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Aw, the eternal debate on “size” Shorter generally means a faster tempo, but you cover less. Longer means you can get into more detail, but can be a slower read too. Also, there’s the attention span of the reader to consider, and giving them natural “stopping points” to come back later. I’ve tried short chapters before (2K) and that was faster to write that story. OTOH, I tend to go for 7-8k averages for the contemplative/serious writings. However, if a chapter hits 10kwords, that’s when I’m looking to split (even if it goes “part A” and “part B”).

I’ve noticed that a lot of my stories being posted here have much longer chapters than I normally write. Usually my stuff is much shorter but also a lot more chapters. Do you find people prefer the longer chapters or shorter ones?

Ages ago, I thought longer chapters were better. So I took my potter fanfic, then around 108 chapters and 660+k, and during a rewrite condensed it down into 11 chapters, but the result was one of those chapters was around 109kwords! Two others were 91k & 70kish. That ... was … horrific. Individual scenes get lost, run together, etc. And I’m still detangling that mess!

I prefer writing and reading long chapters. I recently started dabbling in shorter chapters earlier in the year but my readers started asking for the longer chapters to return and since I have no self control, I’ve been slipping right back into the habit of long chapters. That’s my biggest problem, I don’t know when to quit. Most of my chapters average 5k, but quite a few chapters are upwards of 15k, I think the longest was 18k 😅 I’m shocked so many people are willing to read a chapter that long, but they do, and then ask for the next one to be just as long.

Funny, I went the opposite route it seems. I also tend to wait for me to figure out how the story is going to end for me to start writing.

Well maybe the problem was how much you rewrote it from 108 chapters to 11. If you had instead separated it into 50 chapters, it could’ve been something people wouldn’t be intimidated by.