I'm probably not the first person to ask this, but I didn't particularly feel like searching through 80 pages to find an answer. At the moment I've got about 8000 words of a story I'm working on and I was thinking about posting it to FF.net, but I'm not sure if I should split it into several chapters.

I guess my question is, what do you think is the ideal number of words per chapter? Around 3000-5000 maybe?

 

I think that ~3000 words is the minimum for a decent chapter, anything upto ~10 or 12K is fine. If there isn't a good natural splitting point you should just keep it as one chapter.

 

No less than 5k. No more than 15k. 8-10k is ideal IMO.

 

3000 words to a chapter is pretty standard as far as mainstream novels go.

But the thing is that fanfiction is a lot more meandering than mainstream novels, which are very tightly plotted. The kind of advancement in plot you get in one chapter in an average novel takes your average fanfic 30,000 words to get to.

 

OVER 15K OR BUST.

(But in actual novels and shit, 4k-5k should be the max.)

 

I aim for a minimum of 3k, a maximum of 5k. Sometimes I go over, if there isn't a natural stopping point. Sometimes I dip just under, depending on the chapter in question.

 

DLP I am disappoint :facepalm nobody said the obvious;

Spoiler

Over 9000

Really guys.

 

I think between 5k and 8k the ideal, not a really heavy read, but enough to pack content and not leave you feeling "cheated".

 

Then there's the option of posting two chapters at the same time, if there is a natural break in the flow of the story and you don't want to "cheat" (?) your readers by posting too short chapters.

Chapter breaks should come naturally from the story, not from some expected wishes of the readers. Trying to forcefully pad your chapters to meet some arbitrary word count wont do your story any good.

 

I've been asking myself all day, but I was wondering. I know the Deathly Hallows are considered a Deus ex Machina by a few fans, but would the blood protection in Harry's skin featured in the first book also be considered a Deus ex Machina? The whole Voldemort can't touch Harry thing kind of feels almost like a Deus ex Machina. It's even later brought up in the last book that because of the blood protection, Harry can't die as long as Voldemort is alive because he acts as a connection to keep him alive. What are your thoughts?

 

I disliked the Deathly Hallows because they showed up in book 7. It's the end of the series. They wern't foreshadowed before. I thought Harry Potter was about Horcuxi and the Power of Love, not mystical, ancient artefacts!

I do think the "my skin burns you alive" in book one literally came out of nowhere, but I'm willing to suspend disbelieve there.

 

Er...

I have my issues with the series, particularly the last two books, but "item with Voldemort's soul attached to it" appeared in the second book. Whether she had, at that point, completely nailed down the concept of horcuxes as they appear in the last books, you still can't get much more established or 'foreshadowy' than that.

That's like saying Obliviation wasn't foreshadowed by the time Hermione nuked her parents' gray matter.

 

The Hallows were reasonably foreshadowed: the cloak has been a mainstay of the series, and the stone was in book 6. We knew there was something odd about the ring which made Dumbledore pick it up. In addition, Grindelwald was mentioned all the way back in book 1.

That said, I do agree that in general book 7 was oddly focused on Dumbledore. In many ways Dumbledore is the main character of book 7.

 

He said he was fine with horcruxes, the deathly hallows are what he didn't like.

 

Wouldn't call him the main character. More the only good part, with the possible exception of the Ministry raid as that reminded me of the earlier books(although it's quite possible I'm imagining a raid from a fanfic.)

As for the Hollows. I'm perfectly fine with them. They aren't really a deus ex machina because they didn't do anything. The only hallow that had any effect on the story was the wonky way the wand selected it's master. If anything they were a red herring. In the end it was "power of love" that defeated Voldemort, with the bollocks shield that blocks unforgivables.

 

So if no one is supposed to be able to find Harry under the Halllow cloak, how did Madeye do it? I know that this has been picked over since Dumbledore also did it, but I'm curiouse to hear some theories on it. I'm guessing there's got to be a thread somewhere on this board where the idea was dissected, if so, please point me in the right direction.

 

The Tale of the Three brothers is a myth. The Hallows are just three powerful magical items made by the Peverell brothers. Death (the being) does not exist, nor is the idea of the Master of Death anything other than part of the myth that grew around the Hallows.

As regular magical artifacts, the Hallows of course are not the objects of absolute power they are presented as in the story. Wielders of the Elder Wand can be beaten in a straight up duel, the Resurrection stone cannot truly bring a person back from the dead (not to what they were when they were alive), the cloak cannot make you completely undetectable.

 

The story I'm building in my head features seven hallows instead of the usual three. One of the new hallows is actually Moody's Eye, making it the only thing that can see "through" the cloak. Incidentally, it also allows him to see other things, and the sense that something is always there and watching him is one of the negative side affects of the hallows. This is where his paranoia comes from.


As for canon? It's evidence that JKR hadn't thought up the Hallows yet. They were foreshadowed, but only as of book 6, which is to say hardly at all. During book 4 it was just an invisibility cloak, which his eye can see through. Not the super hide and go seek champion cloak.