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I'm curious, which would you prefer to read? a short chapter, or a long one? or does it make a difference?
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Chapters
I personally prefer chapters that tell a story. Length is totally immaterial, they are as long as they need to be.
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
Amen!
I don't liks chapters that are "too" short-but that could be an interesting storytelling format as well, sort of a "Daily Diary" type of thing. Do it as you feel comfortable!
Wren
An Addendum: Rigidity in Thought and Technique
The US Army use to teach young staff officers how to write. With the Army being the Army, it issued guidelines on what constituted ‘proper format.’ A sentence, according to the Army was to be 25 words in length. A paragraph was to be six lines long. Well, you guessed it, as the chief of a divisional staff section I had to retrain my young and impressionable captains how to communicate, not follow guidelines taught at a staff course that left far too many laboring away for hours trying to beat a staff paper into the proper format of exactly 25 word sentences and six line paragraphs.
While there are parameters that are useful to keep in mind when writing, remember fiction and story telling are a creative endeavors. So be creative, not a slave to guidelines generated by someone who probably never had an original thought in their life. We’re suppose to be creative writers here, so be creative.
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
Small enough
I just wrote my thoughts about this at Fictionmania's message board!
Mostly what I said was that a chapter should be short enough to be read easily in one sitting, so it can be used by the reader as a bookmark, for when they return to reading later chapters.
Also, the chapters should stand on their own with their own story arcs satisfyingly resolved within the larger plot of the overall story, leaving teasers to encourage the reader to continue the story.
Mr. Ram
Sounds good to me
Although I prefer full length stories, Chapter length is important, as you said.
I would prefer to see long parts of a story labeled as 'Part 1, 2, etc' with a series of 'Chapters' within to break it up. Chapter numbers to be contiguous from beginning to end, and clearly headed with 'Chapter 1' etc.
This way it is easy to read one or two chapters at a sitting, and know where to enter using 'find' to continue reading that Part. For my own convenience I will break up numbering in 'Books' by numbering chapters of Book 1 as Chapter 101, and Book 2 as 201 etc. I don't know what I would do if a 'Book' contained more than 99 chapters.
Zip
Personally,
I've ranted endlessly on this subject. I'm an avid reader. I like reading LONG stories.
I think someone recently said something to the effect of ...
chapters should be longer, because it takes me a while to get into the 'reading zone'.
If I am in the zone and it ends or worse its so short I never reach 'the zone' then I'm disappointed. If the chapter is sooo short that it feels like being spoon fed then I'm frustrated.
Personally I like fully completed stories. I also don't like 'chapters' that meander around without adding anything other than filler.
If you look at The Professor's stories that's a good length for me.
I've read a few stories that have caused me to miss a days work because I couldn't stop and the 'chapters' were almost without end... but I still liked them (obviously or I would have gone back to work).
Dayna.
I'm sure most of us have screamed at the tv when the hated words "to be continued..." comes up.
Re. Story length.
I dislike short chapters as they leave me with a sense of emptiness after reading them. (A bit like a microwave ready meal if you will)
Personaly I like a self contained story to be at least 20 kb's. Same applies to series chapters.
Speaking of "The Professor" I am currently reading his "Ovid" series. I have recently read episode 12 "The Rescuer" which was around 260kb and a most satisfying read.
As I've started writing
As I've started writing stories I've become increasingly concerned with chapter length. I've settled on having the character(s) achieve some type of goal in each one. Whether I've lived up to it with what I've written so far is another matter entirely.
I'm also a fan of somewhat longer chapters in the stories I read, though I'm not sure I live up to it in my own writing.
I think if you advance the story in an entertaining way that either moves the plot forward, or contributes to character development, (or hopefully both), then you've created a complete chapter.
What to say?
I'm sure I read somewhere on this site that recommended posting length should be 8,000 words or less. When I posted Summerswitch some months back, I wrote the whole story (58,000 words plus or minus) and dumped the lot in 7 separate postings onto the site. As I recall I did get a few comments about people losing income because they sat and read it at one sitting, but I also had others who said they don't tend to read episodic pieces until they are complete to avoid disappointment should an author stop writing for whatever reason part way through. Not much to be done about the latter, but for the former what to say.
Personally, I find that if I'm going to fit life in around my writing, I can only reasonably expect to put out about 8-10,000 words a week (sometimes more if my muse is singing and I feel the kids can cope with a little bit of neglect), so from there it's a question of what works best.
I've loved the recent regularity of Ride On and find, if the the episodes are reasonably regular on a daily basis, that 2k words at a time is a reasonable read. It's a great opportunity for the author to rack up the kudos because you get one per click on a posting whether you've written 2,000 or 10,000. For myself, since I can't stop rabbiting on once I've started (evidence above), I find it just about manageable to wrap a meaningful chapter into less than the 8k limit and it gives a reasonable read. I also find that quite often a 20k "short story" is a bit much for one sitting, and at times I've skim read (my loss) or read it at two or three sittings.
Brief synopsis - 8,000 words +/- 1000 works best for me both as a reader and a writer, or 2,000ish for dailyish postings if you can keep up the pace and regularity. Oh and only post as you write if you intend to finish. I'm still smarting at Bek D Corbin's Foxglove which stuttered to an inglorious halt four years ago with the Army of Darkness wading across a magically dried up river bed on their way to attack our heroine and her friends. Four years and I still want to flipety-flipping well know what happens next!!!!!!!