct rather than go into long philosophical musings or extensive descriptions of trees, whereas a point-of-view character like Haer'Dalis is going to describe a lot more elaborately. I don't like either padding or overly simple scenes that seem artificially disjoint.

Sometimes chapter breaks creep up on me almost unawares: I reach a key climax or emotional point in the writing and then realise that would be a good place to separate it out as another chapter. Usually I have the main events of the story planned, but sometimes it turns out that there are more subdivisions than I expected.

Several years ago - before Kindle and similar devices - we had this discussion. A number of people commented that long stories were challenging to read on a computer screen due to eye strain and ability to maintain focus. In my own experience, I find it much easier to read looking at a book or a hand held device than looking at a screen sitting on a desk. So the overall consensus of the time was that anything more than about 3500 words (roughly a screen and a half) constituted a bit too much (i.e., was harder to read, maintain focus etc.)

I read fast, so I like to read longer chapters at a time, even if it is on a computer. I rather like the simple screen formatting of Project Gutenberg, FF.Net, Archive Of Our Own, and Livejournal: black text, white screen, easy to resize, filling the entire window, making it possible for me to read novels on the Internet. The main forum skin has too much left-column blank space for my personal tastes. (But it's still fun to post here.)

I tend to write about 5-7 pages a chapter although I do have longer chapters (12-15 pages) occasionally. Much of it has to do with what feels right/natural in terms of the story and maintaining reader interest.

Yes, it is a lot about what feels natural for the particular story. Trying different works in progress, I've found different typical chapter length works for different stories I've tried to write. Longer chapters I like as a reader, but I can't complain when stories end at natural points for them. Thanks for sharing your experiences!