I started my own novel recently and my dilemma is deciding between shorter or longer chapters. What do you think?
Depends ... Start with short to medium length chapters untill you get readers and then you can make them longer in time
A short chapter novel with fast uploads are better if you have a good website. Typically the problem with long chaps is that it would seem tedious to keep your place if you are on the go which happened to me with doulou dalu
Honestly I prefer longer chapters so I would be able to get more of the story in one chapter. You could keep track of things by using an outline as well. Thats what I do. Like I write down the events in advance then I would write the detailed story in another document. I would just cut whenever I deem it long enough.
Make the chapters as long as it takes you to get to a good stopping point. If you can do that in a tweet length, that's fine. Just don't cut it in half if it's in an awkward spot.
Hey I know your looking personal answers but I think this is a good read Tottaly agree with @Fluffums
I'd say between 2k and 6k words/chapter, thats the length I like the most for reading. If you go for a faster release schedule (like daily or every second day shorter chapters are also okay. But more important is not to end too often on cliffs or the like, very annoying if a author does that to often.
I think posting 2-3 times a week is the sweet spot. It's often enough that readers don't forget what happened in between chapters. But it's slow enough that translators can keep up with their weekly quota. So I'd say take however much you can translate a week, divide that by 2 or 3, and that's your chapter length. So if you can translate 6k a week, post twice a week with 3k chapters or three times a week with 2k chapters. By the way, this is all hypothetical. Sometimes, you can't split chapters that easily. Personally, I like shorter chapters because I feel more accomplished saying I've read a 3000 chapter novel than a 1000 chapter novel. Yes, I'm dumb like that.
Depends on how often you can post and what you're writing for. Shorter chapters posted very often will net you plenty of views especially if you're posting on multiple sites. However, longer chapters tend to net you more loyal readers as the chapters are long enough and have enough content to satisfy a reader in one sitting. So you can post once a month and if the story is good and the chapters long, readers will keep coming back. I'd say 500-3000 words would be a short chapter. 3001-7000 would be a medium sized chapter. And 7000+ would be large.
key word you should looking at is pacing if you are writing a novel try to make the pacing feel right so it the cut in between chapters doesn't feel awkward. but once you find you pacing it also doesn't mean you have to particularly stick to it if something feels like it needs to be dealt with more in depth or brief its ok to make it as long or short as need be to settle it. all in all just think of how the chapter feels as your righting it and try not to be a bore with extraneous details or extreme info dumps.
Only reason the chapters are short in the first place is so the website owner can rake in advertising revenue.
If the chapter are too short the readers won't be able to get hooked to them before they finish. Thought lenght doesn't make a story good or not when you only get a few chapter a week and you are updated it does affect if they stop before you start to like them. So i rather for them to be in the medium or long side any day.
It depends on what kind of audience and what kind of story you are writing. For books meant for teenagers, each chapter shouldn't be long. 1000 words to 3000 words seems to be a good length. Books for children should not have more than 1000 words per chapter and should have a lot of pictures instead. For more serious books, you should go more than 4000 words per chapter. It's not absolutely necessary to write this much in a chapter, but serious books are usually read by serious people. And serious people don't normally read 1000 words chapters because it feels cheap. However, there are ekusuception, such as James Patterson who write stories with less than 1000 words per chapter, somewhere around 700 words for each chapter. Short chapters makes it easier to read, but the most important is not the length of the chapter, but how that chapter contribute to the story. If a 700 word chapter provides something to the story instead of a pointless collection of sentences, then it's a good chapter. If a 4000 words chapter also tells the story well, it's also a good chapter. If neither length conclude the chapter, then you have pacing issues and you have to resolve that or your work will quickly be labelled as 'boring'. Personally, I don't like short chapters, because it means either the chapter has been split into multiple parts or the story has been so concise that the joy of reading is lost. Another thing more important is the consistency of the story length. A chapter in the main story (doesn't include the prologue, epilogue and bonus chapters) should have roughly the same length. For ekusuzample, if your story averages at 1000 words, each chapter should complete at between 800-1200 words. However, while it would be nice to see consistency in a web novel, don't care too much about it until the finalized form. For drafts, just keep writing. Editing can come later. Don't stifle your creativity.
Look at the audience targets platform. If they like them mobile then shorter would be better. If not then longer.
My chapter tends to cross 10000 words... (I end up cut them into 5000s parts). Perhaps because of my info dump tendency...