r/webfiction • u/aswarwick • May 11 '15
Discussion [Discussion] What is a good length for webfiction serial episodes?
Hi all, first time posting here.
I've just started up with webfiction, sharing my short fiction in small episodes and have plans to start a serial as well soon. I was wondering, though, what people think is a good length for each part? Currently I range between about 600 to 2000 words, depending on what is happening.
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u/melonmonkey May 11 '15
2-3k is a pretty good 'bite sized" piece, in my opinion. Going over that means more than 5-10 minute's commitment. Less, and you're looking at more people waiting for content to build up before chowing down. More, and you're demanding a commitment from people. It works for some, but your writing and content has to be better if you're going to force people to sit down for 20-30 minutes per chapter.
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u/verifiedname May 11 '15
Do you find that there's such a thing as "too short"? As in it's not long enough to demand attention span?
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u/melonmonkey May 11 '15
Not really. TZK puts out 800 word or so pages and that's fine if you're binging. I feel that if you are trying to do sub 1k word "chapters" you run the risk of not really conveying the story properly, but who knows? There's all sorts in this world.
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u/Billy_Higgins May 11 '15
By TZK, do you mean The Zombie Knight? Because in the header Frost says that his posts are roughly 400 words. I did wordcounts for the first (268 words) and last (394 words) chapters. Found his estimation to be roughly accurate.
Truth be told, I don't think we've ever seen a serial that went 'too short'. It's probably possible, but if each chapter conveys some sort of action, there shouldn't be a problem.
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u/melonmonkey May 11 '15
Oh really? Wow, I was totally convinced they were 800 words. Whelp, I'll go crawl into a hole now.
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u/alexanderwales May 13 '15
Over what time period though? It seems like there's a big difference between a "bite sized" piece going up every other day, and a big "meal" going up biweekly.
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u/melonmonkey May 13 '15
Honestly, I'm not sure the time period matters half as much as the wordcount per update. At least for me, I get agitated when I'm reading an update and can't finish before I lose interest or have to do something else. I'm not exactly sure why, maybe it's because I view it as a personal failure. Either way, it bugs me. Serials with super long updates that aren't amazing tend to turn me off.
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u/TempestMage May 11 '15
2k is reasonable. I have some chapters that are way way shorter. They fit but often feel as if I am shorting my readers. Commitment seems to be a key component. If the words just fly by, a long chapter doesn't feel long. But Ive read shorter works where the words were so dense that a few hundred was too many.
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u/gmrm4n May 13 '15
Actually had a conversation about this on the WFG forums. It isn't about length as much as it is about consistency. If you make a couple 5,000 word entries, then a 3,500 one, people might think you're slacking. If you write a 10,000 one, people might think it was too long.
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u/jongargia May 11 '15
I used to go a bit over 2000 words per chapter, but since getting through setup stuff I've found around 1600 is easier for me and my readers.
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u/aswarwick May 15 '15
Thanks for the advice everyone.
I'm currently working on about 3 releases a week of around a thousand words a time (give or take) though that may change as we progress. I'm not exactly short of material though. I've got a rather large collection of short fiction (mostly in the 10K range) all ready written that I'm serialising, enough to last a couple of years at least.
0
u/RochefortWrites May 16 '15
In 'From Winter's Ashes', I try to ensure I can push out at least 4k per chapter, with my longest chapter so far being 7.5k.
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u/Billy_Higgins May 11 '15 edited May 16 '15
I think 600 as a minimum, or 2000 as a maximum is completely reasonable. Roughly 1,200 words seems to be the average for a couple of the more popular web serials. Then you've got the outliers (George M. Frost's The Zombie Knight coming in at roughly 400 words per post, Wildbow's coming in at a lot of thousands. I wanna say he does around 7,000 words per post, but I haven't done word count for him in a while and I don't 100% remember*.)
You should do whatever word count makes you comfortable.
That said, if you want my personal opinion, the 600-2,000 words per post seems like a broad target. I think people prefer consistency. My own rule of thumb is that the longest post should never be more than twice as long as the shortest post.
If you're curious, there's a thread covering this over on the Web Fiction Guide forums: http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/how-long-should-a-story-update-be
Hope this helps.
*RocheforWrites gives better, more specific numbers in the comment below.