I originally wrote this as a comment to a story I enjoyed. Fortunately I took my foot out of my mouth before much damage was done...
...I still think this topic needs airing, so here it is.
This is what I wrote:
Good story, although I found it difficult to read, and only because of its length.
I don't tend to read stories which are this long but the premise sounded good, so I began... It took me three sessions to finish and even then I spent time at the computer when I ought to have been doing something else. Reading a single file in several sessions is difficult, especially when there are no 'chapter' or 'part' markers within the file to guide you.
Posting a story which is complete and is this long is okay, I think. That's what I assumed when I began reading. I don't take too much notice of the 'solo'/'serial' flags since I know many authors forget to set them right.
When I eventually reached the end and found "To be continued" I was annoyed. If you are going to post a story in more than one part then you might as well make the parts manageable for your readers. It will be more manageable for yourself as well, since it is much easier to find those pesky typos in a file of 6,000 to 12,000 words than in one of 42,000. And yes, I spotted at least four typos while reading; I bet there are more. No author gets them all.
This part could have been split into four, maybe five parts. Shorter doesn't make a story harder to read, sometimes it is the opposite. I try to make my chapters 6,000 to 9,000 words and sometimes I think those are too long. Look at Bailey Summers' stories - those can be as little as 3,000 words and still each part packs a punch.
So, a good story, well thought out, but as a reader you are not encouraging me to read any more, if the experience is going to be the same as reading the first part was. I understand that a dead-tree book may have many more words but very few of those come without chapters, ie places to stop and put the book down until next time.
There you have it. I haven't, in the past, downloaded much to be read on a later occasion, so all my reading is done in front of a screen. (Now I have a Kobo and a tablet, that policy may change in the future.) Reading whole stories this way is uncomfortable, since sitting in the same place staring at a glow does bad things to one's eyes - and I have to spend time here writing, too. So I prefer reading stories in reasonable-sized chunks. To me, anything up to about 12,000 words is tolerable, although I'll go larger on rare occasions.
If you write single-chapter novels longer than this, I won't read them, even if they might be worth reading. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
Another reason for splitting large stories into parts and posting separately is simply this: If you post one big chunk, you get one kudos (if deserved). If you post many chapters, each is eligible of a kudos of it's own.
Discuss!
Penny
What Is Too Long?
I prefer chapter lengths of around 3,000 words. Depending on the lenth of the story I might post one to four chapters at a time. I feel that much over 10,000-12,000 is bordering on too long. Some of my first postings five years ago were far too long. I think it's a bit selfish with all the stories that are being posted to expect someone to read your 40,000 word entry instead of other shorter entries. I don't read everything that is posted in any one day, but I do read a lot.
Concerning the 40,000 word entry, the story was/is very good, and it held my interest; however, it was too long, and I probably didn't read it to the depth I should have. I did PM the author and suggest that it might have been better to break it down into four separate submissions.
The first part of my last submission was probably too long at around 15,000 words; however, that was the first point where the story could be broken. I think the remaining parts were around 10,000 to 12,000 words or less.
Portia
LPC
When I'm reading stories on this site - especially with all authors that post here when stories are more then say twenty to forty pages you get to read more stories in one night and can comment more to different authors. More pages then this depending on the story can be just hard to read and it can be hard to have a stop/start point when chapter are 120 pages long. I just feel that stories chapter longer then 20 pages are harder to read and to keep interest in them too. But is just my feeling on this subject. Thanks!
Richard
I Can Think Of One Solution...
I agree. A good writer has to structure their work so that the audience gets the most out of it. This means chapters of a manageable length - I'd suggest 6000 words as a maximum - with the thrust towards the end. But the most important thing is to make the reader feel that the story has moved on, that they haven't wasted their time with blatant padding.
My own beef is with scenes that appear to have reached a logical conclusion, only to be prolonged by the unexpected arrival of another character. Issues that seemed to have been resolved now have to be debated all over again. Yes, Laurell Hamilton, I'm talking about you.
TV can be just as annoying. How many times have I watched one character begin walking away from another, only to be called back. "This had better be important," my subconscious growls. "I've digested all the information from that scene, and now I'm eager for the next."
And what happens?
"Be careful."
To get back on topic, I think one reason it's difficult to read large chunks of text on a computer screen is that the lines are too wide. I have in front of me a copy of Steven Pinker's 'How The Mind Works', an accessible though certainly not an undemanding volume. Here's a short extract, with line breaks as they appear in my (paperback) edition.
Fears in modern city-dwellers protect us from dangers that no longer
exist, and fail to protect us from dangers in the world around us. We
ought to be afraid of guns, driving fast, driving without a seatbelt, lighter
fluid, and hair dryers near bathtubs, not of snakes and spiders.
I have a feeling that if this was how stories on BC (and many other sites) were presented, their length would cease to matter.
...Laurell Hamilton
Well, that's rather the point of a series novel, and in fact an author trying the ‘break out of the box’ can infuriate some readers.
People read -- in real life -- for many reasons, and not everyone wants to be surprised at all.
Arthur Conan Doyle grew to loathe his character, Sherlock Holmes, because Doyle was literally mired in the same old plot points, over and over and over again, and indeed the use of ‘tags’ on many BC stories would seem to indicate that at least some readers quite like to see the same plot elements repeated, and seek out stories which revisit them.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
dash it all...
Automatic repagination is a built-in feature of HTML, but it's entirely possible to defeat this automation on BC with pseudo-clever tricks, such as long strings of dashes: ----------... which BC does not break in twain... or embedded fixed-width elements which are too wide, both of which are almost always bad ideas.
Many authors either don't know this or don't pay attention, despite Erin pleading with us from time to time to never-never-never create long strings of dashes to imitate a solid line.
Please know that this is largely due to author mistakes, and not anything inherent in the mere number of words in a chapter.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
horizontal lines... HR elements...
I tend to be irritated by the use of HR tags to indicate scene changes, which is a violation of the HTML standard, since an HR tag is not a syntactic element, but a mere decoration which can and often does disappear entirely in many situations.
It's particularly annoying for people who -- as many have mentioned in this thread, copy the story for later reading offline. Highlight, copy, and paste operations quite properly ignore the ‘decoration,’ so copying these stories turns the story into a mish-mash of text without scene breaks or any visible clue as to exactly what's going on from moment to moment.
Scene breaks should always be indicated by either a typographical element or one of the syntactic "header" elements, like this:
Scene One
A room in the castle
Chapter One
-o~O~o-
These sorts of breaks have the advantage of being audible as well, so people who save stories so they can listen to them whilst commuting, for example, are able to guess what the heck is going on.
There's nothing that forces one to do this, but it's polite. I often listen to stories myself, and studiously avoid authors who don't offer me the courtesy of making life easy for me. I don't mind mere length at all, but then I rather like Proust,
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Dine and Dash
I'm a dine and dash reader. By that I mean that instead of reading the story live as I browse the web, I cut and past it into my word processor and read it at my leisure. When time isn't there to complete the reading I put a book mark (I usually use ***) and close the file when I get time to read again, I open the file and search for the bookmark (***)delete it and start reading.
I mean, you wouldn't expect to read dead tree version of a novel printed and bound in 12000 words or less booklets now would you?
While we're airing our personal likes and dislikes in writing. I tend to not like unfinished stories. I don't mind 60,000 words or more, but if it doesn't come to a conclusion at some point... well I've been sucked into to many that just ramble and ramble and never seem to have a point. But then I've never like soap opera's on TV either.
However, judging from the hit count on the latest Bike, there are plenty who do. Just my personal taste.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Bound in 12000 or less?
No. But I also wouldn't expect a novel to have no chapters.
I expect at a minimum a story to be divided into chapters of reasonable size if not parts, chapters and possibly even sub-chapters. "Reasonable size" means that the chapter is a mostly self-contained scene or maybe a few closely connected scenes with maybe one or two self-contained and SHORT flashbacks. Unless an author is breaking some other rules this will generally lead to chapters no larger than 6k and no smaller than 2k, depending on the pacing of the story.
Speaking of pacing... Chapters should also generally be about the same length each chapter, or you will throw off the pacing and readers who are attuned to such things will lose their involvement in your story. Never a good thing.
If the story that sparked this discussion is the one I believe it to be... I feel the author is making a lot of "newbie" mistakes and will hopefully start to learn and tighten up their writing. The story is interesting in ways. But the mistakes being made make it too difficult to read.
Abigail Drew.
dead tree version of a novel in chunks
Actually, that's the exact format in which many great novels were published, including "classics" such as Dickens' David Copperfield, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, Joyce's Finnegans Wake, and many, many more. Bound books were once terribly expensive, and ordinary people read great literature by the month in very inexpensive magazines published cheaply. This sort of literature was wildly popular, because an ordinary working person might manage to scrape up five or ten pence a month, but couldn't nearly manage a guinea at one go. Some people, perhaps many, even shared out the cost of the magazines, so a handful of literary fans might chip in a penny each, and then pass on the magazine to the others when they'd finished. Before television, before even radio, people liked to be entertained.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
It's not..
It's not just the classics...
MANY "books" were initially published in chunks in various magazines (into the '70s)... The first few Dragonriders of Pern books being examples... I have 2 of the 3 magazines that had the 2nd book.
This is just a "how it was published" kind of thing.
Annette
I started using shorter chapters
For that reason. As long as the author knows what is going to happen, and has the story structure in mind, shorter chapters tend to get people interested and willing to read the next installment. A really long chapter or story, when trying to read online Isn't something to avoid, but it is a lot easier if things are in easily taken in bits rather than chunks. I may not like that, but I can and do work with it. If your chapter or story is a long one these days, it had better be good or you won't get a lot of response for it.
Maggie
When I write, or wrong as some might feel about it...
I tend to place roughly five to six thousand words into a chapter.
I have been known to place as few as twenty-six hundred and as many as slightly over ten thousand. It depends on a couple of things (or three or four depending upon the way I am leading the story at the time).
I generally try to place an obvious misdirection into each chapter as well as an obvious direction. Sometimes I even place some not-so-obvious of each. This is done in an effort to get my readers to think and to conjecture, either to themselves or to the other readers. The number of words,therefore, depends on my skill (or lack thereof) and the number of directions I wish to offer as possible.
In the case of Last of the Fey, I also have the added difficulty of presenting a story which is Time interdependent, ie it can be occurring both in the past, present, and future at something approximating the same moment (obviously not so in the story). It is presented in a manner such as that used by motion pictures or television movies that allow you to see the same moment but at a varied number of locations. My only difference is I am considering time to be a location therefore.....
Sorry if my technique (hah) is confusing but then again the requirement that you must consider who is doing the thinking at the moment of the time-place under consideration plays a heavy part in the story and plays as a result a great part in the number of words I must use to achieve my plot.
God bless you all and thank you for the comments
A.
= )
It's not the length, it's the way you tell it. :)
My signature IS working...
...and it just adores your signature!
Love, Andrea Lena
Maddy usually has chapters of
about ten pages in size, in her books. How big is too big to you?
May Your Light Forever Shine
for me it's file size
Like Patricia, I tend to save stories to read later. I don't count words, so the only measure that means anything to me is "K Bytes". I suppose that, using the old typing standard - that, on average, a "word" = 5 characters - then my preferred "chunk" to read at a single sitting is about 10,000 words (50K). Actually, it rarely works out that way, because I end up reading when nothing else is going on, and "normal" for me is somewhere between 4 and 10K at a time.
In a few cases, because of the release rate of episodes/chapters, I will enforce myself to read about 8-10K and mark my place in the copy, to make the chapter last until just before the next installment is due.
Nevertheless, if an author wants to have the highest probability of me reading a one-shot or installment on-line, then 30K is about my limit. I can look at the scroll-bar and get a good guess at the size.
Frankly, one thing (and probably the only) that FM has that I wish was on BCTS is an indication of file size in the preview/teaser.
Best regards,
Deni
I get frustrated with
Stories and Chapters that are too small. I read the LoTR trilogy in one week, reading The Return of the King in one sitting. I read all of Rowling's books within two days of purchase. Serialized postings frustrate me especially when each chapter closes with a cliff hanger. After the second or third cliff hanger I generally stop reading the story till they finish the story and continue it after it is complete, if I remember which ones I liked. I am sorry if my stories are too long. I can let them die on my HD or post them, but I don't intend to break them up into small bites, it is just the way I am.
Paula
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
The Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune
Catch 22
It's a catch 22. I tried both ways and you can't please everyone.
When I posted God Bless the Child, I posted in 40k word chunks. People got mad.
I post other stories and sometimes it is in 2000-6000 word chunks. Other people got mad.
I end on semi-cliff hangers but I try not to leave things too up in the air (I save that for books).
My suggestion, do what you want. If you please yourself, at least you are sure one person is pleased.
Katie Leone (Katie-Leone.com)
Writing is what you do when you put pen to paper, being an author is what you do when you bring words to life
I guess
People will just have to be mad a me or I can stop posting my stories. No offense to anybody, I will post what I have in one post.
Paula
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
The Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune
I Agree Also
I read fast, really fast. I like it if the whole story is posted at once since I do read them in one sitting.
Lori
I love your stories
Post how you want, I will ad them, several times in the Case of The Brain, and starting the third time through on Fashion Star.
Post the way it pleases you, It is easy to favorite the page where i left off.
Goddess Bless you
Love Desiree
I get frustrated with..
I'm with you Paula, if a story is chopped up into very small chapters I tend to just wait till I get 4, 5 or even more chapters before I begin to read it. That way I at least get an idea of how the story is going to unfold. About 10K or so is the smallest chapters I'll even worry with putting together to read. A lot of people enjoy short stories but personally if the story is not at least around 90-100K or so I tend to not be able to get into the characters and storyline. Most of my favorite tales from years past fall anywhere from 100+K all the way up to 2+Mb and I have been known to read half way through a super long story in one sitting as well. lol I get absorbed in a particularly good tale and the time just flies by.
Ha...
I am so hosed.
My Whisper chapters tended to average 10k words each. I dunno, they just seemed to end up around 10k.
1st Person Present Tense POV is a PITA. Don't try it. It is very hard to move the plot along in 5k words or less with 1st PPT POV. Well, for me it was. :)
My newest story seems to be hitting 5k words each chapter, but it is in 3rd Person Past Tense POV. It is far, far easier to summarize stuff in that POV.
To get to the point, I think POV plays a big part on a chapter's wordiness.
Try writing a story in 3rd Person, then the same in 1st Person. See how many words the story and/or chapters end up. Which chapter is "better"? :-P
Don't laugh, I've considered trying it just to see...
-- Sleethr
Posting length
I second what others have allready written about posting length:
A part posting with less than 2,000 words to me often feels like just getting a lick of a popsicle. "Here, you get a little taste! But you will not get any substance to satisfy your hunger!"
The optimal length for me seems to be between 3,500 and 7,000 words.
Postings longer than 10,000 words are definately much more difficult to read. And continuing with the food analogy, are like overeating on a banquet. So that you feel bloated afterwards.
Also, with smaller parts it is possible to post a story over a longer time period. That allows readers who have to travel and/or who have intermitent internet access to not miss a story that would be posted only as a single post and disappear of the front page rather quickly.
Jessica
I've seen...
I've seen quite a variety of sizes here - and enjoyed them as well...
Some as short as 1,500 words I follow faithfully (Bike come to mind...). Others have been in that 40,000 word range. 40,000 words at a single sitting are HARD, if I have work to do... (My boss prefers that I get work done rather than feed my habit of reading. Go figure...)
I did some "research" a few years ago - checking chapter length of several of my favorite (published/dead tree style) authors. I picked 3-5 random chapters in their books and figured out about how many words they used... The average across all of the ones I checked turned out to range from 5,000 words for the author with the shortest chapters to 7,000 words for the author with the longest one.
My first story here averaged about 3,000 words (posted every 2-4 days, with typos galore)... My novella averaged more on the 1,500-2,000 word range, and my current long work averages about 6,500 words per post. That seems a nice "happy medium" between enough and to much - on the posting side. (A few years ago - I ran into issues on Google Docs (where I've shared with my editors) editing files longer than 10,000 words.
On the reading side - with the exception of Bike (which I "know" will be continued the next day) - I find posts of under 1,500 words (except for stand-alone shorts) to be too short. I'm generally happier with things in the 3,000 - 6,000 word range. When I know the author's typical size, I know whether to read then or save for later... If I don't know the author I tend to scroll down to see how long it is - to help decide if I'll read it then, or wait for when I have time.
There's my 2 cents.
Annette
Personally
I want to read the whole story and i want read a LONG story 100,000 lines is a good chapter length. Im computer literate so picking up where i left off is trivial but some have great difficulty using the find feature of their browser if you dont know then how can you learn.
I agree that finding a cliff hanger at the end of a chapter when the story isnt marked as chapter x is very annoying!!!
Please write whatever size chapters you like but please dont post chapter one until the last chapter is written and edited. There is very little that frosts my oaties more than reading 11 chapters only to find nothing else has been posted on this story for a year or more!
Dayna
BZAWT!
Seriously, who owns the story, the author or the reader? Who decides when it should be posted?
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
One thing authors might want
One thing authors might want to think about. When you post 1 huge file any time someone thinks they MIGHT be interested you get a hit, even if they stop reading after the first paragraph. If you break it down into smaller files, then while the first file will get a lot of 'looky-loos', the other chapters will only get read by people actually interested in the story. This means their read count is more realistic, and you can see just how popular it really is.