Writing How many words in a chapter?

[CameronCooke]

How long are your chapters on average? A thousand? More?

 

[minacia]

Mine tend to be short, around 1k

 

[BenJepheneT]

I live on a bit of a more extreme side of things.

 

[0xReki]

I guess I'll have to counter with the other end?

JK. 500 is the absolute mininum, I try to aim for 1.5k but, as you can see it's not working for me. At least, not with this story.

 

[ZesshiLavi]

Average prob 1-2K normally.

 

[Lon3ly]

2K is What I aim for.

 

[OkuraTsukiko]

2k-5k for me, I like it long.... probably why I upload only one chapter per week

 

[TotallyHuman]

How long are your chapters on average? A thousand? More?

~1300

 

[TotallyHuman]

2k-5k for me, I like it long.... probably why I upload only one chapter per week

Wow, it's like 12 times as frequent as me...

 

[Fox-Trot-9]

My chapters are insanely long, ranging from 5k to almost 20k, but for SH, I'll post them in hopefully no more than 4k per part per post. It's still on the long side, but this is as much as I can do right now.

 

[yansusustories]

For me, it depends on the project. Most - especially those that will run for a longer time - will have shorter chapters around 1k words. The shorter projects (so single volumes instead of series) usually have about 4-5k words per chapter.

 

[JayDirex]

1500 to 2500 is the magic number you seek. If you're going to do less than 1500 you need to post more, twice a week.

If you're going to write more then 2500 then you can space chapters out by a week a part, since you're providing a healthy enough chapter.

2500 words should be at least three to four scenes.

 

[ChronicleCrawler]

1500-3000 Words per chapter. Unless the story is very good, that's the number of words that a normal reader can tolerate based on studies on readers' attention span. Of course, there are exceptions. Such as me.

 

[K5Rakitan]

I used to do longer chapters, but now I just try to keep it over 500 words since my placenta is making life difficult for me.
Having a fetus is fun, but having a gigantic placenta means gestational diabetes in my family.

 

[DubstheDuke]

I do about 3000

 

[LifeContinuesOn]

Most of my stories are on Royal road, and it has a minimum of 500 words type of spiel, and I tend to do around 3-4k a day, multiple stories and chapters

 

[LifeContinuesOn]

Most of my stories are on Royal road, and it has a minimum of 500 words type of spiel, and I tend to do around 3-4k a day, multiple stories and chapters

So around 1.5k per chapter, sorry if that was confusing

 

[Maple-Leaf]

Mine changes a lot. I like to at least get over 2,000, but sometimes they get a lot higher. One time I named a chapter after an event but I underestimated how long it would take me to get to that event and it ended up being 5,000 words long and I still hadn't reached it. Eventually I realized that I could just change the name and split the chapter. I was all excited thinking that procrastinating for several months resulted in two chapters rather than one, but then I just ended up changing the name and not splitting it. Thus how the currently unpublished 5,000 word chapter came to be.

 

[eonovels]

1500 to 2500 is the magic number you seek. If you're going to do less than 1500 you need to post more, twice a week.

If you're going to write more then 2500 then you can space chapters out by a week a part, since you're providing a healthy enough chapter.

2500 words should be at least three to four scenes.

1500-2000 is the sweet spot
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@CameronCooke

You can split chapters up into smaller chunks, but then you have to upload them together - maybe within the same day. That way you can spread it out during the day, and still appear on the 'Latest Releases' all the day if that's what you want.
Keep in mind - it will be annoying for the readers if you split it mid-scene. So the split has to make sense.


Here's an actual response I got when I asked my beloved nuffians:

So yeah, there's that. Also, if it's a fast-paced story, you can keep chapters short. If it's a long-description, high-winded type of writing, you want to keep the chapter long.

Basically, each chapter has to add value, so you have to aim at putting at least one rising-action/climax in each of them. And that's how you split the chapters.

I have a completed short story where it made sense to move 300 words into one separate chapter else it would be confusing. Then, I have 2k-3k+ chapters in another story that I can't split even if I want to, because it will ruin the flow.

 

[JayDirex]

so you have to aim at putting at least one rising-action/climax in each of them

Not every chapter needs rising/action climax. Even action stories have to have down time for exposition, character dev, sex scenes, etc

What every chapter needs is a goal, or Aim as you put it. Part of that goal is moving the plot forward via the scenes.