chapter depth sweetspot

Gambio

Gambio

CHYOA Guru
I noticed a significant uptick on favorites after I crossed 50 chapters depth on my newest story. That was after a bit of a dry spell once the story stopped being new.

Which brings me to the titular question.

Is there a sweetspot to chapter depth?

This could be a psychological issue. 50 is a nice round number and it also suggests that there is a lot of content available. Maybe that makes readers more inclined to click on it.

On the opposite side, I wonder if you could get too deep. If you read something like 358 chapters deep, you might feel overwhelmed and don't even start the story.

Anyways, I'm curious if somebody noticed something similiar.
 
50 chapters in a linear story is well on its way to novel length story if it's ongoing. Also a linear story that deep promises something rare on CHYOA, relatively long coherent story that hopefully will continue to an end. So it would be worth checking if I'm looking for something longer to read. I have used 25-30 chapters as a limit if I am looking for something longer.

On the other claw, 358 chapter story would be 179 000 words at 500 words per chapter. That is long enough that it will be competing with actual novel for my attention. So it would have to interest me seriously and be coherent enough to look like it will be worth reading. To me there really would not be much difference between something like 100 chapter deep and 358 chapters deep story. At hat point I am looking for more than just smut.
 
Probably helps that you can search by stories by the number of chapters with fifty or more being the last option so anyone wanting to dive into something with more then a few chapters to it might go here first for a story with some meat to it. Also by that point you have people who have favorited your story when it was new and keep coming back for updates on top of new readers who are checking out the story for the first time.
 
I don't know if there's a sweet spot, exactly, but because depth is shown on the front page but total number of chapters isn't, I think deeper stories attract more attention because there's the idea that there's more to read there.
 
For new stories, 20-50 chapters is about where the sweet spot lies to me. If I've already favourited the story, then you've already got me hooked, and I'll stick with it even if you do hit that magical depth of 358. Even 359! It's not a strict rule for me, though. I'll only ignore really huge stories (hundreds of chapters) and really tiny ones (4 or fewer chapters). For the former, the sexual content tends to be all over the place. If I'm in the mood for something, say cuckquean, and your story has 1000 chapters, and only 1 (or even 10) of those has any cuckquean content, then it's essentially a false positive for me, because there's no reasonable way to figure out which branches I might be interested in. I'd much rather read 3 shorter stories with more of a focus than 1 big sprawling one. And for the latter, if there are very few chapters (under 5), then there's little to discover for me. Those stories also tend to be the product of 1 day's worth of writing, after which they're often abandoned. It's actually worse if a short story is good, because I want more and there isn't more and now I'm sad. (Thankfully the supply of italic tags remains high. :P)

RicoLouis said:
Probably helps that you can search by stories by the number of chapters with fifty or more being the last option so anyone wanting to dive into something with more then a few chapters to it might go here first for a story with some meat to it. Also by that point you have people who have favorited your story when it was new and keep coming back for updates on top of new readers who are checking out the story for the first time.
Click to expand...
I wish the search filters on CHYOA were a bit more granular. It doesn't really matter to me if a story has a depth of 20 or 40 or 60 chapters, but I need to do 3 separate searches just to get rid of the abyss of 1-4-deep stories (and so I don't and just try to scan past them visually).
 
Interesting points here. Looks like the general consensus is trending towards a lower amont of chapter. Well, at least for the writer part of the community.


huginn said:
50 chapters in a linear story is well on its way to novel length story if it's ongoing. Also a linear story that deep promises something rare on CHYOA, relatively long coherent story that hopefully will continue to an end. So it would be worth checking if I'm looking for something longer to read. I have used 25-30 chapters as a limit if I am looking for something longer.

On the other claw, 358 chapter story would be 179 000 words at 500 words per chapter. That is long enough that it will be competing with actual novel for my attention. So it would have to interest me seriously and be coherent enough to look like it will be worth reading. To me there really would not be much difference between something like 100 chapter deep and 358 chapters deep story. At hat point I am looking for more than just smut.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity I decided to check Slave Tournament and I average around 750-1000 words per chapter,which I think is more on the short side for CHYOA standards

Incidentally, I better not tell you where the word count for Slave Tournament currently stands LOL



Zeebop said:
Yeah, the massive-tag-cloud is something I think folks struggle with on broader stories like LLNO. Something for everyone! If you can find it.
Click to expand...

I have to laugh whenever I see the huge amount of tags on Marcie and Gina Reads. Only about five of them are from me, so I'm happy the other authors are more diligent
 
Well, all of my reviews and answer-chapters involve sex, so you want to tag those correctly.

For LLNO, I think there was a slight uptick in Likes/Favorites once chapter depth got into the 30s, but that was during the pandemic when I was getting hundreds of notices per day and the details sort of blur together.
 
Gambio said:
Out of curiosity I decided to check Slave Tournament and I average around 750-1000 words per chapter,which I think is more on the short side for CHYOA standards

Incidentally, I better not tell you where the word count for Slave Tournament currently stands LOL
Click to expand...
Slave Tournament passes coherence test. So you can keep writing for another 850 chapters if you feel like that and I'm likely to keep reading. I just realised that I'm 1042 chapters deep in a story and Futa soccer Camp has exceeded 2000 chapters already.
 
I have *some* limits of how long stories I start reading. I love looking at the story branches to see which branches have gone longer and getting a look at the story before actually diving in. And stories that are "too deep" just intimidate me and I skip them.


Obviously a story that is 3 branches deep doesn't have much either, but if it seems promising I can favourite it and see where it goes, or perhaps even add to it.
 
Another problem with chapter depth is the story map. After around forty two chapters the story map gets giant blank spots. Especially if there are more chapters after that meaning if your story has multiple paths they are hard to find on the story map. Meaning you have to scroll to the right to follow the story but then you could miss new branches in the story that would appear on the left. The only work around I have to this is make the first chapter sort of a prologue and each of the chapters off of the main page sort of a volume of that chapter.
 
My stuff is pretty niche (genre, kink, gay) and I write it to have the kind of stuff I like to read, because there isn't enough out there. If I can get someone to try one chapter, and they stick around for three, I figure they bought the story hook and my kink zone works for them. But because it is niche, I really, really can't worry myself overmuch about readership numbers. And that can be freeing from a concomitant worry that a kink I want to write won't have general appeal. I can instead focus on "have I established this relationship dynamic through action and dialog? Did I give a good overall idea of this particular location? Is that word too obscure and can I say that more simply?" and so on.

Also, though, my stuff here is new, and my stuff elsewhere is only also about ten (long) chapters deep, written sporadically over as many years. But because it is niche, readers who do click, stick.
 
huginn said:
50 chapters in a linear story is well on its way to novel length story if it's ongoing. Also a linear story that deep promises something rare on CHYOA, relatively long coherent story that hopefully will continue to an end. So it would be worth checking if I'm looking for something longer to read. I have used 25-30 chapters as a limit if I am looking for something longer.

On the other claw, 358 chapter story would be 179 000 words at 500 words per chapter. That is long enough that it will be competing with actual novel for my attention. So it would have to interest me seriously and be coherent enough to look like it will be worth reading. To me there really would not be much difference between something like 100 chapter deep and 358 chapters deep story. At hat point I am looking for more than just smut.
Click to expand...
Interesting reply, especially given what I'm writing. I'm working on a story for CHYOA that started as a vanilla novel, but has morphed into a chyoa story. I'm still writing it novel style though, so it's have a beginning, middle and end, chapter lengths will vary and I'll complete the whole thing before I publish the first chapter so readers can get invested knowing there is a conclusion. It's going to be long for a completed linear story here, but average for a conventional novel, I'd say about 85k words ish, i'm at 55k now and into the last third of the story.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top