Is anyone else having trouble with the 1500 character limit? Or, do you prefer short chapters? Discuss down below, and don't forget to link your novel or comic, if you have one.
Edit: I meant 15,000
I realized most of the interesting events are in my second chapter, so I cut out some boring stuff and combined my first and second chapters.
https://tapas.io/series/Potions--Spirits5
Jul '20
Dec '20
Character limit is 15,000. And Tapas markets itself as short snack bites entertainment that you can read in line a the grocery store or on the go in 5 minutes. I personally dont have an issue, since my chapters are broken into parts and each part fits under the character limit without a problem.
Although I can see if you're novel was set up differently it could be a problem you'd have to find the breaks or create them in a chapter without losing steam.
Not too much trouble. My manuscript chapters are usually broken up into 4 or more episodes at 700 to 1000 words each, though I've had some as low as 450 and some as high as 1,300.
A majority of Tapas' readers read through the app, so shorter episodes are easier to consume.
When I first started writing, I wrote long chapters. Most of what I wrote, however, was completely redundant. So my chapters all became 1k words shorter after editing.
Right now, the chapters are around 1.2k words long and the most recent once I've written are a little longer.
Hello @Jen-Jen.
Well, at first, I knew my chapters wouldn't fit within the character limit, so what I did was to fragment them in four parts.
I guess for Tapas layout - and Tapas' goal as little text snacks - this way is better.
And doing that way, you bring a lot of good things for your novel:
The size of your chapters is entirely up to you though.
I made a similar thread about a month ago and from a reader's perspective it seems like people prefer a 1000-1500 word count 
I've had a couple of my episodes dip into the late 900s but most are in that range.
I don't write each episodes as individual chapters but rather I wrote the book as a traditional novel and carved them up to post here 
I was worried about the limit as well, but once I started breaking down my chapters into itty pieces (I just name them 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and so on) it wasn't so bad, since I had natural break points within the chapters. It also helps me update more regularly, which is an added plus.
Plus I came from doing comics where it's like...here's one page that is 4 lines of dialogue--see you next week! So I feel like I give way more in an novel update than a comic update.
I struggle with it because my novels aren't written to be bite sized. So trying to find places to break them into parts that fit within the character limit has been a struggle and is a big reason I haven't yet committed to moving to Tapas full time. One chapter suddenly becomes 2 or 3 parts with each part just randomly ending because I've been shooting to keep each part the same length. I'm sure the more I do it, the easier it'll become, just a matter of motivating myself to want to do it for my other books LOL And motivation has been a huge issue for me.
At first, I couldn't stand the limit, but that's because my writing style is already broken up. While I write longer chapters, most of them are segmented because its written in multiple POVs. So I've just adjusted the story to use the POV changes as a separate episode.
As time has gone on, I actually don't mind it, and vaguely considered breaking down the chapters in future editions of the novel. Who knows.
I typically don't have problems with the word length. I think it is a fun challenge to tell the story in bite size segments
Interesting range. So, your original manuscripts are about 2,800-4,000 words long? Do you find it easier to write that way, or is that just how it turns out for you?
Yeah, it's better for Tapas to have shorter chapters, and the audience is expecting it, too. In the end, it's better for creators, too. I guess I'm just disappointed because it's the complete opposite of my writing style. Oh well, it'll probably get easier as time goes on.
Eh, I don't pay too much attention to the actual lengths of my chapters. So long as they accomplish what I want them to accomplish, meaning that they have a collection of linked scenes that drive the plot forward, then it doesn't matter how long they are. Like in one book, my shortest chapter is 5 pages while the longest is 16 pages.
I basically always end up pushing the max character limit with my updates. My chapters are basically always over the limit so I have to cut them into smaller updates. I usually prefer 6k-8k characters per update but it depends where a good spot for the break is.
I've had people say that they like how my updates are on the longer side which I'm happy about. I don't personally like cutting the story into really short bits since I don't really like reading stories like that myself.
You sound a lot like me in terms of how your write. The chapter will be as long as it needs to be to finish what it needs to convey. I've had chapters as short as 500 words and other chapters as long as 10k. However, the 10k was back when I didn't have any real experience with editing myself LOL Now that I'm a bit better at targeting my redundancies and over describing certain things, I've been able to keep my chapters in average of 4-6K words.
