(What? An uncreative title for a rambling-about-writing post? I suppose it had to happen sometime.)
I've seen a lot about novel lengths—how many words are acceptable for a certain genre, the debate on whether 50,000 words can ever be enough, and so on. Yet I haven't seen much on chapter lengths aside from actually reading novels.
I like to keep my chapter lengths consistent, firstly. I've yet to try to count pages or words in any published books, but I feel like it's not rare to do this. Really short chapters can come up for emphasis; otherwise, everything seems more or less the same. Of course, this is just a rough estimate; it may be more of a matter of seeming the same length in accordance with pace. That sounds like a much tougher algorithm than word count, though.
My chapters are typically rather short. For some fictions, I'll do 1,500 words; some, 2,000; some lighter ones even 1,000. Compared to the 4,000, 6,000, or 8,000 I see elsewhere in the fan fiction world, mine have quite the pallor in comparison. Sometimes I will go up to 3,000 or so if the story doesn't have a good splitting point, and sometimes I just can't stuff the chapter enough to get to the typical amount.
Which do you consider more important, length or consistency? Does it even matter as long as the story has divisions where it should be, chapter break, section break, or otherwise?
Hmm, I don't think I've ever considered the length vs. consistency debate much. Consistency is a tricky thing; it's often difficult to tell just by reading through a FanFiction chapter exactly how long it is compared to the others, so unless the chapters are extremely long or extremely short, it doesn't make much of a difference to me. I guess I prefer length, then, because often when chapters are short I don't feel like I can get into the story enough; I'm always just waiting for whatever will be revealed next time. I'd say I prefer chapters around the 5,000 word mark, then? I don't really know. The ones I write vary a lot; I've been keeping track of the word count in Unstained, and the shortest chapter is 3,671 words and the longest is 8,409.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I don't think I've noticed many chapter length differences myself.
DeleteDo you feel the same way about reading completed books?
That question implies that I regularly read completed books rather than just FanFiction ... *coughs* I guess I don't really notice it; I just assume they're all somewhat consistent.
DeleteHow about the lengths, since you don't really have to wait for what's next?
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