DOs and DON'Ts of a Fallout fanfiction

Bear with me, this one's about chapter length

Okay, okay, I can already see all the raised eyebrows - we're going to learn about chapter length from you? Yeah, yeah, I admit I'm not the best at this. I confess.

I know most people out there are gonna tell you that a thousand words is too little, two thousand arguably too, but say, seven thousand borders on the too long. But that's not what I'm gonna tell you.

Okay, let's start with this: I used to believe 2K words is a great chapter length. It took me a while to write but also was long enough for the reader to feel the wait was worth it. Then, of course, I became more of a reader than a writer and I realized that...  It's not much.

There's this guy at FF.n, DeltaV, great writer, whose chapters were always very fulfilling for me, length-wise. I couldn't quite get that in my stories, so eventually I PM'd him about it and he explained to me that he tried to balance his chapters around 5-8K words, depending on how much space it took.

Funnily enough, this reminded me of what I used to do while writing my very first fanfics at the age 11 - I never once did a word count. Instead, I always did a page count, where around three pages was the optimal chapter length.

So basically what we have in both of these instances is that the form of your writing affects the contents. Or rather, the form counts into the length more than the contents. In these examples, dialogue would take up more place than, say, reported speech or just a description of the conversation - ergo chapters with dialogue would have a smaller word count, as it took up more space.

Yeah.

This was stupid.

I mean, I came back to those old fanfics of mine to check how it worked out content-wise, and did a word check. (I'm not going to go into specifics of how many filler chapters I wrote when I was eleven.) So, as it turned out, those chapters that seemed longest at a glance actually a) took shortest to read and b) weren't actually that long. In fact, I found a few that were barely longer than 1,5K. (The longest chapter of that story spanned over 4K, in comparison.)

So form definitely isn't the way to go, right? Well, not exactly. It's definitely not the smartest choice, but if it doesn't mess with the contents, it can actually be a helpful way of dividing your book.

The thing is, there really isn't any "correct" or "appropriate" length to a fanfic's (or a book's) chapter. It all depends on the writer, and the story, and the format of the story...

Some writers prefer to have their chapters around the same length. Like me, for instance. I even tend to split some of my longest chapters into parts for the sake of consistence. But again, this may actually be harmful to your story if you hadn't plotted it out beforehand. For people who want similar-lengthed chapters, I suggest you plan it all out - which scenes go into which chapter et cetera.

Some writers prefer chapters that can't be measured with any algorithm or mathematical logic. Reading, say, Chris Paolini, you might notice that one chapter is two pages long and the next takes up over thirty. Or take Goethe. Brilliant writer - he didn't have any consistent chapter length in his works.

All in all, whether you write long chapters or short chapters, whether you write similar-lengthed chapters or just chaotic chapters, what matters is that you write something. You write a story split into smaller parts. Those parts can't be too long or else you'll just bore people (also why I don't have many readers), but they can't be too short, either.

So how short is "too short"?

I think that there isn't any strict way to tell. I've read stories with 800-words-long chapters which were still great stories. But still, 800 is a bit... Well, it's not a lot. If I were to say how short is too short, I'd say that if you can fit it on one page, it's probably not enough. This can be around 1000 words or 700 words, depending on the font used, language, and even form.

How long is too long?

I can tell you without batting an eye. My chapters are roughly 9-12K long and people don't want to read them. Somewhere around 6-7K is that barrier which says "hi, this is too long!". Sadly, I don't seem to know how to find it... (Then again, while writing 6K chapters, I got comments saying they're too short.) But anyway! This isn't supposed to be me whining about not being popular, it's supposed to be me helping you guys write good stories!

So as to how to find the perfect chapter length for your story and your style, one that will make you comfortable with writing like that, you should follow a very, very simple rule.

Quality>Quantity.

Wait, no. Contents>Quantity.

Actually, we could place this all into one ultimate writing inequation! Contents>Quality>Quantity.

#1, Contents.

This is the most important thing. The chapter length isn't determined by the word count. Sure, it's important, but the plot is way more important than some stupid number! What you want to do is make sure you've covered all the things you wanted to cover in that chapter. For example, I've been rambling on and on about chapter lengths for the last half an hour, but I've still got more to say, so I'm writing still. But if I'd long since said what I wanted to tell you guys, I would have cut this chapter short. If you're done with the part of the story you wanted to show in this chapter, just move on. If you're not, keep working. It's as simple as that.

#2, Quality.

Obviously, quality comes before quantity. I get much more pleasure from reading a short, well-written chapter than I get from even the longest one covered with mistakes. This, I think, isn't something I have to explain. Simply, y'all should put out your best work out here! ^^

#3, Quantity.

This is what I've been writing about for the last 900 words, A.K.A., the Word Count. I don't think there's anything more to say about it other than that it is, and must always be, inferior to the quality of your work. If you're convinced you can handle long chapters, don't be scared and write them. But if don't feel quite confident on this writing ground, I'd suggest you to stick to the form which you're comfortable with.

It's all about you feeling good about what you write, isn't it?