Is there a normal cap on how long a chapter should be? I typically separate mine into chapters but this past story I left as a whole 10k words single story. Is that okay? Or should I have broken it up?
Is there a normal cap on how long a chapter should be? I typically separate mine into chapters but this past story I left as a whole 10k words single story. Is that okay? Or should I have broken it up?
I typically separate mine into chapters but this past story I left as a whole 10k words single story.
That's fine. A short story doesn't have chapters and is typically 1,500-10,000 words.
A short story doesn't have chapters and is typically 1,500-10,000 words.
Originally, I started out with 15,000 word chapters (on average). The last I checked, I now average anywhere from 1,200 to 9,000 words. Longer chapters for the first few, story development chapters, smaller for the later chapters (90,000 vs 3,000 words), though that varies per story.
By the way, with books, the standard is to measure words, as 'pages' can be any length, depending on the size of your display (phone, tablet of 50" inch desktop) so it's a meaningless construct, signifying nothing. Even with print books, the book's dimensions have a dramatic effect on page count.
Is that okay? Or should I have broken it up?
I don't think there is a rule governing how long a story or chapter should be. I can't speak for others, but I like to break my stories into chapters of about 20 pages (7-8K). I do this because I find it simpler to work with chapters of that size, than to work with a single file.
However, there are times when a single file is convenient, such as when I want to standardize the spelling of a word or when I find that I have been using different names for the same character. For those occasions, I use a file containing links to the chapters that merge all of the files into 1 document.
Do what works best for you.
As always, chapters, like stories, are exactly as long as they need to be, hopefully not a word more or a single word less. That's concise writing, which I word hard to achieve.
I heard a civil engineer once proclaim that someone had insisted the Golden Gate Bridge was too long. His response was they were going to make it a foot shorter, but it would've fall fell into the ocean.
When I first migrated my stories here, I received a message from the site that one of them was over the normal length - it was 30k. They still posted it but noted that they prefer chapters be 10k or less. Since then, I've adhered to that and have actually found that it's much easier for me proofreading shorter chapters rather than a long story.
I have seen stories with over 100k words without chapter divisions, as well as a single chapter in a long story that exceeded that length as well.
Both of those would be what I consider 'to long' to not have chapter divisions.
Personally I don't think 10k words is an excessively long chapter or undivided story - granted that's my personal opinion.
I don't know if it still happens, but in some of the older stories there's a note that it was posted as one chapter, but was broken up for, I think, browser compatibility.
Mostly I think it depends on what you want, and what fits your stories. Up until Going Postal (I think), none of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books were broken into chapters. I don't remember anyone saying that they missed them.
I don't know if it still happens, but in some of the older stories there's a note that it was posted as one chapter, but was broken up for, I think, browser compatibility.
Go back a bit in time, and some browsers had difficulty with very long pages - and such pages could take a long time to download if the connection was slow. Things are different now, so the code for artificial break-up into chapters was disabled/removed. It's still helpful to readers to ensure chapters are not overly long, though!
I don't know if it still happens, but in some of the older stories there's a note that it was posted as one chapter, but was broken up for, I think, browser compatibility.
It was still one chapter, but the chapter was broken into multiple pages.
if chapter one starts with the birth of the main charecter, you need to have a seperate start by the time they hit 3rd grade
When I run into a story that has chapters much over 50K, I generally pass on it. If I can't finish a chapter in one sitting, It takes too much time to find where I left off.
When I run into a story that has chapters much over 50K, I generally pass on it. If I can't finish a chapter in one sitting, It takes too much time to find where I left off.
That's how I see chapter breaks, a necessary stopping point so readers can take necessary breaks (ex: relieving themselves, sleeping, eating or, if necessary, your daily job. ;)
However, I also tend to break ever scene change, though I use my own notation for that (a simple line (rule break) on SOL, a smaller empty line on my books, so you can either stop there or keep going.
I post on some other sites and on Inkitt, they have a posting recommendation of 1500-2500 words for a chapter. I used to post in large blocks as chapters. It took me a long time write, edit, and post such large chapters. After finishing a novel on this site, I started posting there and I broke a 20 chapter book into a 60 chapter book and it genuinely made everything better. Long sections that were dead space suddenly became interesting because they became cliffhangers moving into the next chapter. Since then, I have concentrated on short chapters. I try to keep them under 3,000 words. I have found this actually helps a lot with anxiety, too. I can allow myself to write a massive block of text, as far as the stream of consciousness will take me, and then I can break up what would have been one chapter into 2 or 3, and since I post once a week, that gives me several weeks to be ahead.
Now that I've started doing it that way, though, I've noticed I've lost patience for long chapters. I started reading a story on here that was really long chapters, and I couldn't stick with it. Nothing wrong with the story, but my attention couldn't hold to 12k words, even if I was enjoying them. I have one chapter that's 5k+ words and I even get impatient with myself.
My stories hover around 5000-6000 words (about 30KB) per chapter, but I might try splitting up the next in my series into smaller blocks.
How often do/did you post?
You definitely can break up those chapters at least once. One way I made the mundane into interesting was let's say a conversation that went on long. If there was a question asked, that's where I'd make the chapter break so what was a long string of dialogue becomes a cliffhanger. Or if a new person shows up into said conversation. One chapter I broke off when a character shouts at another from afar and though there's nothing that's particularly interesting about it when it's one long block, cutting it off at '"Hey, Anubis!" cried a voice' suddenly made it more interesting. Inkitt has chapter analytics so you can see how often people click immediately to the next chapter after reaching the bottom, and I noticed as I moved chapter ends around (I updated so often, I got called out on it a couple of times by my few followers over there, ha) that those cuts got me the most clicks. Perfect for me to know before I publish.
As for how often I used to post, well, with those big chapters, I was lucky if I got once a month. Now that I started doing these short chapters, 2k words or less usually, I have started posting weekly. So far, I've kept up. And I'm posting 3 different stories. So I will write a long section, as far as whatever scene is willing to take me. If that's 2k or 20k words, I let it out. The big scenes take so long to write, but then I can focus on another story and write a big long block for that as well. Then I cut them up into those shorter chapters, and I have material for a couple of weeks ahead of time. And for those few times so far I've fumbled, the super short chapter length has saved my butt by making it easy to write a chapter in a single day. 1k words is so much easier to spit out even when grasping than 10k. A rough chapter is better than no chapter.
I happen to have some numbers handy from an old reddit post, so I'm just going to add that in trad.pub. the average chapter length will vary wildly by genre, region, and writing style. As an example:
The Reality Dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton, part one of the Night's Dawn trilogy of space opera novels, is around 385,000 words with 30 chapters. That's an average chapter length of 12,834 words.
Guilty Pleasures, the first novel in Laurell K. Hamilton's long-running Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, is 93k words with 48 chapters, making an average chapter length of 1,938.
The difference is less about length, though, than how the two authors use chapters. Guilty Pleasures is entirely from Anita Blake's point of view with high interiority. Early chapters are very short, introducing one new character or world element. One chapter for an interview with a prospective client, one chapter for a phone call with her best friend's bridesmaid, one chapter as she looks at the body at a crime scene. There are scenes which take multiple chapters to detail because each chapter has a very specific purpose in the novel.
Reality Dysfunction is the opposite. It's a sprawling narrative with over a dozen major point-of-view characters, taking place across dozens of different worlds, all mostly at the same time although there are a few flashbacks that go back decades. Some chapters follow a single character through a series of connected events, others will switch between characters to give the reader a fuller understanding of what is going on during a given scene. Despite how complicated the world-building is and these long, complex chapters, it's a surprisingly easy read. This is space opera, just a very developed type of it.
It may also be worth noting that Peter F. Hamilton is British. I've seen multiple British authors who either have long chapters or don't use chapters at all, just page breaks. Early Terry Pratchett novels are an example of the latter style.
My point is that chapter length and usage actually serves a purpose in narrative structure, although different writing styles use them differently. A lot of online authors have adopted specific chapter lengths as a result of how early web sites (and usenet) worked. The chapter length wasn't a choice by the author, just a limitation of the technology.
It's fine to split a story in multiple small chapters if it fits your needs, but think about why you're doing it. Does it serve the narrative or help with ease of reading? Are you providing breaks between specific types of content, such as time jumps, scene shifts, POV changes, and so on? Are you providing breaks after busy scenes or highlighting an important change?
Or are you just putting a break every 3,000 words because you saw someone else do that?
I attempted, just the other night, to read Runesward by Kenn Ghannon.
I managed to get to chapter three then gave up. The writer seems to prefer chapters around 12Kb in length, and it felt as though it was written by someone with ADHD, as each 'chapter' looked to concern a different protagonist. The story has 74 chapters.
I found the rapid change of perspective intensely annoying as there was no time in which to invest in the character before you were whipped away to another character.
I prefer chapters to be at least 30kb.
I know in film, they use jump cuts to give the illusion of pace and that may have been the intention here, but like in movies, I just find it annoying. Other than that, it seems a popular story.
The writer seems to prefer chapters around 12Kb in length...
... each 'chapter' looked to concern a different protagonist
So it's well laid-out then.
AJ
So what the hell are you doing reading my work then
I'm a sucker for angry girls, especially those in charge of big, stompy machines :-)
AJ
As a reader I have more problems with authors who post chapters that are two short. It leads to a very choppy and disconnected reading experience. Recently, in apparent response to complaints about multiple short chapters, one author consolidated the 30+ chapters he had posted down to five or six.
I don't see a chapter break as any more intrusive than a scene break, at least when you have the complete story available.
What were the chapter sizes before and after the author you mentioned consolidated the chapters?
AJ
I would agree, but for stories on here they are usually posted in individual chapters. Sure you can wait for the entire work to be posted but if the author wants to keep interest the chapters have to be long enough to tell a reasonable amount of the story. Often they are not.
chapters that are too short. It leads to a very choppy and disconnected reading experience.
It's simply turning the page to start the next chapter. Why is that choppy?
Why is that choppy?
Possibly if the POV is changing? Bouncing from character to character, or different locations/times, I find is very off-putting if done in quick succession, without at least some story progression from those involved.
Possibly if the POV is changing?
Nah, the comment was about short chapters.
I can see it while the story is being posted a short chapter at a time. But do we write for posting or for the complete story? I write for the complete story without taking into account the nuances of SOL's posting (well, sometimes I do post more than one chapter at a time).
Bouncing from character to character, … I find is very off-putting if done in quick succession
It's sure a lot better than head-hopping which happens frequently with SOL stories. I haven't read "The Da Vince Code" in many years, but I remember that at the end of each chapter there were one or two small scenes from other characters' POVs — what was going on with them. That didn't bother me.
I'm writing a story now where the MC is fretting over something over the weekend and on Sunday night makes a decision to see someone in person on Monday. The chapter is short even for me so I could have started the next paragraph with something like, "The next morning," but I thought it was cleaner to end the chapter and begin the next one with the MC waiting for the person to answer their door. A time and location change. Right up the alley for starting a new scene/chapter, in this case chapter.
Nah, the comment was about short chapters.
In the example I posted above, the author starts a new chapter with every head hop, which meant a new chapter after a few paragraphs. It's absolutely horrible to read, as it's like watching Tik-tok in book form.
Which is very similar to DBActive's comment I was replying to:
chapters that are too short. It leads to a very choppy and disconnected reading experience.
the author starts a new chapter with every head hop, which meant a new chapter after a few paragraphs.
That's done to avoid head-hopping. I've seen on SOL the author constantly having a scene break to switch POV and avoid what the academics call head-hopping. But it's actually still head-hopping, just done in a literary correct way. It's still jumping from head to head. A way around that is to write it in 3rd-person omniscient.
For me, the hardest part of writing is POV. I desperately want to tell the reader what every character is thinking but I don't want to write in omniscient.
I've seen on SOL the author constantly having a scene break to switch POV and avoid what the academics call head-hopping. But it's actually still head-hopping, just done in a literary correct way.
I'm not sure of the correct terminology but isn't that a valid technique for an 'ensemble' story where there are several protagonists who eventually all come together to dance round a maypole or whatever?
Written as a screenplay, the segments for each individual would take up more time than you'd expect because they don't just stand around saying their lines, they simultaneously perform a range of actions.
Except for the men, who everyone knows can't walk and talk at the same time :-)
AJ
It isn't just turning a page when the author is posting serially.
Ok, that's an SOL posting nuance. I get that. But I wouldn't combine two chapters for that reason. I'd post those two chapters at the same time. That only happens once. Once the story is posted, to everyone else it's just turning the page.
I can second this. I'm very annoyed by chapters under 1,500 words or so, and mildly so by
Edit: wtf, why my response got truncated? For using "
Edit2: yup... /
If you want a < in your posting, it must be followed by a space to avoid it being rejected as a non-approved HTML tag.
Somehow haven't encountered it here before, or had, and thoroughly forgotten about. Anyhow, it's slightly surprising in modern context, somehow, although historically self-explanatory, perhaps.
I'm very annoyed by chapters under 1,500 words or so
1500 words probably took you about six minutes to read but an hour for the author to write (unless they did a decent job of editing and proofreading their own work, in which case at least double that).
I don't think you have a moral right to feel annoyed.
ETA: I used figures from Google's AI response: s silent reading speed of about 250 wpm and a writing speed of about 25wpm under exam conditions.
AJ
Moral right to be matter very little in being annoyed. At the most it ever may, is by me being annoyed with me being annoyed. I didn't say such doesn't happen. Actually it indeed does, but that only adds to the totality of annoyance.
The part of my post lost to forgotten rigors of online security did state that I have experimented with writing on and off (but insofar no other living soul had ever read anything of any of that as far my knowledge goes) and in those I tend to gravitate to about 8,500 words +/-2,000 as my "natural" chapter length. Such takes between two hours and two years to write... (not that I would have market anything at all as "finished" not even partially). Does that give me any "moral rights" for anything? Of course not.
When I transferred my stories from another site, I received a note from the admin about the length of my first story posted. It was 33k words. They stated they preferred 8k-10k max per chapter for this site, but stated they would post it anyway---just stating their preference. Since then, I have averaged around 8k words per chapter.
I wasn't even aware of that limitation. I use chapters a lot, but not necessarily because of the length of a story. I like using the Saturday morning serials concept (google it, Gen X,Z), with a hook to hopefully keep the reader interested.
All of us seniors should remember the Saturday morning serials, and some of us remember the Saturday matinees at the theater. Back in the 50's we didn't even have to lock our bikes.
I like using the Saturday morning serials concept (google it
Googled it, not much the wiser. Perhaps you could summarise the concept for us non-USAians.
AJ
Googled it, not much the wiser.
You have to ask Google in question format to invoke its AI to get a good answer. For example, Google "what were the saturday morning serials"
Part of the response is:
"Saturday morning serials" refers to a type of children's television programming that aired on major networks primarily on Saturday mornings, typically consisting of episodic, serialized cartoons or live-action adventures with cliffhangers at the end of each episode, designed to keep viewers tuned in week after week to see how the story developed.
Each episode would present a part of an ongoing story, often with a cliffhanger ending to encourage viewers to watch the next week's episode.
But serial films (not TV) were popular in the first half of the Twentieth Century. Wikipedia explains it. This is the beginning of that explanation:
A serial film, film serial (or just serial), movie serial, or chapter play, is a motion picture form popular during the first half of the 20th century, consisting of a series of short subjects exhibited in consecutive order at one theater, generally advancing weekly, until the series is completed. Usually, each serial involves a single set of characters, protagonistic and antagonistic, involved in a single story, which has been edited into chapters after the fashion of serial fiction and the episodes cannot be shown out of order or as a single or a random collection of short subjects.
Each chapter was screened at a movie theater for one week, and typically ended with a cliffhanger, in which characters found themselves in perilous situations with little apparent chance of escape. Viewers had to return each week to see the cliffhangers resolved and to follow the continuing story. Movie serials were especially popular with children, and for many youths in the first half of the 20th century a typical Saturday matinee at the movies included at least one chapter of a serial, along with animated cartoons, newsreels, and two feature films.
consisting of a series of short subjects exhibited in consecutive order at one theater, generally advancing weekly, until the series is completed.
It's sort of what's streaming nowadays. Each season is a story with 8 to 10 episodes. Each episode typically ends with a cliffhanger. What they're doing nowadays is taking what would have been a 2 hour movie and breaking it up into many 1 hour episodes. For me, that drags the movie out.
My question to Google was so close to yours as to make no difference but I entered your question verbatim and didn't get the response you got.
Perhaps we accessed different versions of the AI - I understand the rollout strategy prioritises the USA. Or perhaps the responses were tailored to the originating country. The USA was way ahead of the UK in its television programming and I don't remember us having a Saturday morning serial equivalent.
AJ
first
Let see; Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, The Lone Ranger, Sky King, The Cisco Kid, Zorro, Tarzan, Wild Bill Hickok, The Gabby Hayes Show, Rin Tin Tin...
I understand the rollout strategy prioritises the USA.
Try Meta AI and see if it's also biased toward the USA. I entered "what were the saturday morning serials" and got sort of a different answer than Google AI. Google AI was about the TV serials while Meta AI was about the movie serials with the following paragraph at the end:
These serials were often shown at movie theaters, but later, with the advent of television, they were also broadcast on TV. The Saturday morning serials played a significant role in shaping American popular culture and remain a nostalgic favorite among many who grew up watching them.
Some classic examples Meta AI gave of Saturday morning serials are:
Flash Gordon (1936)
The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941)
The Phantom (1943)
Captain America (1944)
The Lone Ranger (1938)
Buck Rogers (1939)
Zorro's Fighting Legion (1939)
Dick Tracy (1937)
The USA was way ahead of the UK in its television programming and I don't remember us having a Saturday morning serial equivalent
We had them as well. Annoyed the fuck out of me to such an extent that I stopped watching them completely, because I knew it would end in a cliffhanger (the law of unintended consequences in action). This was back in the late eighties, early nineties. I can't remember the shows, but there was a fair few of them, over both Saturday and Sunday mornings and around 1800 1700 hrs on BBC2 during the week.
Not so much nowadays as the likes of 'Lost' really kicked the arse out of it and I think UK TV execs realised they were doing more harm than good, so changed it just to the end of series episodes. However even that is fraught with danger. Case in point, the TV series 'Home Fires' ended its second series with a cliffhanger (plane crash), only to be dropped by the channel, annoying all the viewers to such an extent that the original writer was forced to explain what happened next via the medium of book.
In fact, the backlash for the habit is growing, because of how many of the main content providers are quick to drop a series, after even one series, if the ratings are not what they decide as being 'suitable'. Another case in point, 'Serenity' was the result the of backlash over the cancellation of 'Firefly', where many viewers were very vocal in their displeasure over the abrupt cancellation.
This was back in the late eighties, early nineties.
Yeah, but we're talking 40–50 or more years before that. Times were different then. People found it exciting. They didn't have many other things to compete with it.
The concept of serialized fiction dates back much further than you've been discussing. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was first published chapter by chapter in a British newspaper. I believe other Dickens stories were also published that way, but I remember a Christmas Carol specifically. I guess I shouldn't say I remember, I'm old, but not quite that old
Another early serial. Many of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were serialized, most notably in the Strand.
Charles Dickens was first published chapter by chapter in a British newspaper
Did you know Stephen King's "The Green Mile" was written to mirror what Dickens had done? It was 5 or 6 parts (I don't remember), each published and sold separately for a low price. Then they repackaged it and sold it as a complete novel with each part a chapter.
I like using the Saturday morning serials concept (google it, Gen X,Z), with a hook to hopefully keep the reader interested.
Assuming an average silent reading speed of 250 wpm and a 20 minute time limit, that would make each chapter around 5000 words.
AJ
I missed most of the radio serials, but my older brother and cousins loved them. I started watching TV serials when we got a TV about 1951. My brother thought they were dumb since they showed you everything. The radio serials were a trigger for one's imagination. Things were described so you had to put together a picture in your imagination. Then there were the early primetime serials, like Lassie and Superman. Later we got more primetime shows like Maverick and Leave It to Beaver, that were complete episodes without any cliffhangers, unless it was a part one of two. You would get all excited and then the next screen said "To Be Continued."