Less than 1000 words are not chapters, they are scenes. Once a week 2000 words is the NU standard for niche titles, so I choose that
In general, I agree, absolutely.
1-3K tends to be the sweet spot of what an author can manage in their head, and being the average of the two: 2K is not a bad spot for a chapter break.
But I do think that a 999 word segment of Hegel will read to most people as ‘a chapter’.
Just as I also think a 9,999 word treatise written somewhere between go dog go and run spot run will be read as a very long, very empty, and very annoying waste of time.
A scene can be a chapter if the scene is rich enough to warrant it, and a chapter can be made of many scenes if the author believes them to be cohesive.
Or anything in between: all is valid, words are cheap.
For my part, nothing excites me more when reading something I like than watching the scroll bar stay entirely unmoving in a 17,000 wordslop bonanza.
For my other part: I have adored chapters, even entire stories that are one single sentence flash fiction:
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
I like poetry for its restrictive, highly packed nature; and I like prose for nurturing expansive, libertine thought.
As such, not only can I see a chapter being five hundred words: I can see whole stories being less; narrative poetry is a personal delight of mine as such — The Cremation of Sam McGee is a wonderful setup for a little joke, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner has people singing the callback for:
Water, water, every where,
And all sorts of fun detailed shrunken storytelling is available in the form of modern narrative song, which could go as long as Alice’s Restaurant, or as emotionally brutal as Blake Shelton’sThe Baby or as fun as his Some Beach; with repeated refrains as in Money Machine (eg. I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to live like this), and repeated choruses as in Willow Tree, whole stanzas giving purpose only to a single wordplay in its chorus as in Me and Bobby Magee, and things for which meaning’s elusion is perhaps the point as in My Love Mine All Mine.
It could even be as short as: wipe out, or tequila! — the best karoke songs.
Brevity may be the soul of wit, but as cheap as they are: words have heart.
I would be thrilled to read a chapter that moves me with no words at all, and I would be thrilled to read a chapter that moves me with every word the same bleeding off the infinite page in a restless jumble. Both have brought me to disquiet (an interrupted thought, never to be finished by way of death, the chapter used as a spacer) and to tears (depiction of dwindling sanity and brokenness in a person losing their memories brought to the fore to make me uncomfortable and horrified at the tragedy and suffering depicted).
Because sod standards: if your work can move me, that is all that matters.
Personally: I aim to take a piece I think a person can be expected to cerebrally conquer as a chapter — Lead in, guided exploration, let out.
The chapter serves
a digestive and aesthetic purpose: where you start and end being the only elements that define a chapter.
Start too early, go too long, end too late: the chapter drags.
Start too late, say too little, end too early: the chapter lacks.
Greasy burgers and dainty salads are both choices on the menu: some chapters have meat, and teeth to bite back later — others are refreshing, but carry little substance.
I say we should aim for tacos in writing chapters: refreshing, substantiative, and portioned for the palate of the discerning customer’s satisfaction.
Thank you for the meal, but I’ll pay in time, and the bill will be — How much?!
I ask because everyone says the best way to gain readers is to have constant updates. On RR, you're not even supposed to start uploading until you have 20,000 words ready to go all at once if you want to get onto the Rising Stars list. But I don't have the time to write enough 2000+ word chapters that I could release a new one every day and still have a good sized buffer, unless I was okay with not releasing a book for the next decade (I'm not). So instead I thought about taking one normal sized chapter and breaking it up into multiple bite sized chapters. That way I could keep my stories the same length they already are, and still manage to have constant updates.
A sensible take. Smart, good business-minded thinking, and fun too: who doesn’t love a story they like that updates every day?
But I will say: if you tell the story you feel is best, it will be a better story by default — at least one person likes it a lot.
Most important is what you can manage to pull off; writing the story not being the choice made: only uploading or revising it.
There is stream of consciousness on this site with millions of views. There is gold on this site that may never be seen.
Presentation of the package therefore matters more than what’s in it in terms of total views — but the best presents don’t come in packages.
Best of luck whatever your call!
Me: "Dang, everyone writes that much. I Should be able to write so many words too! Let's do it!"
Me with ADHD, 5 minutes later:
Haha, no:
All the diligence in the world isn’t worth much if you show up to work in your birthday suit.
Trying to extract gold from an empty mind with too many far flung tunnels loaded full with shite… can be a real mine in the rear end.
I get migraines myself, and struggle to maintain a sensible sleep schedule due to mine and my husband’s at-odds work hours, which serve to torpedo my capacity to hold water beyond the time I spend in the early morning making the sandwiches that make the money that pays our rent and bills.
If I have coffee or red bull: death knell on writing until they’re out of my system (though I can just yap and yap and yap as you can see: so putting in words is clearly not beyond me — staying fair to the worlds in which my works are set in, and those who might read them, on the other hand: very much is).
Good, consistent sleep is the sole difference between a passive go-through-the-motions make-the-world-stop-hurting aToTeT, and an active oh-my-god-that-was-5K-words and my-house-is-so-clean aToTeT.
I don’t know what the magic bullet might be for you, or even if there is one; but I hope you find it for yourself, or a way to manage the insanity-inducing frustration that is having the urge to write and being yet unable to determine which option to go with.
To which I can only say: start writing as stream of consciousness, and revise it once you have found what you needed to write down.
Great stories are not found so much in bold ideas, as they are in the process of refinement itself.
Maybe that’ll work for you. Maybe I should go downstairs and do it myself.
But I dreamed that flesh-eating worms were all over me (and inside me), so actually sleeping so I can function through fictional artifice is still out for a while.
May no one ever dream of the same.
