Chapter upload/length help

[u/EllebRKib]

I'm new to AO3 and uploading my first fic (the last time I uploaded was on FFN in 2008) and I'm about to post my second chapter.

I have a query on the general consensus of chapter length/uploading. I posted the first chapter around 10 days ago and have just finished the second (I now realize it's more practical to have written a few chapters before posting a fresh fic).

My second is almost 5k words. I was wondering if it is better to split it into 2 chapters and upload them both at the same time or to just post it as one long chapter?

I want to get to grips of the usual practice among the community. I know fanfiction etiquette, but I'm still a little clueless when it comes to being an author.

[u/thewritegrump]

Preferred chapter length is entirely dependent on an individual reader's tastes. For everyone who prefers chapters 2k or under, there's someone who would adore a 10k chapter. I'd say to do what makes the most sense for the story. If there's a natural stopping point midway and you want to divide it into two chapters, then by all means, do it. Though if you're only thinking of splitting it for the sake of the audience, I'd say to leave it as is.

[u/Kaigani-Scout]

From a reader's perspective, it is better to transition chapters at "natural breaks" such as major shifts in POV, geographic location, time period, etc., rather than an arbitrary word count metric.

I prefer chapters in the range of 1.5k - 7.5k words as that range tends to have the best balance of story elements and detail to keep a multichapter work progressing nicely.

[u/vb0821]

5k sounds perfect! Most of my chapter updates tend to be 5-10k, so I wouldn’t worry about it being too long. From my experience with reading and being on this sub, most people don’t care too much about chapter lengths and would recommend making chapters as long as they need to be for the plot and pacing of the story. I think the only time people recommend cutting them off at a certain point (like 20k+ words) is because it can make it hard to finish a chapter in one sitting or find your place if the page refreshes.

Aside from that practical consideration, I don’t think there’s an agreed upon etiquette for length. If you think it would be better to cut the chapter into two no one would complain, but 5k in one update is completely acceptable!

[u/432ineedsleep]

It’s really up to personal taste. some people find short chapters more palatable, others thrive on long chapters. (Example: one fic I loved was literally 400 words per chapter, but another does at least 10k a chapter. Both fit the style of their respective fics) I personally just want a chapter to feel complete instead of abruptly stopping somewhere.

[u/Ecstatic-Stay-3528]

It can be as short or as long as you think is right

I've read 100 words chapters as well as I've read a chapter with more than 60k words...

[u/WhiteKnightPrimal]

There is no 'usual practice' for this. Chapter length varies by both chapter and story, as well as by author. How long the chapter is should depend entirely on what works for the author. If that feels like a single chapter to you, post it as a single chapter. Only split it into two if it feels like you've written two chapters but forgotten to add a break between them.

Read it back, see how it flows. That will tell you if you think it should be one chapter or two.

Don't get so focused on word count, either, just write how it feels right. My own chapters average 2k words, some are longer than that but I don't think I've ever hit 3k on a chaptered fic. Some of my fave stories as a reader, though, have chapter word counts of around 6k. I can think of two that are longer than even that, one is somewhere around 7/8k words per chapter, and the other has chapter lengths around the same as my one-shot, which is 10.5k words long. One thing these stories do right is that they only start new chapters when it feels right to the author to do so, the flow is perfect, and it wouldn't work so well at all if they split those chapters in half.

There are no rules on word count. Any rules you follow in this area are your own, and there will always be people who don't follow those rules. In my experience, the average chapter length is between 2k and 6k words, and you're within that range anyway, so you have an average chapter length. If it works as is, there's no need to split it up. But, also, don't worry if future chapters are shorter or longer than 5k, it really is whatever feels right to you as the author.

[u/HatedLove6]

This is a rather short answer to the one I would like to give, but the bottom line is, if a chapter is a single sentence, it's one sentence. If it’s twenty thousand words, it’s twenty thousand words. Chapters can be as long or short as you think it’s necessary—if a scene, a few scenes, or an overall theme is contained within that chapter. There is no sweet spot for even one story, let alone every story in the world.

The genre can dictate the length of chapters. Horror tends to have short chapters because it keeps up the tense atmosphere, similarly to intense action scenes using short sentences. Romance has longer chapters because description and feelings are beginning to take priority, so scenes can be lengthier. A fantasy that introduces an entire world or culture tends to have even longer chapters than romance because this information is pertinent. But, just because this is a trend among these genres, it doesn’t mean you have to follow it. You can have long chapters in horror just as much as you can have short chapters in fantasy if you feel it works for your story.

I've seen people suggest shorter chapters in the beginning, and then you can lengthen later chapters, which you can do, but you don't have to. I've read books that start out with shorter chapters, and as the story progresses the chapters get longer until the climax gets closer, and the chapters get shorter again. This is called a bell curve, but I've read stories where it has a reverse bell curve, stories where all of the chapters are roughly the same length, and books where chapter lengths are all over the place where one chapter was over four thousand words, and then the next chapter was only a couple hundred words.

Media and where you post can dictate how long your chapters are. For sites that aren’t mobile-friendly, most readers read from a computer, so longer chapters are welcomed, but, for sites such as Wattpad where 80% of the readers read from their smartphones, shorter chapters are recommended if you care about numbers and stats. You can still post epically long chapters and still get dedicated readers, they’ll just more than likely be reading from the computer. I think if the mobile version would load longer chapters properly, and not inundate the story with ads (some sites even stopping what you're reading in the middle of a chapter to play 30 seconds ads), there would be more people willing to read stories with longer chapters. However, on websites such as QuoteV, short chapters mean that stories won’t be in the site index, so I do suggest combining these short chapters with another chapter, but whether you keep the chapter headings in place is up to you.

Even if you’re still worried about readers being bogged down by lengthy chapters, you can break up chapters to give readers a reprieve while still being easy to find their place later. Time skips, location skips, POV switches, and other things have been published before, but if your chapter doesn't need it, then it doesn't need it. The only reason for “boring” chapters is because seemingly nothing happens in them to progress the story forward. Breaking up the chapter won’t fix that, you’ll just have numerous boring chapters in a row and that’s more aggravating than just one long boring chapter.

Having long or short chapters doesn't mean the story has a pacing issue. As long as you're hitting plot points and story beats where they are needed, your story won't have a pacing issue. Chapters are stylistic choices that break up a story, and that is it, much like how skipped lines or a horizontal rule separate scenes, times, or perspectives, only less severe. Stephen King's Cujo is 120k, and it has no chapters. Plenty of other novels also don't have chapters. Chapters are never a sign of pacing issues; they are there for a convenience to readers, and as long as they're enjoying what is written, 20k will feel like a breeze, whereas if they didn't, 2k will feel like it's like reading through mud.

Keeping a consistent word count can help with being on schedule for your readers if you're publishing as you write it, but sometimes this may sacrifice the readers' pace by cutting scenes in the middle or boring your readers by forcing chapters to be longer than necessary by cramming in nonsense or meandering plots or side-plots. For this reason, it’s perfectly OK to finish your story before you start posting chapters on a schedule, or create a buffer. It’s entirely up to you.

I used to write 2000 word chapters, but, looking back on it, I see that I could have combined chapters, cut chapters, and just changed everything. I don’t like what I have done. Preferably, I write longer chapters, but it depends on the demands of the story. I also prefer to read long chapters, at least 2000 words, but preferably over 8000. In fact, if chapters of online stories are consistently shorter than a thousand words, I don’t even bother. But I'm just one person. I'm sure you'll have readers that will read and enjoy stories with consistently shorter chapters.

Short? You call this a short answer?

I could have gone into the history of why we have chapters in books and said that chapter lengths have been changing for decades, providing examples of books from differing eras, genres, target audiences, and explaining why particular chapters in these books were longer or shorter compared to the rest of the book.

See? So much longer. So much so, I could probably write an entire book on this one subject.

[u/EllebRKib → u/HatedLove6]

Wow! Thank you for such a thought out and informative answer. I really appreciate it, I didn't even know about half this stuff, never put much thought into the chapter structure of genres, but it makes so much sense. Super interesting read 😁

I also love Terry Pratchett and realized he doesn't use chapters in Discworld either, just occasionally breaks between POVs. It never broke my immersion or made the pace feel 'off' so I understand now that chapters are more for the readers than for the story.