《Twilight over Arcania》Author's Note: Chapter length
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What is the ideal length of a chapter?
I found myself shortening this week chapter from 16K to 11K words because it felt too long. As an author I can release about 10k to 15k words a week.
When I write a chapter I usually choose a theme, and put in snippets that advance the storyline according to that theme. The length also increased as the novel is progressing.
I thought about it, and like often in engineering, there may be a sweet spot.
On one end, there is a length that most would consider too short. If I just wrote 100 words per chapter, it would take forever to finish the novel and a chapter would not meaningfully progress any story thread at all.
On the opposite end. If I were to release a chapter of 1M words, it would basically be a whole novel in itself. It would be bad because you wouldn't have the chapter list to help you navigate all this content, and it would take you days or even weeks to read.
It's hard to tell, but I feel this novel will be about 100 chapters of 10K words once the third arc is over. That adds up to about 1M words in total.
This is the actual length of some of the chapters I have written.
Chapter 2: Arrival is 1.8K words
Chapter 5: Revelation is 5.2K words
Chapter 12: Death is 10.9K words
There are also side stories. I outlined many of them when building the history of Arcania. But I'll hold on to them. Right now I plan to finish the main story before exploring anything else in the world of Arcania.
I'd like to hear your opinion as readers, so I made a poll.
What do you think is the right length for a chapter?
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