How long should my chapters be?

This is an issue i see a fair bit in fanfic writers, especially new writers. Their chapters are only a few hundred words, and that means it only takes two seconds to read and doesn't keep the readers interest. Its over in two seconds and doesn't hold that excitement that we want for long enough. Heck the whole reason we read is to get some sort of entertainment and excitement. If you're chapter takes two seconds to read, its not going to hold my excitement for long enough for me to want to read more.

The average chapter should be anywhere from 1000 -10,000 words long. If its any shorter than 1000 words, then its too short. One of the great things about wattpad is it shows you how many words each chapter has while you're writing it, so you can see just how long it is. If you see you have less than 1000 words, then you should make your chapter longer.

How do i make it longer? you ask. And i shall answer.

First step is to remember that three act structure i talked about in the part 1. Every story has a beginning middle and an end. The middle section is where the action happens. So what you shouldn't do is jump straight into the action from the first sentence. You need a build up to the action before hand. So if you think you might have jumped into the action too fast, go back to the beginning, and see if you can add anything. Depending on the chapter/story, you may want to add a backstory, explaining the events of a characters life that led to that moment (as long as those events are relevant to the story of course). This helps build up to the action by setting up the parts of the story we're missing when we jump right into the action. 

Another thing to consider is an inciting incident. This is the incident or thing that sets the action off, the thing that causes the causes the action. Lets use sickfics as an example since i know most of the people reading this are probably sickfic writers. So lets take a real simple example of a food poisoning chapter for example. The inciting incident would be eating the food that gives them the poisoning in the first place. If you jump straight into the story without a beginning, you would be missing the inciting incident, and that means we don't know why our characters are in the situation they're in. Of course there are stories that break this structure. It doesn't always have to be in that exact order, but you just have to make sure you address things that need to be addressed. If you do jump straight into the action, at least do a paragraph after setting up that action about why the characters are in the situation they're in, like a flashback almost. That way we actually know what's going on.

Anyway, that's structure, but there is more ways to lengthen out your stories so they're not boring or just too short. That being making sure you have enough descriptive language throughout. The thing with descriptive language is that there needs to be a happy medium where you don't have too much, but you shouldn't have none at all. Lets use an example sentence.

"Jungkook was sick."

That sentence is boring right? its too simple, to straight forward. It doesn't make me feel something. It doesn't allow me to really picture the moment in my mind. So to make it more interesting, we add extra descriptive words.

"Jungkook collapsed in front of the toilet, releasing a stream of vomit"

That conveys the same message, but its more descriptive and interesting for us as readers. And its like 3x as long. But we could still add more.

"Jungkook collapsed onto his knees in front of the white porcelain toilet bowl, his spine curving and stomach contracting as he released a stream of putrid vomit."

I think that would be the limit. Any more descriptive and it would be too much, and would just become hard to read.

And its not like every single sentence has to be that descriptive. Its ok to break it up with smaller sentences. Otherwise the story would just be tiring to read. But you still need to make sure you are being descriptive enough, especially during the peak of the story, so that your reader can picture it more clearly in their head, and therefore creating more sympathy for the characters. The more descriptive a story is the more it makes me feel, and therefore, i like it more. But again, its about balance. There comes a point when its just too much, and it pulls you out of the immersion. 

i think thats about all i have to say on that

Its ok for chapters to be shorter at first. Heck one of my first chapters was only 300 words long. But just try and build up and get your chapters longer so its not boring to read. 

also, just for context, this chapter is 855 words long.