Like always, people like to point out some obvious times from time to time, such as "These chapters are short". (And, I'm not trying to pick on anyone about pointing these things out; I just wanted to explain a few things.)

Chapter length, like paragraph length, sentence length, and everything else is part of what makes up an author's "Style". If you go to the review pages and do a review, you'll see an option to rate a story for style. For a webnovel, I'd expect to find the style rating to be really high, if the author does a good job with pacing, flow, and all those things.

For my own works, I would actually drop the score down a few points and probably rate myself a 3 or 4 as my limit on "Style" here on RRL.

GASP!! An author down-rating their own work? WTH is up with that??

It's just me being honest. My stories usually aren't formatted, created, or written with "webnovel" optimization in mind. Instead, they're written to be novels, which are shared on the web.

A webnovel vs. a novel shared via the web...

A subtle difference, but an important one, which I tried to explain a bit in response to a comment by a reader in a different post. I'll share their initial comment and my response here, and maybe people will understand a bit more of what they're getting into when reading 'Game On', and why the style *is* what the style is, and why it's not the optimized webnovel format.

09/08/2016 09:35:13 Wrote: [ -> ]Woo new Darky story! I'm enjoying it so far, but the chapters are a little short.

I think this is a case of the readers reading it wrong, and not a case of the author writing it wrong. :P

Most stories on this site are a web-novel (a serialization that is written primarily to be viewed on the web, which, if it grows long enough will then have segments taken out and assembled together to be called a "novel").

'Game On' instead is a novel, which is being written and share on the web. It's final, ultimate purpose is to end up as a written book, and to be formatted in epub/mobi formats for e-book distribution and paperback printing.

It's written in a style which is made to be read from cover to cover, all in one nice sitting. Chapter length is set to help dictate the pace or page turns, which helps control the flow and rhythm of the book. Short chapters turn quickly, give the impression of rapid action to the reader, and generate a very fast flow to a story. Long chapters contain more block-text, more description, and turn slower, giving a more detailed description of a scene, and slow the flow.

For a written novel, chapter length has an incredible impact on the pacing of the story.

For people who are primary web-readers, and who are reading a chapter at a time however, they end up complaining, "This chapter is too short! I just sat down, read half a dozen words, and then BAMM!! It's over! Sooo frustrating!" By reading each short chapter as they're posted, one at a time, it can leave the impression similar to someone stuttering.

"Hello... my..... name..... is...... Steve.... You... have... been.... poisoned... here's.... the.... antidote..."

That pause between each segment is somewhat annoying to a lot of people, but it's not the stutter's fault. It's actually the listener's for simply not having the patience to wait for the speaker to finish, and if they die from not taking the antidote, it's not the stutter's fault.

It's the same thing in this case. The story is actually meant to eventually be read as a stand-alone novel, complete and uninterrupted. A lot of people are reading it a chapter at a time, and some of those chapters come across as short because of their intended pacing, and without the patience to listen to the end, the reader may end up with a bad impression of the story.

Now, the options I'm left with as an author are simple:

1) I can change my story and my writing habits to produce "more filling", longer chapters which start and stop with each segment being more fully contained pieces of writing (very little foreshadowing, no cliffhangers or minimal cliffhangers, several minor alterations to make the story more suitable for reading chapter by chapter as a web-serialization).

OR

2) I write the story in its intended end-format, and readers will just have to remember that what they're reading is an actual novel-in-progress, being released a chapter at a time, with the end goal of ending up in print format for cover to cover consumption and not a webnovel written for chapter-to-chapter web-optimization.

Some folks like method one.

I prefer method two: I'm writing with the goal of the finished product in mind; not with the idea that each chapter must be a finished work by itself. :)

Readers need to keep this distinction in mind when reading 'Game On'. Game On is a novel being shared chapter by chapter on the web, not a webnovel which might eventually be formatted for off-line production.

In this case, the author isn't writing it wrong. It's the reader who is reading it wrong. :)

For the most enjoyment of this story, I'd suggest NOT trying to read it with each short chapter that's released, but to wait and read it every 5th chapter, or every 10th chapter, or even to wait until I post a "It's finished" memo -- depending on how much the short chapters bother someone, and how strong/weak their willpower is when it comes to waiting on updates.