IMO all chapters should be as long as the scene depicted requires.
^^^
my vote
reminds me of music. in classical and progressive, there is no real song length, the track will be as long or as short as it needs to be. But, radio play imposes a 2.5 minute arbitrary limit. No intro, no outro. Middle eight, keep it tiny. Don't bore us, get to the chorus. repeat chorus constantly, its the hook. and if you want radio play? you write your songs to that formula. or you don;t get radio play.
this is no different.
don't get me wrong, I like it here. all the writing advice, applies to regular writing. The last place I was at where WN writers were gathered together? You would hate the way they talk about their own craft. They call it "slop" or "webslop". And they use that term affectionately. A lot of the advice? There's two camps. One, is like here. Everyone wants to learn all the guidelines of writing. which is great. but the other camp back where I was, its soul less. They say it straight out. I don't *care*, screw plot. You got to have the right cover. You have to hit the right tropes. Whatever is on rising stars? the most popular across the board at the moment? That's the tropes you better hit. They call it "meta". You gotta nail your meta. Just copy an existing big performer? There you go, do that. The readers not only don't complain? They LIKE it like that.
there's more than one very successful patreon person back there. They have it down to practically a science. They crank out a chapter a day, or more. Once they hit one success, they now have name recognition and can do more. Its just a weird culture. They tell me all the time. Dude, you want readers? This, is how to get them. And if a story ain't making patreon bucks? they drop it and start another one. or they start several at once, and whichever "hits" they drop the others and run with the performer. the most popular article? "run your web novel like the business that it is". you put multiple horses out, and you only run with the winner.
its kind of shameless to see all that behind the scenes. Like, the sausage factory isnt a pretty place. But some part of me respects it. I have no readers, they have tons. The "side money" the successful ones make? is more than I make working.
like I said, its all very strange. I guess only when viewed for the first time, as an outsider coming in from reading paperbacks, to this.
In conclusion, you may wonder what I'm doing here. or why I like all this. As I said, no other place to learn real writing while writing. No other way to try to get readers, to have a chance to get to KU. SO? I split the difference on my new project. I went "isekai". tryting to write basically a paperback novel (yes, with paperback paragraphs, LMAO) to try to straddle the fence. I'm pretty sure it won't work. trying, though.
