Spending chapters with your characters separated across continents

[CrimsonGenius]

How many chapters should you make their suffering and how grand the reunion? Two protagonists trying to find the other in world under chaos.

 

[2wordsperminute]

Mushoku Tensei did this. Iirc it was years in universe but only like 16 chapters in the webnovel (could be wrong about that chapter count, I only watched the anime).

 

[Paul__Michaels]

x= (2−4 √b²−4ac)/2a



this is the formula to create the perfect separation of two MC for the right amount of time. It is flawless.

 

[J_Chemist]

There are plans for this in my story and it's gonna be bloody.

 

[AYM]

Preferably, zero, because they are both protagonists. It can easily double the length of arcs, halving the perceived progression.

An author who does this will need to manage the timeline very carefully.

 

[Ellieporter]

Maybe in a battle where they are on the opposing sides then upon seeing each other. They fight briefly then join hands to bring peace to the land...

 

[prognastat]

I don't think there is a going to be a generalised answer because it would depend on the genre of the story and the relationship between the characters up to that point. If the two are only together in the prologue and the readers aren't that attached to the characters yet then having them seperate for a 100ks of words will probably be fine. However if you have built up their relationship a lot with the readers together than it will be harder to pull off long spans of time apart. If they are very close before the separation it will be harder to keep them apart for long.

If it's a romantic or smut story and they are love interests and the readers have gotten very attached to them and the relationship then it's going to be very hard to keep them apart without annoying the readers. If they are childhood friends and they get separated after a quick couple thousand word prologue that only generally touches upon their friendship then people probably won't care that much about them remaining separated.

 

[MouseDestruction]

It really depends, two of the best actual book series I have read had very very large separations, but it did suit the tone of the book. And the MC's were very much the solitary do it yourself kind of characters.

I will quite often hate slavery/prison time in stories, because the world around them sort of stops moving, they barely do anything while there. Sure they come out with a bit of information or some extra skills or whatever, but the rest of the world kind of freezes. So you do want to make sure you keep the plot line moving, and things happening in the world.

 

[J_Chemist]

Maybe in a battle where they are on the opposing sides then upon seeing each other. They fight briefly then join hands to bring peace to the land...