I’m currently working on a new adult romance and am wondering on how long chapters should be. I typically write around 2500 words, however as this story will be on wattpad I’m wondering if this should be shorter. Or, if chapter length should be determined by the place of the cliffhanger.
Thanks
wattpad chapters are often quite short, around 1000-1500 words. mine are usually longer. honestly i would focus more on the content anf where it makes sense to end the chapter rather than the length. a strong 5000 word chapter that encourages readers to go on to the next one is better than four choppy ones.
I agree on principle but would disagree in practice, haha. I think a lot of reading, especially online reading, happens on commutes or otherwise on the road and it’s really inconvenient to lose your page because you have to rush off the train 
Especially on a platform like Wattpad that doesn’t save your progress mid-chapter…or it does if you’re flipping virtual pages instead of scrolling? I dunno, I’ll have to try now 
Either way, long story short, I feel like the ideal chapter length for reader retention is somewhere between 1500-2000 words, 2500 at most. 2000 is the magic number if you can get it, less than that is kinda short imo, but story comes first, so if it doesn’t make sense to split/prolong the chapter, better leave as is and go with the flow.
Wattpad recommends now 1,500 - 3000 words per chapter within their new vertical frameworks for “best practice”.
Technically, there is no such thing as a specific length for a chapter as a chapter can be as long or as short as it needs to be.
I’ve had chapters on Wattpad that are an average of 2,000-4,000 words and still had readers be okay with it. So… it’s not necessarily length that’s the problem. Usually, people will complain if it’s long winded (like too many details or too many unnecessary scenes) or it’s just a them problem, such as short attention spans and whatnot.
Honestly, your chapters are fine enough, I’d say. It’s not too long, and they’re not too short. 1,200 or less words sometimes seem short if they end on scenes that feel like they ended too abruptly…
But at the end of the day, just do you.
I agree with this because people don’t want short chapters with a lot of ads being forced onto them, but you also don’t wanna read a novella in 4 chapters
It’s definitely the happy medium, and I’ve found personally, my readers love my chapters the length I make them. I tend to average 2.6k, with some going to 3.1k if something “big” is happening like an action scene or dramatic scene etc.
That sounds very reasonable.
I am aiming for that for my story.
I agree with the camp of stopping where it makes sense rather than a hard word count.
Granted my chapters these days are much shorter than they used to be (5-7k words rather than the current target of about 3500 words)… But that’s not because of reader attention span, but rather how I handle my storytelling.
My chapters vary wildly in length, because I won’t fluff up a chapter just to pad a word count.
If the interest is there, they’ll find a way to finish it. Shrug that’s my two cents FWIW.
Chapters can be as long as you want them to be.
On Wattpad it’s recommended no longer than 2500
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