How long should chapters be?

[Tailsy]

PFFT, chapters. I don't deliberately separate my writing out into chapters. This is probably because I don't stop and start novels, I just read straight through. It's probably a pain for anyone who tries to read anything I write...

 

[surskitty]

I tend to pretty much only read long one-shots. :3 A lot of those could be broken up into chapters, sure, but there's no point.

Honestly I tend to hate chapters in general. :( Why bother, most of the time? Unless it's going to be really, really long, just break it up whenever the scene changes a bit. Preferably not with numbered/named chapters. :(


Also I hate it when chapters are referred to as anything else when it's clearly a chapter. I'm going to call it a chapter anyway >:( and the writer probably isn't as witty or novel as they think they are. Calling them episodes implies that you're writing it to be a TV show not something meant to be read (which sucks. Kind of like the low-end version of reading Shakespeare. It's horribly wrong.) and calling them anything else is just ... why would you?

 

[Negrek]

Honestly I tend to hate chapters in general. :( Why bother, most of the time? Unless it's going to be really, really long, just break it up whenever the scene changes a bit. Preferably not with numbered/named chapters. :(

I understand chaptering things. One of the things that bothers me about Terry Pratchett books is that they usually don't have any, for example. Chapters provide a nice stopping point; provided that the writer can chapter worth a damn, they're good places to stop so that when you jump back into the text later you'll be able to figure out what's going on and pick back up easily. This may just be my neurosis, but I also have trouble stopping myself at "just a break," when I can see that the text keeps going on right after the delimiter; I feel compelled to keep reading. Further, I don't like to stop in the middle of a page, which leads to me searching for a page that either ends in a break or at least ends in a complete sentence. Dunno, having a chapter end just provides a more satisfying sense of closure for me, a sort of, "Okay, you can put the book down now."

Chapters online are even more yesplz; if it's anything more than twenty-thirty pages, I'm probably not going to be able to read it in one sitting, and if there are no chapters, how am I supposed to find my place when I get back? I'd need to leave the computer on and the window scrolled to the right point, and do my best to ensure that nobody's going to mess with it before I get back. A ginormous page of text with nothing but a few breaks scattered throughout would be mighty intimidating, too, not to mention inefficient--it's not like it makes a big difference, but why load the hueg wall o' text every time I want to read a little segment, when I could just be jumping to the (presumably significantly smaller) chapter I wanted.

Well, okay, you stipulated "not really, really long," but if it's going to be chaptered in the first place... it's most likely going to be really, really long.

 

[OrangeAipom]

PFFT, chapters. I don't deliberately separate my writing out into chapters. This is probably because I don't stop and start novels, I just read straight through. It's probably a pain for anyone who tries to read anything I write...

I could never do that. D: I have the attention span of a flea.