Young Writers Society

So what I've learned from the internet so far is that people don't like long looking text. They're afraid of it. So what I'm wondering right now is that... how should I split my current working novel? xD

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Here's the info:
Title: From Where We Started
Genre: Scifi/fantasy
Chapters: 3 + Prologue
Pages: 57
Words: 31,325
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First, though, I would like to upload the prologue, but it's 12 pages long 8D

So should I split it into two parts or four? Maybe three?
Or should I keep it the same, I mean, it might look a tad intimidating. It's much easier to read when you have it on your hand since it doesn't hurt your eyes that much.

I'm just trying to make it easier for you ;-;

Nice Title

I adore lengthy chapters, especially writing them.

One thing to consider is your audiance. Children and young adults prefer shorter chapters, but fast readers sometimes prefer longer chapters to save the disruption.

The other is that it's not just hard on the eyes, but on the brain as well. To best comprehend things we sort them into segments- which is why we have grammar for sentences. A sentence is an idea, lots of sentences is a cluster (a paragraph) and lots of paragraphs make a scene. We take this scene and we decorate it with our own imagination and we put it in the version of the novel that exists in our heads.

If each chapter is a scene then it's easy to organise, but if that scene is too long then there is too much information being pumped in, and it's kind of like filling a room with so much junk until it's not a room anymore, it's a store cupboard full of forgotten things.

If each chapter is a group of scenes then these scenes have to be linked and relevent to eachother in some way, like having a kitchen with a half wall to separate it from the dining room - two separate areas for eating, but technically still one room (one chapter.)

Keep this in mind when splitting your chapters. Your reader makes a new room and adds in what you say. If there are too many things going on, too many decorations dotted around, it all gets confusing and most is ignored.

To shorten your chapters you tidy them up, throw out the junk, put everything in its right place and if you still find that your computer wires are choking the houseplants then you need to consider splitting one room into two.

I hope that makes some kind of sense :p

YWS has a guideline floating around somewhere. If you're posting a longer work, 1,500 to 2,000 words is the recommendation (tends to get you the most number of reviews); that amount is just long enough to give reviewers an idea of what needs to be worked on and what's working just fine, but not too long that they lose interest and get eye strain.

You don't need to split up your chapters themselves, persay. Just post them in smaller segments if you want reviews. Longer segments if you want people to get completely lost (but, on YWS, the assumption is you want reviews. And the first thing people will point, out, as you discovered, is chapter length).

Past that, keep in mind what Ten said about audience and markets. They do play a factor when you're trying to get published. (I like longer chapters myself, and tend to be more interested in each chapter being about the same length than what the market's looking for. I've seen YA 200/300 page [trade paperback] books split into 10 chapters).

Yeah, I realized I might've said everything wrong. I do mean I wanted to post it in smaller segments xD
I didn't exactly wanted to split it. I thought saying splitting it into parts would be a nice way of saying it.

Like, should I split it four pages each and make it into three parts or so?

Going by word count is easier, because you can have 4 pages with a lot of dialogue (which won't be as much text) or 2 pages with as many words as those 4 pages, and it'll feel like a lot to read.