Is Tapas the best place to post long-chapter stories?

[penn_lovedove]

Hi there! I'm Penn, and meanwhile my account is new, I've been on Tapas for a very long time (since 2015 to be concise). I love this site and is by far my favorite platform for reading comics, and recently I've been wanting to post my own story here,

The trouble is, I know that Tapas has a limit of 15,000 characters (that being for me around 4 pages). I have written and planned a story with a lot of chapters, and every of them is around 15 - 20 pages long. That means that, in order to post it on Tapas, I'm gonna need to split every chapter into 4 or 5 parts, and I'm not sure if people would be comfortable about it.

I have read all the tips that talk about writing short chapters and not splitting them into a lot of parts, but, I want to know if it would be very troublesome to post a story with so many parts from the point of view of the readers. I don't read a lot of stories from Tapas, mainly comics, but since I cannot draw, the only way I have found of posting my story is through writing.

I'll receive any comment or tip gladly =)

[mia-carmen]

Hello~ I'm still new to Tapas even though I had this account for awhile now. I realize that there is a word limit for each chapter around 1k or 2k I don't remember the exact count. I also had to split a couple chapters into parts because they were too long. It's okay to split your chapter into 4/5 parts. I don't see any reason why people won't read it or could care less about it. In my view, it's not troublesome at all. (I also don't read much here on Tapas but I'm slowly getting used to it now)

[DasIstWunderblyat]

From what I have heard from other readers, and observing other novelists' chapter arrangement, splitting chapters into a lot of part is a common practice and readers usually do not mind it as it is cut properly ( to make the pacing good/make interesting cliffhanger, not making it seems incomplete).

The Tapas recommendation for chapter length is around 1000–1500 words (I'll cite later I am lazy).

Some series here can have 100+ episodes, one person even stated to me that they are okay reading a series with so many episodes as long as it does not exceed 500.

[SurvivALIST]

I even don't mind cutting mine's into ten parts of just one chapter either. This kind of thing is also advantageous to creators who put their stories on premium, too. Take TurtleMe's The Beginning After the End novel who has a chapter divided into 4 parts. Not advertising his novel or anything but seeing that the novel is good to go makes it alright.

Just go with what floats your boat and glad that you've decided to enter the "writing universe of Tapas"!

[kmlangleyauthor]

I have varied lengths of chapters, but I’ve had to split many of mine into 2, 3, and 4 episodes. None of my readers have seemed to have a problem with that (thankfully) I’ve also read many stories on here that have chapters split into two or more as a running norm.

I think the key is to label them appropriately (“Chapter 1 part 3” or “[Chapter Title] 2/5” – as long as it’s consistent) and make sure they break at a good point. Personal opinion, but my theory is that readers care less about exact word count of every episode when they break at a natural point (to include cliff hangars). For pre-written stories, sometimes this means last minute editing to rework a few paragraphs to keep the pacing right. Sometimes there’s already a perfect breaking point (and at the right word count, too )

Plus, by breaking down your chapters into smaller chunks, you’ll have plenty of wiggle room for updates! Want to upload a whole chapter each week? Thats 4 updates for you! Great for visibility! Or you might want to stretch updates out a little longer and do 2 a week – which means a good, long-running series for people to keep up with.

There’s a lot of flexibility on this site and it’s about finding what works best for you and your readers that’s just my two cents

[penn_lovedove]

Thanks everyone for your opinions! I am so so so so so grateful! =)

It kinda reassures me the fact that splitting chapters is not so big of a deal, and it being a common practice meanwhile there is a good pacing or the proper cliffhangers sounds great to me, even after knowing that others great novels do it too.

Also the idea of updating the chapter in parts through a week sounds interesting and good to me, I actually never thought about it but sounds so great! Thank you all for your wonderful advices <3

[MeltingCORE]

Yeah, there is nothing wrong with writing long chapters and splitting them into sections! As others have said, many do that (myself included). Just focus on having fun and making the best story you can.

[Kuma]

I'm having a similar issue, most of my chapters end up reaching if not overstepping the limit. I'm trying to change a bit my style of writing and I'm considering split apart chapters into two parts

[thedude3445]

Do readers actually not mind? I haven't ever heard reader opinions on it so I do worry that it's slightly annoying to many.