Comments | ratherastory: And now I wibble more about writing ;)

ratherastory

And now I wibble more about writing ;)

Jul 21, 2010 14:26

So after the last inspirational post, in which I'm all "Positive Energy YAY!" I'm going to complain bitterly that, while I am upholding my end of the bargain, I am having trouble with my castielfest fic ( Read more... )

castielfest 2010, authorial wibbling, writing is hard!, crossover

Comments 5

bellatemple July 21 2010, 18:45:30 UTC

I've got a difference of almost 5000 words between two chapters of my big bang, so it'd BETTER not matter (and honestly, most people seem to figure that as long as THEMATICALLY they're about even, you're okay. Word count doesn't matter).

What's the crossover show? If it's one I'm familiar with, I could be a character voice beta for you (character voices tend to be my strong point).

ratherastory July 21 2010, 18:51:16 UTC

I'm going to edit this comment right after posting, because my recipient is on my flist. So I hope you have email notifications. ;)

Crossover show is [redacted to preserve the anonymity of the exchange].

bellatemple July 21 2010, 19:53:09 UTC

Ooo, yeah, that's unfortunately not one I can help you with. Sorry, hon!

spookysquall July 21 2010, 19:39:05 UTC

You know, relatively few of the (sometimes wacky) old classics have chapters of equal length. Lit gets even nuttier in the 20s with streams of consciousness and trust me, none of that follows any sort of pattern. :) And contemporary writers like Stephen King switch up chapter length all the time. So in my honest opinion, chapter length doesn't really matter--as long as it works for the story. A chapter could be 1 sentence or 100 pages. As long as the story flows, it shouldn't be an issue. :)

peppervl July 21 2010, 23:55:58 UTC

I try to keep mine about the same, though they'll usually vary within about 1,000 words. But that gives me a length to shoot for.

However, that's only actual chapters. I break my chapters up into sections that vary with no consistency at all. And if it's stories in a 'verse, anything goes.

So, for example, in To Dream, the shortest chapter was 2,709 words, the longest was 3,954 and most of them were between 3,000 and 3,500. But they all had sections of varying length, and some of them didn't have sections at all.

Of... on the other hand has ranged from 2,424 to 9,034.