What's the longest chapter you've ever written?

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-05-18 03:42am

The longest I've ever written was this one chapter I wrote for a fic long ago. Stats:

28 pages, 17,839 words, 1,686 paragraphs, 1,972 lines.

Singular Quartet · Post by **Singular Quartet** » 2003-05-18 01:16pm

Holy mother of god, that's long. I've written five chapters of stuff, and it only hit 15 pages.

Post by **haas mark** » 2003-05-18 01:26pm

We'll just have to see as I get further along with The Invasion and The False Queen, now won't we?

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2003-05-18 01:27pm

I try for about 9-12 pages a chapter when I'm writing. Any longer, I fear, and people will lose interest and have to continue later.

Admiral Cross · Post by **Admiral Cross** » 2003-05-18 01:36pm

I used to write 7-9 pages per chatpter, but now i do 4-5. I dont want to make them to long... but the longest ive written was like 23 or 24 pages. It was the finaly chapter to a fan fic i wrote...

Micheal Ryans, Beta pilot · Post by **Micheal Ryans, Beta pilot** » 2003-05-18 03:13pm

The longest chapter I'm written is 17 pages.

Post by **Dalton** » 2003-05-18 03:25pm

Hmm...some of the Duchess' chapters of Fist of the Empire went on for a long, LONG time.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-05-18 04:11pm

Shiova, how can you have 1600 paragraphs and 1900 lines? thats not even 2 lines per paragraph, and paragraphs need atleast 5 lines..

Post by **haas mark** » 2003-05-18 04:16pm

kojikun wrote:Shiova, how can you have 1600 paragraphs and 1900 lines? thats not even 2 lines per paragraph, and paragraphs need atleast 5 lines..

Dialogue.

Singular Quartet · Post by **Singular Quartet** » 2003-05-18 05:58pm

verilon wrote:
kojikun wrote:Shiova, how can you have 1600 paragraphs and 1900 lines? thats not even 2 lines per paragraph, and paragraphs need atleast 5 lines..
Dialogue.

Lots of Dialogue.

Shinova · Post by **Shinova** » 2003-05-18 09:49pm

Singular Quartet wrote:Lots of Dialogue.

Hmm. Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2003-05-18 11:45pm

I routinely write 35-40 pages per chapter in a rough draft

victorhadin · Post by **victorhadin** » 2003-05-19 10:42am

I have a chunk of a story done which amounts to 50'000 words, but I may well split it up a touch.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-05-20 10:48am

Shinova wrote:
Singular Quartet wrote:Lots of Dialogue.
Hmm. Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

In a screenplay, not as much as in a novel.

Novels, remember, use literal descriptions to give the reader a mental image of what is going on as there is no set, no CGI and no costume. While dialogue is good in a story (obviously you need it) excessive use of it can lead to loss of plot or cohesion in the actual storyline. No doubt in reality there are long conversations, but in a novel you simply can't go several pages just having a dialogue without at least some basic descriptive text going in there, so it is kept down in order to keep the story flowing and not lose interest.

But each writer has their own style, for me I like overly describing things which I have to avoid now as many have pointed out on other forums, so I use more dialogue than normal.

As to the question at hand, I think my longest chapter was just over 15,000 words as part of a 80,000 word piece which I lost on my old PC. It wasn't going anywhere I guess anyway.