How many chapters for a series/stories should have?

[HyperTurboFox]

What is the best amount of chapters, a series should have.
From Beginning to End

Is it's 12 Chapters?! 24 Chapters?!

100+ Chapters?!

Ask me in the comment section

 

[SwordLAAAA]

depends on the story, obviously

 

[Cris_Agev]

10 is a nice number, I like it.

 

[nyka]

I've been wondering this as well. I watch a lot of anime that ends up having like 13-56 episodes. Longer series often feel like they are broken down into story arcs but a lot of the single arc stories seem to generally get 13 episodes. I'm not saying that a chapter always neatly mirrors an episode's length...but I do sort of vaguely use that notion with a grain of salt depending on story needs. How many major events or let's say arc are happening in the story? How many do you need to tell it? 10 is a perfectly fine number of chapters if you feel like your whole story can be told in only 10. Honestly if 10 feels like a stretch then a story might as well become a short story or a novelette. If you have a lot of characters and lore and major points in your story though? Then you might want to trend above 10 possibly! I mean pace is up to you too; really all of it is! I'm just kind of thinking aloud a bit here since I've also been thinking about chapter lengths and story lengths lately.

 

[KaiserMk7]

There really isn't such a thing as a good baseline or rule of thumb here.

 

[Yousef]

Are you asking for your own writing? Because if so, you should write what you want.

 

[ciro64]

I'm not a book reader, but I saw a few series/anime that was good for a while but then started overstaying its welcome by repeating itself, exaggerating and dragging things over when it could just have wrapped up sooner and be remembered by me more fondly.

This depends on the kind of story. If you want to write a big one, then you gotta setup for such. You got to find a way to keep it interesting, refreshing and consistent for that length. Some narratives might fit better in fewer chapters.

 

[Nelson2001 Nelson2001]

It depends on the popularity, the season and also the quantity because the minimum is 8 episodes and the maximum is 26 or more, although per season it is usually 13, 14 or 16.

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

If we're talking about books it depends on the story being told, genre and just general length of what a chapter is. For literary fiction the chapters tend to reach about mid 20s, some single fantasy or sci-fi can reach as little as 19 and as big as 60, mystery tends to have high chapter counts like 30s to 40s but the chapters themselves are short to be punchy and keep both you and characters on your toes. Horror tends to be shorter as you can only keep dread and tension for so long. And I say romance is roughly the same as mystery, short chapters but mid-high count.

And these are just novels not novelettes and I'm thinking more on older (pre 2012) adult books, there's different lengths depending on demographics like YA, New Adult, and Children's. And some people just do large parts not broken by chapters or a single book with multiple parts separated by chapters within them. Overall a chapter needs to end both to close a scene, idea, arc, conflict or be a start, it's not a goal post to say if your story is complete or not it's just a matter of giving the characters and the reader a break.