[Alassante]

Wow - is it thread revival week? hehe

I believe the chapter length depends on the author/story/plot/etc. I have one story that I am lucky if I can keep it under 20 pages per chapter. Which I know Elliska LOOOOVEEEESSSSSS to beta. Although she got a little testy about the two chapters that were 25 pages and said - Make three out of these two. LOL She was right of course (she always is and no I'm no sucking up to my beta at all ) But this story has a flashback in the beginning of every chapter that is about 5 pages long then it goes to the current times.

Now my other stories range from 9-15 pages per chapter. If I write less than 9 pages I usually feel like its too short. But if you write long chapters sometimes you can lose the reader. Thats why I feel like you have to have the plot be set up a certain way for it to be very long. I had no idea until recently how long my big story was word wise - its longer than all of my finished stories and its only 1/3 of the way through at most. Can we say epic??? As long as you don't say snoozefest I'm okay. I've been told by a friend that her newest chapter was really long or whatever and when I'm reading it I don't notice cause I was so into it.

Personally I like reading WIPs. If I see a story that has 20 some chapters already finished, it feels like a huge task to sit down and read it while a WIP is a little chunk at a time. Of course you do run the risk of the writer dropping the story or long delays between updates but I think if you enjoy the story you won't worry too much about the delays and hopefully the story won't get dropped.

Thats my official two cents. Well...maybe more than just two. And now you all can see why on earth I can't write short chapters.

[Sulriel]

I think a chapter needs to be as long as it needs to be it might be 500 words or 5000, it should move the plot forward, have something good happen and something bad. I don't think the word count matters as much as the flow of the action.

I don't typically read WIPs. I'm one who likes to sit down with the whole thing and read through. Ironic now that I have my own long-un-updated WIP *sigh* (it *is* in-progress! it is, it is!)