Does the Tapas Word count limit influence your style?

[althewriternyc]

Hey guys, So I was wondering how writing on sites like Tapas or Royal Road has affected your writing style?
For me, when I learned to write creatively in school, word count was more of a personal goal to hit during my sessions. Unless it was an essay, I never cared if I had under 1500 words to work with.

My Novel CAKEWALK had to be edited & cut down into Tapas style chapters when I decided to upload it here. For my new book, I’m personally writing with Tapas word count in mind.
I have found it really interesting to make work like this. The smaller window to grab people's attention has forced me to write more dynamically. It also has caused me to cut out a lot of the fat from my stories & pay better attention to my pacing. But then that's just me.

What about you guys? Have you found that the word count here has influenced your style?

[Freemints30]

Not exactly, mostly cus I write my chapters looong in advance on a google doc and just search for a good segment under 2k words to upload. So generally my stories are still description heavy.

I feel at most it made me focus on having scenes that end with something. Either important dialogue or at least one plot point reference. Im kinda aware that style is more suited for actual novels in alot of places but I guess that's how I prefer to write and read.

Honestly I just write the whole book in advance and cut down very little . Just upload scenes rather the entire chapters. Maybe that's why the word count never bothered me. I just end up having a big buffer of me and never have to worry about dead lines.

[RobertBMarks]

Not in the slightest. I write chapters to be as long as they need to be. If the quality is there, the readers will stick with it.

[bulgariansumo]

No. Since I post on sites other than Tapas, I can't bother dealing with its weird character limit. I just have to hope that my chapters have a natural place to break off when I split them, which usually they do, thankfully.

Royal Road, however, did affect things a little. My story is broken up into episodic installments, and prior to Royal Road, I would post those episodes separately as their own books. Someone on RR nicely advised me to put them all into one story. Since then, I've been writing chapters in between each episode to tease the next one, kind of like how cartoons/anime does it. It's fun! Also, if someone finishes the last chapter of an episode and doesn't have much more time to read, they'll have a little something that will spark interest for the next episode.

[Christal]

No because I don't write very long chapter! My chapter are short so my viewers don't get bored

[Kuma]

I began writing up to the limit and now I split apart chapters in two with 8k on each give or take

[Spectorium_1]

I've never met the word limit on anything, so not really

[KhanSpring]

Sometimes.If my chapters are too long I see where I could split them without it feeling weird.

[YaoiParadise]

It didn't at first. But after so many years on Tapas I've started to embrace the word count more with every new project.

There's something really interesting about working in the 1k(ish) goal for 'episodes', but still allowing a chapter structure to be in place for potential print publishing. I've had to adapt to the kind of tension which can be built with the shorter length, especially in quick moving scenes (and tbh I love the rage from a good cliffhanger so it's just extra opportunity to mess with my readers).

It's definitely a different style than traditional publishing, but I think it definitely has its own appeal (especially for those who write as they go, being able to write a 1k word episode as compared to a much longer chapter is much more feasible to help avoid burnout)

[LackofCoffee]

Not at all. If I have longer chapters I just break them into smaller parts to fit better with tapas (chapter 1.1, chapter 1.2)
I found that doing this much improved engaged.

[NellieVP318]

I just split my chapters into parts when it gets too long. It did slightly influence my style by trying to make my content a little shorter than long-winded when it calls for it.

[althewriternyc]

Oh that's a really cool idea!

[system]

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