#i think 4k is a good average length honestly. but some stories are built to be bigger

[insecateur]

hey anon (and whoever else might be reading this)

i understand your worries. i've been plagued by these thoughts as well. in fact, for a little while, i was in a writing community where people often talked about how they were unable to read chapters longer than (i think) 3k on a phone/computer screen and assumed everyone else was the same. it was a bit of a culture shock for me, i'll admit.

back in 2021 i was rewriting one of my rare chaptered fics. my original goal was to make sure they were of equal lengths. i kind of succeeded, but not entirely. i realized that i actually cared way more about keeping up with my "theming" than i did sticking to a fixed (even with some caveats) length. i could have rearranged some things around so that the chapters were more balanced, true. but then it would have thrown a wrench into the theming i'd come up with eight years prior, and that felt like a bigger betrayal to the story than having one chapter be 6k and one chapter be 11k.

a few months later i sat down to work on a chaptered sequel. i had a very specific theming in mind for it, and wanted the story to be cut in three parts with each part following both the theming and a build up until the end. at the time i told myself "i'm going to have each part be 10k." (originally it was 9k but i ended up giving myself more leeway.)

the chapters ended up being 9k, 13k, and 19k.

in retrospect it was obvious it would end up that way (the first chapter was always meant to be more of an introduction to the main issue, and the last chapter focuses on a character who takes like 5 paragraphs to admit he has unresolved feelings about things) but i was really worried about it. and mad at myself that i couldn't keep up with what i had planned.

but then i realized, once again, that the theming mattered more to me than anything else. if that's how it makes sense in the story, then so what? i wasn't sacrificing what i had in mind to begin with for the sake of having neatly arranged chapters. especially when i don't even care about that stuff when reading other people's fic!

in published novels it's not unusual for a chapter to be one or two pages and then another to go on for dozens. sometimes it's just how things turn out. if it makes more sense with the story, if it's better for your pacing, if it aligns with how you've divided your themes or hell, with how you'd planned to name your chapters: it's all good, in my book. you should do what makes sense for your story. there are no overall rules for chapter length.

...but then again i am the guy who posts 30k words long one-shots so you know. you can take this advice or leave it 🤷‍♂️

I'm not sure if this is the place to ask. I am in a bit of a trouble as I wrote a 8k word chapter. I am wondering if this is just too long. Cutting it in half wouldn't be satisfactory, but doable. Would it be better to cut it or leave it that long? I might be able to cut some things from the story and come down to 7k. I need advice.

Hey Nonnie -

I am merely a tumblr mod, so this advice is coming from an avid fic reader and not the OTW hivemind (if there is one, I have not yet been invited to that groupchat)

Do what brings you joy. Writing fic is supposed to be fun. It is a labor of love that you send out into the void because your passion cannot be contained.

There is not a specific wordcount that makes a chapter Correct. I (personally) have never in my days noticed how long a chapter was, since I always click on Entire Work.

I probably would have sent a private reply, but instead we shall ask the tumblr community -

~ Mod Remi