Post haste or not so much?

[rattfan]

I've been pondering two questions regarding posting fic online. One involves chapter length. I know this can vary tremendously, but what do people actually prefer? I'm not a fan of very short chapters; I read fast and find there's not enough to settle into. In terms of number of words, is there a preferred range? I've been cutting them at around 4000 words, sometimes less, sometimes a bit more if I can't find a good spot to break it.

The other question is posting something that you haven't finished writing. That's something you never do in pro writing, of course, but it happens quite a bit with fanfics. Perhaps the author is hoping for input to help them decide where to go with it. I do surreptitiously go back and fix things I didn't notice first up, whether or not anyone has seized on them!  But I like reading the comments and responding to them. And kudos, of course, are how fanfic writers get 'paid.'

So is there an acceptable length of time between posting chapters? Is it too annoying to have it go months between chapters, as I admit to sometimes doing? I do have notes and a vague plan for the ending, but not certain atm just what will happen between now and then. So I'm debating whether I should finish the thing first before releasing any more chapters into the wild.

Comments

[tellshannon815]

I'm very conscious of the big gaps I've left between chapters in my fic although I think a big part of that is writers block (I know where it has to go, but it's exactly the thing I started the fic trying to avoid. It involves changing the timeline in Dark, and is a bit complicated to explain without knowledge of the show.) So I can't really see anyone else as annoying for doing the same!

[celli]

4K is a good length for a chapter. I feel like every writer I know prefers to read a different length than they prefer to write. Brains are weird!

I also think that a long time between chapters is okay. People can always just subscribe and not read it til it's done if they'd rather not have the breaks.

[igenlode]

Personally, I never risk posting something before I have finished at least the main draft version. There are so many abandoned fanfics out there that I don't want to potentially add to their number (and if I relied on getting comments as motivation I would be too depressed to post at all; at least if I already have the stuff more or less written then I have a reason to keep posting, even if the actual final editing hangs around a lot).

From a purely practical point of view I think it has been established that the way to maximise your views is to post frequently enough to 'stay on the front page' so that anyone checking your fandom for new updates will see your story there by default. If your fandom updates very slowly then people probably won't check back all that often, of course... Personally I like to wait until the number of hits on my latest chapter has at least reached two figures before uploading the next one, but then I have a fair few stories that have yet to stagger into three figures and only one that ever hit four ;-)

In terms of chapter length, as a reader I don't care how long a chapter is, provided it doesn't 'feel' long, i.e. it holds my interest so that I am not conscious of reading it. As a writer I would try to aim between a minimum of a couple of thousand and a maximum of four thousand or so; less than that and it feels inadequate, unless I'm consciously writing a brief introduction or epilogue, and much more than that and my sense of pacing starts to tell me it's too long.

In terms of frequency of posting, I'm more likely to *review* chapters if they don't come out faster than I can get round to writing reviews for them, to be honest :-p

[mific]

Ah, the WIP! Like many people I've been disappointed when authors don't manage to finish a chapterised WIP, and these days I almost never read them while in progress. As suggested, I'll subscribe if I eventually want to read it once done - I can't handle long breaks between chapters as I can't remember what went before, so subscribing then waiting for it to be done gets around that. Some authors announce in the notes that the whole thing is written and they're just polishing each chapter before posting - that's a pretty good way to do it if you have written the fic and are in the beta stage, as it reassures readers but you still get the building experience of a chapterised story with (hopefully) readers getting invested and commenting on each chapter as you go.

Four thousand words-ish per chapter sounds pretty good, to me, but it's very much YMMV. Longer is also fine, but I think really short chapters can be frustrating for readers, knowing it's part of a longer fic. I'm happy to read a 1000 word (or less) fic knowing it's a one-shot as hopefully the writer will structure it to be satisfying within those 1000 words. With a 1000 word chapter you don't necessarily get the same structure.

I've only ever written one long (novel-length) chapterised fic, when I was new to fandom and hyped up with the discovery! That was a true WIP where I had some idea where the fic was going and wrote a chapter per week from scratch without any detailed overall outline, and a lot of it unfolded as I wrote. It was a wild ride, and I did finish it, but I'd never risk anything like that today - it was written on a fandom high that luckily lasted for the few months it took me to complete the 28 chapters. In terms of pro writing, I guess Dickens did that with his serial publication of novels, but I don't think any pro writers still do that? Dickens had working notes that look to have been a mix of outline, theme, characterisation and plot notes, and I think his chapters were 17 pages long, usually, so maybe about 5000 words each?

I think serial writing like Dickens is fascinating, and I'm glad I got the chance to try it once (in NO way comparing the quality of that early fic of mine ofc!) But it's damn hard to do and still end up with a complete story that holds together. Writing the whole thing then releasing it into the wild in chapters is a lot safer, process-wise, if less heady!

[verushka70]

I think the length of chapters can vary. I've never planned how long chapters should be; they break where there's a natural break.

I've seen many times in profic that authors may have some long chapters but other chapters may be surprisingly short by comparison, which I sometimes didn't understand as a (young, or younger) reader... but when I started writing longfic, it started to make a lot more sense to me (not that my fic is on the level of profic, by any means, lol!) that authors would break fiction into chapters where there seemed to be a natural break, rather than at some specific number of words.

Of course, many profic authors do break chapters into similar sized chunks of x number of words each. It doesn't bother me either way, as a reader, so I break chapters where the natural breaks seem to occur: could be mini-cliffhanger within the fic; could be changing from one character on whom the omniscient third person POV is focused, to a different character's POV; could be right before a new plot point starts. It really depends.

I don't post fic until it's completely done. (Or, more recently, until I know it's "done enough" and that adding more isn't going to make it any better, and/or I just want to post it so it's off my plate, and I can move on - I've taken to tagging the latter type of "finally posted after years of 'perfect is the enemy of good enough'" fics with the tag 'fic dump'... because I have so. Many. WIPs. and the last several months I just decided, eff it, this/these is/are as done as they'll ever be, I just want them off my cloud space where the imperfections I still see have been mocking me long enough!).

So, me personally, I can't post fics while they are WIPs, writing and posting chapter by chapter. My brain doesn't work that way, first of all. Secondly, I don't like that pressure (or even just the idea of the pressure) of people asking when the next update will be. Even just the thought of getting comments like that gives me the heeby-jeebies - for me, that pressure is like an anti-muse or muse-killer! Ugh. Too much pressure.

That's not because I don't inherently like writing longfic... most of my fics wind up longer than I want them to be (I'm nearly incapable of succinct fic, lol!). It's because, as a discovery writer, I often don't know where the fic and characters are going until I'm writing it... and I don't really know how to write any other way; my fics always seem to turn out as discovery written. But that can result in some narrative blind alleys or tangents that later on have to be edited out or continuity-fixed to match up with where the characters decided to take things in the end. (Sometimes I don't even feel like I'm writing so much as I feel that the characters in the fic-world have taken me with them on their ride, and I'm just documenting what they decided to do on their own, lol!)

(Outlining hasn't worked for me for writing, as a strategy - it's only occasionally helped organize what I already have, to put the narrative into a better sequence... I also rarely write a fic straight through from A-Z, start to finish: I often begin with an idea but then my writing jumps around a lot, writing the beginning of the end before I even have the middle written, for example... So in that case, I have to outline, to make sure I have things in the right order, and so I know where the narrative gaps are that need to be filled in; that's the only time outlining seems to be beneficial to my writing process; it's always been something that occurs out of necessity, after I've already got a substantial amount written.)

My muse can be elusive enough as it is when writing longfic (I have four years-old longfic WIPs right now, in four different fandoms; one is literally almost 20 years old, but the ending - or the muse for it - has been eluding me almost that long!).

Adding that kind of "when do we get the next chapter?" pressure would seriously stress me out way more than posting something years later in a fandom from which most people in it long ago moved on. The resulting lack of attention to it, in the latter case, would bother me far less than the stress of people wanting/asking for next chapter installments when my fickle muse has deserted me, putting me into the role of abandon-fic writer. I did that once, long, long ago... and I was lucky enough that the entire fandom was moving from one major fic archive - which had become almost non-functional - to a new archive and then to AO3, at the time... so my abandoned fic got a little lost in the shuffle. But I still got some "when will you update/finish this??" comments and I still feel really guilty about that. So I do not want to do it again.

I probably would've found that kind of "next chapter, when??" pressure more inspiring and motivational when I was younger. But I'm old now... so it's more a motivation-killer than a source of motivation and inspiration.

YMMV, of course. Depends what style of writer you are and how you write: whether you're an A-Z straight-through narrative writer, or not.

Sorry for rambling. Hope this helped somehow, maybe!

[rattfan]

Thank you all for all that feedback and also for the tags on the page, which I see are very useful.

I have been writing my Thing since last year, though there were periods of stagnation because of RL dramas, but hope to have it done Real Soon Now. The comments have encouraged me to get the rest done first.

[mific]

*cheers you on!*

[lucy_roman]

Just an observation on the things that profic writers do. There was (not sure if it is still available) a thing called kindle vella (sic). Writers could put their stories on it a chapter at a time and then readers would pay to access each chapter.

With fanfic I have posted the occasional wip as I go but I always committed to finishing the story and when reading I do try to avoid unfinished stories. I hate being left to wonder what should have happened next.

[nagi_schwarz]

Historically novels were posted serially, like in magazines, which is why if you read a Dickens novel there's a cliffhanger like every three chapters, so this sense that a book must be published all in one go is quite flexible, and with web novels now (posted a chapter at a time like webtoons) those are often posted ongoing and are in the process of being written while being posted, so you'd be surprised at how much crossover there is between professional publishing and posting fanfic.

As for chapter length, I figure whatever length the story requires is good. I reckon I average 2-3k words per chapter when I post in chapters, whereas I didn't post/write in chapters before and then I'd have to go back and figure out where chapter breaks should be, which was rough and I don't recommend it.

As for how often you post, that's totally up to you, and can very from fic to fic! When I posted a birthday gift for someone, I posted the first chapter on their birthday, and then weekly after that, having completed the fic first. I only have a handful of WIPs I posted unfinished, and I feel pretty awful about that, but there are some WIPs I'm pretty sure are abandoned that I love and I will reread them anyway, so there is that. On the other hand, one time I was posting a multichapter fic for a fest, and the entire fic had to be posted on the day the fic was due, and so in order to not spam my readers I posted a chapter a day so I could post the final chapter on the due date, and that worked too! There's one writer I love who will post maybe once very few months, very sporadically, but I love their work so much that the wait is always worth it.

[troyswann]

Nothing makes me nope out of reading a fic like a 10/? notation under chapters.

I know there's a subscription option, but I don't enjoy a julienned salad of fics coming into my space at odd intervals. I prefer to read the whole thing at once. I guess I would not have loved a Dickens serial.

I can manage to hang on for serialized audio dramas/podcasts but cannot seem to make that leap for fic. Delayed gratification is not my jam.

As a writer, I have abandoned fics after posting a few chunks in my DW or, BITD, LJ, but it feels like the contract with the reader is different there. In my blog, I'm talking out loud to myself as much to an audience, focusing on process more than end artifact. Posting to AO3 seems to come with a different expectation.

But then again, I know I'm returning to fandom after a long absence and the culture and practices have changed a lot, so my attitudes may be outdated.

Also, I barely understand AO3 at the best of times, so finessing engagement through chapter posting is so far above my head as to be invisible. It's super interesting to read about that here, even knowing it's never going to factor into my posting practice.

As for chapter length, I always read in the full story view, not the chapter view, so I tend to think of chapters more in terms of story structure than posting practice. Sometimes a one-sentence chapter packs a punch--but not if I have to wait two months for it. :)

[pir8fancier]

I have three novel-length fanfics that took me seven years to write. There was a big gap 3/4s of the way through both fics, one because I wasn't sure if JKR was going to kill off Draco Malfoy, and if she did, I couldn't finish the fic. One was because my life got super crazy. The third novel was a POTC fic where the ending just didn't sit right, and at a certain point I felt it needed a different ending. So, there was a many years gap between finishing both fics. As I ease out of fandom, I have made an effort to finish ALL my WIPS, even though it was like pulling teeth, but I've done it. And now I feel a sort of closure. I can leave fandom all together without any feelings of guilt. What every author who leaves a half-finished fic "on the vine" so to speak must accept is that you will lose dedicated readers. You might gain new ones when the revived WIP, but fans move on to different fandoms over time, and you can't really blame them.

I think the length of a chapter depends on how quickly you follow up with a subsequent chapter. If you leave a short chapter hanging for months, then the reader doesn't care anymore. If you follow it up with another chapter within, say, a week, then I don't think it matters how long or short it is. Some chapters should be short because of the material, IMO. The success of that book "The Da Vinci Code" is primiarly based on short chapters that end on cliffhangers. The entire book is like that. It's a technique that I think is kinda cheesy, but it does keep the pages turning.

Frankly, I never wrote fanfiction for money. I wrote because I wanted to write. Do I deplore writers who don't finish their fics/ Let's say I'm irritated, but nothing more than that. Life gets in the way. Canon changes. Ship wars happen. I'm sympathetic to a certain degree.

[sgatazmy]

William Faulkner had an extremely poignant chapter (the only chapter I liked in the book) that was 5 words long. It was exactly as long as it needed to be.

Similarly, Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers had a chapter that was a sentence to a paragraph long.

My latest fic had a first chapter that was only a couple hundred words but the rest were between 2000 - 5000.

I’m a big fan of a chapter is exactly as long as it needs to be.

However! Lots of short (under 1000 words), underdeveloped chapters really turns me off from a fic. But too long and I can lose attention. 3000 - 4000 is a nice number I feel.

I am posting a fic that was “finished” and I thought I would update daily, but revisions have been hard and I’m only managing once a week. I realize that is not ideal for many.

However, 4000 everyday is too much of a time commitment for me to read unless I really love a fic.

[thatzeta]

I feel like I might be on the more "extreme" end of the spectrum when it comes to chapter length. Incidentally, it's sort of (?) tied to starting a WIP and updating whenever, instead of finishing the story first before posting!

Basically, when I started writing, I didn't have much of an idea where I was going with the story. During that time, my first chapters were roughly between 4,000-6,000 (minus the shorter prologue) and I wrote until I felt like I found a good point to stop a chapter. When I sat on about ten chapters, I started posting semi-frequent updates while working on new content.

On the plus side, this buffer means that when I have a spontaneous idea that requires some addition to older chapters, I can sneak them in before posting and it won't turn into an obvious ret-con lol

The downside is that I end up writing new content while I simultaneously have to edit old content. It also somehow lead to cyclical plot points in the story, not as in repetition, but as in "patterns" because I end up focusing on specific story threads whenever I "stumble over them again" during posting-prep of an older chapter.

Another WIP downside to me, is that the longer I go without an update, the worse I feel about it. But that's more of a writer's block thing.

Now for the chapter-length part of your questions:

From how I see it: My approach to handling chapters changed after I figured out the plot. Now that I know what needs to happen, chapters as a whole feel more like they're check boxes. They will be as long as they need to be to wrap up the plot-beat that I planned for them.

... which does mean that my chapters are now fluctuating between 10-15,000 words each.

(This also works retroactively, as all the older chapters I am currently re-writing have also gone up into the five digit numbers.)

But yeah, basically, I guess I handle chapters like Mike Flanagan handles episode length in his shows. Like Haunting of Hill House can vary in episode length from 51min to 71min, Bly Manor varies from 45min to 66min. Whatever the plot for the episode needs.

I do realise that my "starting length" was already way beyond what the average fanfiction chapter is, lol, but yeah! Anything shorter always left me feeling like I couldn't really get the plot moving forward, if that makes sense.

I also prefer reading long chapters. I'm much more inclined to read a fanfic where the average chapter is a minimum of 4,000.