It's something I found myself thinking about, and in the end I decided to ask my readers about it. I'm also asking here.

What is the ideal length of a chapter?
 
I found myself shortening this week chapter from 16K to 11K words because it felt too long. As an author I can release about 10k to 15k words a week.
 
When I write a chapter I usually choose a theme, and put in snippets that advance the storyline according to that theme. The length also increased as the novel is progressing.

I thought about it, and like often in engineering, there may be a sweet spot.
 
On one end, there is a length that most would consider too short. If I just wrote 100 words per chapter, it would take forever to finish the novel and a chapter would not meaningfully progress any story thread at all.

On the opposite end. If I were to release a chapter of 1M words, it would basically be a whole novel in itself. It would be bad because you wouldn't have the chapter list to help you navigate all this content, and it would take you days or even weeks to read.
 
This is the actual length of some of the chapters I have written.
Chapter 2: Arrival is 1.8K words
Chapter 5: Revelation is 5.2K words
Chapter 12: Death is 10.9K words
 
What do you think is the right length for a chapter that is released weekly?

'Reya Dawnbringer' pid='827050' dateline='1502625870' Wrote: It's something I found myself thinking about, and in the end I decided to ask my readers about it. I'm also asking here.

What is the ideal length of a chapter?
 
I found myself shortening this week chapter from 16K to 11K words because it felt too long. As an author I can release about 10k to 15k words a week.
 
When I write a chapter I usually choose a theme, and put in snippets that advance the storyline according to that theme. The length also increased as the novel is progressing.

I thought about it, and like often in engineering, there may be a sweet spot.
 
On one end, there is a length that most would consider too short. If I just wrote 100 words per chapter, it would take forever to finish the novel and a chapter would not meaningfully progress any story thread at all.

On the opposite end. If I were to release a chapter of 1M words, it would basically be a whole novel in itself. It would be bad because you wouldn't have the chapter list to help you navigate all this content, and it would take you days or even weeks to read.
 
This is the actual length of some of the chapters I have written.
Chapter 2: Arrival is 1.8K words
Chapter 5: Revelation is 5.2K words
Chapter 12: Death is 10.9K words
 
What do you think is the right length for a chapter that is released weekly?

The problem lies in that mostly only true readers are treading the forum, which means that they will vote on longer chapters.
As I've seen it, even 4k long chapters are somewhat troublesome for some. I wrote 4k long chapters for seven months before finishing my novel and that means 688k words. Some people commented on how they didn't dare to start with it, while others have read it in like 2-5 days. So I'd rather say that generally, 2,5-3k long chapters are the best on this site. Excluding the forum visiting readers, who have longer attention spans. :D

Personally, I like chapters in the 10k range, though that's assuming I like your story enough to stick around each and every week instead of just binging on it whenever I feel like it.  5k chapters work okay too.

IME, though, with 2k chapters you can never get enough done to make it a satisfying experience in itself.  Like, I'm sure there's a way to do it -- maybe writing 4k and then cramming all of what happened into 2k -- but, most of the time, authors just don't have enough time, space, or experience to make 2k viable.  Chapters need to be experiences in themselves, or else we aren't going to feel satisfied by them, and too often 2k is just a chunk of something larger instead of a small unified piece.

It doesn't really matter how long the chapter is as long as they end naturally. There are stories like Change: new world that has chapters that are longer than 10K and still grabs you, or there are also the authors like DarkBringer whose chapter are averaging 500 words per chapter and are still satisfying.

I think chapter length is secondary to the quality of the actual story itself. So do what is comfortable to you personally.

You all make reasonable points. In short:

>2K words/chapters
Require higher writing skills to work
>5K words/chapter
Sweet spot.
>10K words/chapter
Appealing to users with longer attention spans. Requires people to really like the content.

I'll work on making chapters fo about 4K to 6K words.
I'll work on expressing the same concept using shorter sentences/excanges.
I'm thinking about releasing two chapters a week sometimes.
In the future, I'll rework the existing chapters to be more uniform in length.

Thanks for the feedback, forum! This was really useful!

'Reya Dawnbringer' pid='827077' dateline='1502693554' Wrote: You all make reasonable points. In short:

>2K words/chapters
Require higher writing skills to work
>5K words/chapter
Sweet spot.
>10K words/chapter
Appealing to users with longer attention spans. Requires people to really like the content.

I'll work on making chapters fo about 4K to 6K words.
I'll work on expressing the same concept using shorter sentences/excanges.
I'm thinking about releasing two chapters a week sometimes.
In the future, I'll rework the existing chapters to be more uniform in length.

Thanks for the feedback, forum! This was really useful!

> No.
> Yup.
> No.

- good idea.
- it's all up to your writing style... forcing short sentences can make story feel like written by a 4'th-grader.
- surely a better idea than releasing one 10k per week.
- mhm, good idea.

Interesting you should bring this up. I've just been considering completely restructuring my chapters into smaller segments, as most feel quite long for a web novel(at around 6k). But if some people feel that's the sweet spot, that's good to know.

I think the point about the readership's attention span varying is pretty crucial. On a free web format like this (or Wattpad), my gut feel is that 2k is the sweet spot. It's much like in the gaming industry; like it or not, the market dictates certain aspects of how it is used. People don't play mobile games for as long as they play full-blown games on a PC (though statistically they play them more often). This trend dictates the strategy that performs best (ie. the shallow casual mobile game). Also, much like Free-to-Play mobile games, when you have lots of a thing available at no monetary cost (like web novels), people are less likely to commit to your work, because they haven't just slapped down a tenner to get their money's worth out of. This is the reason why simplistic gimmickry seems to thrive in such places; cheap attention-grabbers and parasitic compulsion-holders win on that front.

So in a sense, I'm still undecided. But it's good to know that 6k+ doesn't scare off everyone ;)

You are all following silly stereotypes with this 'attention span'. How about you actually see what kind of content is popular nowdays? The 4 minute videos were a thing 10 years ago. Now videos that are 20-30 min are the most popular. (the changing algoryth of YT is a part of it, but still). Geez, don't base your ideas on outdated stereotypes....

'Caladbolg' pid='827126' dateline='1502783107' Wrote: You are all following silly stereotypes with this 'attention span'. How about you actually see what kind of content is popular nowdays? The 4 minute videos were a thing 10 years ago. Now videos that are 20-30 min are the most popular. (the changing algoryth of YT is a part of it, but still). Geez, don't base your ideas on outdated stereotypes....

To clarify here, I'm not banging the tired old "people don't have attention spans anymore" drum when I say that certain audiences have low time commitment. What I'm saying is that the platform itself will shape the user habits. I don't think anyone's mentioned Youtube prior to your post, but indeed the site's own changes are at the heart of the change you describe (other factors like a decline in TV probably contribute). In other mediums, such as mobile gaming, the trend has not changed in this way because the rules haven't. 

As far as reading is concerned, I think there will always be a range of 'attention spans'. However, where those tastes can be found is not uniformly spread and that is the thing to gauge when trying to improve content.

Well, 2k chapters in my experience are unifromly received as short by readers... but maybe I'm biased because I read mainly trnaslated novels.

I'm writing my webnovel with every chapter being as long as I feel it needs to be. There might be short chapters and there might be long chapters.

I think it isn't something you should be worried about. It's better to focus on the quality of a chapter rather than the quantity.

'fluffywolf' pid='827132' dateline='1502791754' Wrote: I think it isn't something you should be worried about. It's better to focus on the quality of a chapter rather than the quantity.

I think too that quality is the first factor.

This discussion was helpful, it gave me some insight on what reader might value.
At a certain point I had a chapter of 17K words, which definitely felt too long even for me.

What I'll do from now on is to focus on chapter in the range from 3K to 7K words, to give some uniformity to chapter length.
I still wouldn't for example cut a battle in two to respect the limit. It's more like a guideline that i set in order to make reading more convenient.