Chapter Length

When I update a story I try to write 1500 minimum.

It depends.
I have some chapters that are very short. However, they aren't fillers, it's all vital information.
I've even been complimented on that by my readers. They say they like that the chapters are short but contain a lot of info.

What's too long for a story is I found a story that was one chapter.
But more than 13,000 words. . . .

depending on the type of story, i'll write updates anywhere between 50 and 2,500 words. My average, though, for a chaptered story is about 1200-1600. I'd love to be able to write longer chapters, the way Jinxeh does and not have the chapter grow boring, but I'm not quite up there yet

The chapters for 9 Months are usually around 2000 words.

The ones for NaNo are usually 6-8k. One is 11k and one is less than 6.

My average is usually around 5,000-9,000 words.

I never bothered in putting chapter breaks for my NaNo. So I have a 50,064 word chapter.

For stories I write while not-crazed, though, I try to average them at around 2k.

Some of my stories are written as oneshots and then fractured up like & We Die of Broken Things Like Hearts. I broke it up because I felt it was the best way to present the flashback in the middle of the story.

Oh, wow. My chapters are getting longer and longer.
The first chapter of Learning to Fall is about 6500 words and the second chapter just breaches 8k. That's just how it worked out. I don't think chapters should be broken down as shorter just on reader demand. I think it's more important to present a story the way it's meant to be told.

On average my chapters are about 1,200 words long. I find it hard to go any longer because by default I'm a very dialogue driven writer. I don't put a lot into the thoughts of my characters except for a few (like when I write William Beckett or Ryan Ross.)

Also, I find myself fearing that if my chapter was like 2K+ people would skip through it. I'm guilty of it myself with some stories. Like when I read Prisoner, I would have to like skim at some parts because it was so long, but it was such a good story.

The only time I went longer was when I did NaNoWriMo last year. That's when I found it acceptable for 2K+ chapters.

For a story I'm doing for a contest, I want long chapters, but that's to keep the chapter count short.

My chapters are tiny. Generally from 400-1500. But my stories don't generally have much dialogue, anyway. And that's when they feel finished to me, so that's when I post them. I couldn't care less how long my chapters are.

For me, it really depends on the story and what works. Most of my chapters are around 1,500 - 2,000 words, but I'm working on another story that's first chapter still isn't finished and it's like almost 6K.

I have read brilliant stories that have only 200-400 words per chapter, but it worked in the case of that story.

I don't think there's like a standard word count that any given chapter should be, though sometimes I aim for a certain number of words per chapter.

Me and a friend (the watchtower.) were discussing chapter length the other day 'cause she had a pretty long chapter and was wondering if she should break it up so as to not scare off readers. But basically we decided that if readers can't handle the way a story is being told then they obviously don't "get it" anyway.

I tend to do one shots and plays a lot more than chaptered stories but I prefer short chapters. I wrote a story once where the chapters where each around a paragraph, I had two that were only a sentence and I did that intentionally, not because I couldn't come up with enough content or due to lazyness.

When I pictured the story in my head it was like a movie. Y'know how in a movie it can show a girl on her couch watching TV and then the scene cuts to a man in a big coat struggling to get home on a rainy day? That's how I wrote my story. That's how I pictured it and so when the setting would change completely (as would the focal point) I would start a new chapter.

I think saying a chapter is 'too short' is kind of bull. As long as the point that the author is trying to make in the chapter is made, why should there be extra length to it just for the sake of having length? It's pointless, in my opinion. Kind of like page requirements on essays. I prefer concise to drawn out.

Anthrax:

I think saying a chapter is 'too short' is kind of bull. As long as the point that the author is trying to make in the chapter is made, why should there be extra length to it just for the sake of having length?

I feel the same way about long chapters. A chapter should be as long or as short as it needs to be.

Depending on the story, I have different update requirements.

For things like Beautiful Things, I shoot for anywhere between 800 and 1200 minimum, depending on the content. For my BBB fic, it's sort of told through snapshots, just a few minutes of their lives, so they range between 600 and ~2000 words. That's pretty much how it is for all of my stories; I try not to stretch things out unnecessarily or else it reads wrong to me.

Boychild and Girlchild is my favorite thing regarding chapter length, though. I just wrote each bit depending on how long it needed to be; one part is just 80 words, while the final is ~500, and that's the range of the words.

It depends on the story. For example, In My Veins chapters are longer, usually about 3,000 words, but most other stories I shoot for at least 1,000. The longest I've ever written was a one shot that was ~11,000 words. (I was so proud)

But, like everyone else has said, it depends on the author and it depends on how much you're trying to have occur in the chapter and how much you feel you need to describe or elaborate on. :)

My chapters are usually between 3,000 and 4,000 words. I think I read somewhere a while ago that that was a good length, so I started striving to make my chapters about that long. Now it's just kind of a natural thing. No matter how little or how much I have planned for a chapter, it usually ends up being that length.

Normally my chapters are around 1,000 to 2,000 words. I think the longest I have written would be about 4,700 words in length. <3

I think my longest chapter was 11k for NaNo.