#4

Your Chapters Are Too Long

(So I'm not gonna read)

Okay okay okay. So I think everyone who is involved in fanfic writing as a main hobby will know there's ALWAYS debates regarding legnth over chapter amounts. Is it better to have millions of chapters filled with small snippets of writing worth barely 1k of content, or a five chapter fic with a collective 15k? 

For me, personally, I like chapters with substance. I like lengthy paragraphs and I like to be able to keep reading and reading and finish a chapters as though it was just that; A chapter in a book. I'm guilty of reading a foreword, clicking on the first chapter (not prologue) and scanning how long it is. I'll then scan the next, then the next, and if they're all relatively bellow what I believe to be 1.5k, I move on. 

I'm always sceptical of fics with lots of chapters, as normally, from what I've seen, it will mean they have every chapter at maybe 600 words or LESS. As a writer, I just don't see that as a chapter, but drabble! How can you describe something, a scene or an event in 600 words or less? I just don't understand it, and it's been done more and more recently, just so authors can slap out chapter after chapter and keep their fic on the front page.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't always the case, but lets face it, it's happening more and more frequently. Maybe it's just me here who doesn't mind waiting a few days to read a decent, full and eventful chapter over one that tells me their character just changed clothes, or had a conversation. Gee, I'm so glad you updated just to tell me that. 

But then again, I'm a firm believer in not OVERWRITING. It's all about finding the right balance between TOO much description, and not enough. Does your reader really need to know what colour the floor, roof and ceiling is? Is the contents on the room relevant? What about that random girl they just passed on the street? What defines a good writer from just a writer is understanding when description is needed, and when it's most definitely not. 

For me, personally, less certainly isn't more, and I'm tired of great, long fics with such amazing descriptions and character development being passed over for small, meaningless chapters that, if I'm brutally honest, were probably written in the space of five minutes. 

It's time to face reality; 

If your chapters are too long, nobody will read it.

Whats your opinions on length VS quick updates? 

Don't worry about the word count. Worry about making your words count!

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"Your character can move from the living room to the bedroom without you having to find some clever way to make the hall interesting for us. Just bypass that hall. Halls are stupid anyway, and we more than likely know they didn’t teleport, or use a magic wand."