If you've posted a novel/novella...

[Amiii]

...how long were your chapters?

Is there some preference amongst readers? Do we go by word length per chapter, or sex scenes per chapter, or some other arbitrary unit of measurement?

My story is 53k words. I've currently got it broken up into four chapters, the first of which is sitting in the pending queue. Chapter 4 is a rather wordy 16k. Not sure if I should revisit this...

TIA my fellow pervs.

 

[Bramblethorn]

About 2-3 Lit pages (7500-11000 words roughly) for mine. I have no idea whether that's optimal but it seems to have worked out okay.

IMHO the exact word count is less important than ensuring each chapter has some reasonably satisfying arc of its own. I'd rather post a longer chapter than one that felt like half a chapter. By Chapter 4, people who are still reading are probably invested in the story and unlikely to complain if a chapter needs to go longer than usual.

 

[Amiii]

About 2-3 Lit pages (7500-11000 words roughly) for mine. I have no idea whether that's optimal but it seems to have worked out okay.

IMHO the exact word count is less important than ensuring each chapter has some reasonably satisfying arc of its own. I'd rather post a longer chapter than one that felt like half a chapter. By Chapter 4, people who are still reading are probably invested in the story and unlikely to complain if a chapter needs to go longer than usual.

Beautiful, thank you.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I currently have 10 novels published on here. I don't worry about word count or characters per chapter since I only post them as single submissions. Now, I will tell you that four of the ten were once submitted in chapters or parts consisting of multiple chapters, but I converted those to single submissions based upon reader feedback. Once converted, the views per day for each story, the scores, and the feedback from readers all became more positive.

When writing, and during the editing process, I determine the natural breaks within the story and those become the chapter breaks. It seems that my chapters tend to organically wind up being between 3K and 5K words.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My 104k novel on the Arthurian myth was published over twelve chapters, so that's around 8k - 9k per chapter = 3 Lit pages. Some chapters longer, some shorter. Once the whole thing is published, the chapter lengths are irrelevant really, since they're all there.

 

[THBGato]

I did 87,000 words over 5 chapters, though I was publishing as I wrote so didn't know the length at the time. It means the final chapter is quite a bit longer than the rest.

I'm working on a story at the moment that I think will be a similar length but I plan to publish in a single submission.

 

[AllenWoody]

Agree with @Bramblethorn about each chapter having an arc of its own. My chapters tend to run around 3-4 Lit pages, or about 15K words, but if there’s a natural stopping point I’ll do that and move the following content into the next chapter. I do also like to include at least one sex scene in each chapter.

 

[CarmineBlancheJr]

About 2-3 Lit pages (7500-11000 words roughly) for mine. I have no idea whether that's optimal but it seems to have worked out okay.

IMHO the exact word count is less important than ensuring each chapter has some reasonably satisfying arc of its own. I'd rather post a longer chapter than one that felt like half a chapter. By Chapter 4, people who are still reading are probably invested in the story and unlikely to complain if a chapter needs to go longer than usual.

This exactly.

The chapter length should be whatever it takes to express that part of the story. If the chapter gets too long, or at least you feel it is too long, consider breaking up that portion. For example, you can have it so that in that section, you are telling the story from the point of view of two people, and each might get their chapter; chapter 1 is the point of view of the male or the antagonist, or whatever, Chapter 2 is the tale from the other's point of view. Chapter three can have them meet up / confront one another / have a dance-off... whatever.

The most important thing is to keep the work engaging. If the reader is interested and invested in the story, they probably will not notice that that particular chapter is three times longer than the others.

 

[Privates1stClass]

I think it's important that each chapter builds on the plot. As @Bramblethorn says, include a narrative arc for each chapter. As you end each chapter, make it like a TV serial with something your readers want to learn more about--a secret, or your main character is about to embark on a significant activity (for Literotica, it's likely a sexual encounter). So, leave your readers hanging at the end of each chapter so they want to read the next one.

The length of each chapter is dependent on telling your story, so any length between two to five LIT pages should work okay.

 

[OffNSFW]

I've written one novel on here, M.U.F.F., about an overweight plain jane sort of girl who graduates high school and experiences something of a sexual awakening. I did not think consciously in terms of page count or word count. Instead, I thought in terms of how much story content there was--was there action, were there character revelations, stuff like that.

I figured, each chapter should have around two or three important things happening. Any more than that, and it's probably more than one chapter. Any less than that, it probably needs more development or needs to be merged with the next or previous chapter.

That said, each chapter does seem to shake out at somewhere between 3.3k and 3.7k words. Again, I didn't plan it that way, but that's how it happened on its own.

 

[Amiii]

Thanks everyone. It's interesting to see how much your chapter lengths vary. I like the idea of sticking to an arc, or 'TV episode' per chapter, and making the word count secondary.

 

[designatedvictim]

...how long were your chapters?

I'm a new author here, so take anything I say with a grain of salt.

I find that the sweet spot seems to be in the 7-10K range for chapters. Three to four Lit pages.

With that said, my first publication (still in progress) is in N&N where each 'chapter' represents the events of a single day each. Their sizes vary greatly.

Chapter 1 - 14.8k words
Chapter 2 - 32.8k words
--
Chapter 3A - 6.3k words
Chapter 3B - 9.8k words
Chapter 3C - 12.1k words
Chapter 3D - 9k words

I started breaking Chapter 3 into smaller pieces because I felt that chapters that are *too* long drive away readers. Of course, breaking it up, even with good break points, can ruin the flow of the chapter, which also risks driving readers away. (That's just my opinion.)

Chapter 3, so far, weighs in at 37.2k words and there's one more section to go. My characters are talky and get talkier as I progress.

 

[ItsJustMeApathy]

177K words divided into 22 chapters. Some are short around 4000 words and some are longer around 12K words.