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What is everyone's
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What is everyone's
What is everyone's average word count per chapter for a story? I have five chapters so far, and the words average out to 680 per chapter. Is that rather short? I have one chapter in the nine hundreds, and one in the three hundreds, so my chapters really vary.
submitted by Coral
(November 26, 2012 - 1:48 pm)
(November 26, 2012 - 1:48 pm)
On Nano? Gosh, highly irregular. Most of mine in the beginning were about five pages. But now I just realized I wrote a 22 page chapter. I ended it, because I didn't want to torture anyone too much. That's really good, because normally I only write one page chapters.
(November 26, 2012 - 6:49 pm)
ToP
(November 26, 2012 - 7:05 pm)
Pages? Ha! I have ten so far. :O :P Yep, I write a page and then think I've accomplished something. And I have six chapters. So yeah, short.
(November 30, 2012 - 10:01 pm)
I don't really have chapters as of now. They're just kind of... tildes. In between two separate points of the storyline. So it's like:
AblahblahblahCassidytalkingblah
~
Liberty time!
Although I will definitely make them into chapters, later.
(November 30, 2012 - 11:21 pm)
And of course I didn't actually answer the question :P
I usually have about 400 to 500 words per section, and if I shove some sections together and call them a chapter, I'll have about 1200-1500 per.
(December 1, 2012 - 9:26 am)
I have a character named Kassidy. :)
Spammy says owhd...or is it ownd?
(December 1, 2012 - 7:22 pm)
I generally average 3-5k chapters. Within those chapters there's generally a group of three or four scenes, which are separated by double line breaks or symbols or whatever I felt like when I started writing the story. I view chapters as mini-stories in that they each have their own arc which then contributes to the story arc as a whole, so I end chapters not based on length but based on when that chapter's story comes to an end (and I know that happens when the story of the next chapter becomes inevitable). If that makes any sense.
(December 1, 2012 - 3:16 pm)
I'm not that organized. My "chapters" usually end at a cliffhanger or whenever I'm done writing for the day. I'm on a writing website my friend made, and so I usually write something and then post it immediately to keep people happy (for some reason people like my story a lot), not even bothering with revisions (which I think will happen when I run out of ideas, likely soon.)
(December 1, 2012 - 7:26 pm)
I am ALLERGIC to (writing) cliffhangers. They can be used brilliantly (JKR, f'rinstance, makes excellent use of them now and again) but when I use them it's almost always a sign of weak writing on my part unless I specifically planned for one (which usually happens during climaxes anyway, and those are meant to be read fast).
My writing process tends to look something like this:
1. Get ambushed by plot bunnies at highly inconvenient time (i.e. during a test, in the middle of another project, skydiving off Mt. Everest...)
2. Lure plot bunnies into the back of mind and into plot bunny traps. Allow to ferment for a long time (recommended anywhere from several months to a year).
3. After fermentation reaches completion, be seized with the compulsion to write. Brain-vomit at least 5k words!
4. Following this, write every day.
5. After about a week, reread and despair.
6. Return plot bunnies to plot bunny traps and allow to ferment some more.
7. Plan. Obsessively.
8. Be seized with another compulsion! Write write write write.
9. Reread and despair. Rewrite everything.
10. Rinse and repeat ad nauseum.
11. Post first chapter on the Internet somewhere. Attempt to use tiny but loyal fanbase to circumvent steps five and nine.
12. Fail.
13. Take a break: draw characters instead. (Remind yourself bitterly that if Kate Shindle thinks you're talented, it's probably true. Probably.)
14. Return. Write ALL the things!
15. Repeat step eleven.
16. Succeed!
17. Be extremely paranoid about step number sixteen.
And that's basically how it goes every time. The Tom Gaunt fic has (tentatively) reached 16 (after 5 repetitions of step 10...). The Wonderland fic's still flopping between seven and eight, the Alice & Bob play still hasn't made it through the final scene and is languishing at five, and I have loads of things sitting at two at any given time.
(Among them, at the moment, is a Wonderland/OUaT crossover, three or four distinct original fictions, a whole host of Harry Potter fics, a Tin Man fic [which may or may not end up lumped with the Wonderland/OUaT one because the idea of putting the Hatter, Regina Mills, and Azkadellia in a cafe together is INCREDIBLY tempting :P], a Wonderland/SyFy's Alice crossover [+possible Looking Glass Wars 'verse as well], and some Twilight spitefics) (the majority of these will probably not get written for a very, very long time, if ever. but they're the real reason I have insomnia, because I haven't yet figured out how to turn off the part of my brain that generates them) (you know, in case you ever wondered how my brain works, which you probably haven't...)
(December 1, 2012 - 10:26 pm)
Some of those actually sound like me...
(January 29, 2013 - 11:23 am)
Er... I don't have chapters. Every so often, I have to switch to a different character's POV, so I have breaks, but no chapters. Chapters are for editing.
(December 3, 2012 - 9:52 pm)
Wow! That's a lot! I have no idea what my word count is. They vary, too, between two-page to seven-page.
(January 29, 2013 - 11:21 am)