wips: eh; utterly miniscule chapters: NO.

[cimorene]

I'm a little baffled by serial posting of works in progress. I mean, I think I know the main reasons people post that way, and I can think of some others; I just can't relate personally to them, because my inner drive to finish things (definitely before exposing them to other people) is so strong, and I don't really like reading unfinished things either unless I'm either desperate, or completely without emotional investment in the outcome. Even in the world of wips, though, I find myself confused by the ones with really short installments. I can sort of see why someone who doesn't write longer things naturally would think that between every scene was a natural place to break the story (I think they're wrong), but if that scene's barely a few hundred words? It doesn't duplicate the feel of a chapter that they must be used to from novels. I've been reading wips lately (mainly through boredom) where the length of the chapters, on film, would be roughly equivalent to the length of the teaser scene at the beginning of a tv show, before the opening credits roll. Which is just silly, and exasperating even with no emotional investment, because you're left thinking, "And...?"

Comments

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I understand why people post and read that way in general even though I don't like to. But it seems to me that the logical motivations for splitting the story up like you mention don't really explain the behaviour of people who post really, really short chapters. Either it's feedback bait or perhaps a completely lacking sense of proportion and length... (although evidently many of them don't know if they'll ever write another five hundred words in advance, "feedback bait" still pretty much describes it).