Novel length: too wordy for online reading?

[rajillustration]

I'll be honest at first it was a little tricky for me because my book was originally a book format, so my chapters were hella long--but after glancing at what other authors were doing on Tapas it helped me realize that like...people have some really short episodes on here, and it's fine. So I split my chapters into like 9 or 10 parts sometimes, as long as it feels like a satisfying thought each episode, not necessarily that a major plot element needs to happen each update.

[Oto_Kouda]

I feel you on this. I'd written around 20k words before I started adding chapters to Tapas.

For me, I ended up splitting and adding to chapters since I was too attached to my old cliffhangers. I also used this as a chance to tidy up some of my older chapters while fixing up scenes since I pretty much had a TARDIS known as "the rest of the story" planned out!

[Mane]

7-8k is what I'd have thought was ideal in my case as well, but then I saw a recommendation stating that episodes should be ideally around 3k.

[HippieGhost]

you really benefit more from having a large number of short episodes than a smaller number of longer ones. In your case I'd break it up by scene, trying to keep it between 1k and 3k words depending on how far they go.

[milejdyvan]

200k IS long for amateur publishing. But if you're just posting it online, no probs. I defo suggest posting short chapters though. From all my readers' comments, I know that they appreciate most very short chapters that they can read without it feeling dragged out (around 500-1500 max words, though mine are 800-1200). It makes them stay longer too. I'm not going to say all, but quite a few of my readers binge read the entire thing in one to two sitting (and I used to have hundreds of chapters). Chapter length is key (!) to keeping your audience interested. Don't worry too much about leaving each chapter with a cliffhanger. Just cut off the chapter, add a somewhat meaningful ending to it (so that it doesn't just cut off mid sentence) and you should be fine.

[Mane]

Yeah, I'm going to test out the 3k episodes and see how that they look.

[Mane]

It got that long because I didn't plan properly. I just went with the creative flow and ended up with this behemoth of a story, and now I'm worried it won't even garner an audience because people will feel put off by the long format.

[milejdyvan]

Mine is 130k. It's not as long but it's just above the right length for fantasy. And when I had it all posted (rn, a lot of my chapters were deleted because of editing purposes), I had 120 chapters, all 800-1200 in length. And there would be very many readers who would just binge the whole thing in one or two days. If you make your chapters just as short, I think you have a much bigger chance at keeping readers interested. If you make 2k+ long chapters, chances are, most readers will choose something else to read. I would say 1500+ word chapters fit other sites like wattpad or RoyalRoad, but for tapas, where you can have an infinite amount of chapters, and most importantly, there are comics on this site too, it is important for novelists to stick their chapters to the shorter side. It's how I had comic readers come to my story, appreciating that they don't have to read a mammoth of words just to pass a single chapter. For comic readers, which is the majority of tapas, it is important to make chapters short, even if you end up cutting up chapters in half–it is worth it.

[thedude3445]

Web serials and novels alike, if you have a single book that's going to be 300k words long, it might be worth figuring out how to cut it down to size, maybe even by half. If it's a full series you might be fine, but books really don't get to sizes that big unless it's epic fantasy by already established authors (and usually those books should have been cut, but the publishers were too scared of the author to do it). No idea if your book NEEDS cuts or not but once you finish you can make that call.

For reference, the longest Lord of the Rings book was Fellowship at 187,000 words, and that's a book that spends like 100 pages on some hobbits setting up for dinner lol.

[milejdyvan]

Thing is while I agree, there's a big difference between a published book and posting a novel online. That's why I think it depends on intention. If you want to publish your fantasy story, no more than 120k words is necessary, in fact much less is much better. But if your ambitions aren't for that, the length can be whatever as long as it's entertaining. At that point, the only people who can suggest if it is too long or not long enough are readers and reviewers.

[Mane]

130K is still pretty long, so I'm glad there are other people with longer stories that have readers. I've learned my lesson with other books I'm planning, but for the one I'm currently devoting most of my time to, it's a little late to edit the chapters. I guess I;ll have to make sure the episode are on the shorter side.

[Mane]

I'm certain if I had a dedicated editor they'd find a lot of fat to trim, but it's hard for the person that is writing the story to see it as that. From my perspective, everything seems to have a purpose, though I know a reader would look at it differently.
I think, once I'm done with it, I'll take a break, then go through it with rested eyes and I'll see what needs to be cut and what has to stay.

[amberberry]

3k could work too if your story has structured in a way that allows fluent cuts. Or you can of course do it even if it doesn't have that.
No one has commented that my updates are too long. A couple have said that they enjoy the bit longer ones. My story is currently at 150k words at 90ish episodes do you'd definitely have enough content for bit longer updates.

But also just came to mind (I don't know if anyone has mentioned) but if your text is more heavy to read then maybe do shorter episodes. Bit if it's lighter then longer ones work too since reading it isn't as taxing.
You could always experiment a bit with the upload length, but I'm sure you could do 7k well if you want to. I smetimes have bit shorter episodes too if thr chapter structure demands it

[mlocik97]

Look, there is 1600 eps premium novel.. so this is nothing,.... what you wrote is like 100-150 eps

[Mane]

That's actually reassuring.

[Mane]

I'll have to test it out and see if around 3k makes sense as a breaking off point. The consensus seems to be that the episodes themselves should be shorter so I'll try not to max out the word count per episode.

[AnimeKitty]

What matters most is your storytelling. If you've got an interesting story and characters, then you'll find readers who will want to binge read it. Personally, 200k words for a webnovel might turn me away. I'd read a few chapters and probably abandon it unless something really hooked me in. What's your genre? I know fantasy can reach 100k and up, but 200k is quite a lot. But I've seen some novels on here with 200+ episodes that do fairly well. It just depends on what you feel is best for your story. Nobody else can decide that but you. I would say keep your episodes as short as you can tho.

I had to adjust my chapter sizes when I first started publishing here because I had mine between 2k-4k words each. I trimmed them down to 500-1,700ish (somewhere in that range) because that's how I was able to cut the scenes best. I've only ever finished two novels that I'm taking seriously at the moment and am still currently working on edits for both. One ended with 97k and the other fell short at 69k. My first drafts always tend to be shorter. I add more as I edit.

[Mane]

Well, the novel used to be on premium before I took a long burn-out related break, then the allocated time expired and it got taken off. It wasn't super popular, but those who did read it seemed to really like it. It got decent to good reviews, so that's what pushed me to continue. I want to finish it before I publish it again (maybe even see if it's accepted on Premium again)so wrote and wrote and wrote and before I realized I was pushing 200k and I still have 10 or so more chapters to go.

It's dark, Victorian cottage core fantasy with a lot of action and a splash of horror. I'm pretty proud of about 60-70% of it and really unsure about the rest.

[AnimeKitty]

That's great how you made it to premium! I can totally relate to that burn-out feeling. It happens sometimes. Glad you're getting back to the story. I think you might be fine having 200k but you bring up not being too sure about 30-40% of it. Is there a possibility that by trimming some things down you might be closer to 100% or at least in the 90% range of being proud of the story? If you feel like everything is necessary for it, then I'd say just go for it. Go a little over 200k words if you must. Oddly enough, I've lately been really into the Harry Potter series. Never read it as a kid, crazy I know. But I'm reading it now and loving each book. You're probably wondering wtf that has to do with anything, but I'm getting there. I'm on book 4 now, which is huge and sits at 190k words(had to Google the word count but I knew it was big) I don't mind that at all because I'm loving the series so much. Would I read a story this long if I didn't love it? Probably not. Which is why I brought up your storytelling. If you've got a great story to tell, then use as many words as needed. The next book in this series is super huge, just sitting on my dresser and has 257k (had to look that up too xD) and do I plan on reading it? Heck yeah!

[Mane]

Thanks!

Yeah, quality of the storytelling is key, but I think readiness is also a factor. See, Harry Potter is in a traditional format and a thick book is less off-putting than a stuffy chapter online. I looked up the writing on mobile and seeing it on a tiny screen gives a different feel than a pages in a book. I guess I'm just stuck on the idea of "bite-sized" which doesn't really apply to my current style. Hence why I'm a little worried.

I'm just glad to see that there are other long form examples on tapas.