There's no hard limit, although chapters with less than 100 words tend be very annoying and place-holder-y. Ideally, I prefer a chapter be long enough that something actually happens, and enough information is provided to inform whatever decision is offered for the next chapter(s) to read at the bottom. 250-500 words is usually equivalent to a page of text in a book, so that's not a terrible range to aim for. Some stories, you're going to have more or less depending on circumstances.
When I write a chapter my goal is always to accomplish something and move the story along. Sometimes I can do that with less than 200 words and sometimes it takes more than 1000. But never really lock myself into a word limit. Instead I ask myself, "Does this move the story move forward?"
I don't know, 250 feels a little low if we are talking of a real chapter. I'd go with 500+ but I would allow a few exceptions to that. In a game-story context, I would deem it fair to go often lower than that. Also, a choice hub chapter could be made of just a couple of sentences even in a more descriptive story.
I usually aim for 4000-5000 characters, that is way more than 250 words. But in my case, I have the opposite problem because sometimes I end with a chapter too long that I have to split it into multiple chapters. I get used to that metric of 5000 characters because that is the limit from google translate. PD: I do not write my chapters with google translate, but I found it helpful to write the chapters myself in English, and once it is complete use google to translate the text to my language to verify it.
250 words seems too short for me at least. I definitely feel constrained with even less than 1000 words and it gets awkward trying to fit much happening in such a short chapter or get the story moving anywhere. As I've written more on this site, I've gotten comfortable writing much longer chapters though. Right now, they're at least 2000 words if not more.
I think it depends on style and the type of story. In a tale heavy on presenting choices to a reader for example, it should probably depend on what happened as a result of the last choice and how much description it takes to set up the next one. I tend to settle in at about 750-1,500 words per chapter if memory serves but I'd recommend letting each chapter dictate how much you write
I write whatever I feel the appropriate length is for that chapter. I couldn’t tell you my average.
I mean, if I'm contributing to a public or even moderated story, like 750-900 feels like my sweet spot. My own story though... I ... I don't know and I'm afraid to check.
In a plot heavy story, I aim for 1000 words. This is actually far less than the average chapter in most real novels, but this is the Internet, and audiences here generally have much shorter attention spans. I like to keep my chapters bite-sized. To that end, it's also sometimes important to deviate from such word counts to ensure the chapter is bite-sized conceptually, as well. For instance, I've written chapters around 1500 words for longer scenes with no opportunity to break, and those as short as 600 for introductory scenes where avoiding info-dumping the reader is crucial. In a game mode story, word count per chapter, of course, varies greatly. I can envision scenarios where just a few simple words would be justified. It's also possible for the need for a chapter displaying thousands of words to arise - such as a very comprehensive list or index - but I would cap actual prose at 2k.
I prefer shorter chapters over long ones. Any time there is a wall of words there is a chance i skip some of it. And if there is a wall after wall after wall there is a huge chance i just close the story, unless i'm already invested in the characters and want to find out more. A smaller chapter also give the impression of a longer story, since you'll have more chapters, the reader will feel more invested since he clicks a button to continue reading and you would offer other authors more choices to split the story. Anything under 500 is fine, ~800 is ok most of the time. But that is just a personal preference.
IMO, in chyoa format, short chapters aren't really a problem. Having stuff like "He drops his pants. He fucks her hard. He comes!" is. Badly written scene in a single 1000 word chapter and badly written scene in 5 200 words chapters aren't really different. Another important thing: chapters should either end at a good branching points or serve as a natural end of a chapter with a transition to a different scene.
A chapter should be long enough to serve its function and not longer. If I see the same thing repeated 3 times to fill out some arbitrary chapter length I just leave.
I see a lot of stories with really short chapters that read more like a table of contents than an actual story with character development. But I learned the hard way that too long chapters can box you in if you want to add branches later. So break stories at least up into main ideas. For example: If you have a nice dinner with your date, then fuck him in your car, break up the dinner and fucking into two chapters. You might later want to offer the reader a chance to get laid on a mattress but still enjoy the same bad Mexican food. But, if the sex is a quickie in the car, I might not break that chapter up into a separate BJ and cowgirl scene.
