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What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

penguin.co.uk

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Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#51

Post by watwut »

jb1991 wrote: post #9

The larger question for me is the long-term effect of rapidly vanishing attention spans in our population. The short-form format across tweets, tiktok, much on youtube, instagram, SMS vs. voicemail -- even email is often considered "too long" for newer generations -- what is the likely consequence of this? It seems dangerous in the long-term, but maybe not. Is it just a temporary cultural shift, or is it resulting in…

On the other hand, you have people binge watching long series. Which is something that would not exist a generation ago. A movie used to be 2 hours. Now it is something unserious, serious stories have one mega story over 20 hours of a watching time.

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#52

Post by passion__desire »

watwut wrote: post #50
passion__desire wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humanities department generally / traditionally haven't believed in insights that come from mathematics.

A lot of bad science consist on applying math on subjective things with unclear definitions (ideal chapter) and then insisting that this is useful. You then end up with ridiculousness like a guy from IT insisting that widely popular and simultaneously critically acclaimed book is actually bad, because it does not conform to whatever random statistics he misapplied.

So according to you, subjective analysis of subjective things is ok because humans are in charge, knowing fully well how many biases we carry around?

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#53

Post by carlmr »

watwut wrote: post #50
passion__desire wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humanities department generally / traditionally haven't believed in insights that come from mathematics.

A lot of bad science consist on applying math on subjective things with unclear definitions (ideal chapter) and then insisting that this is useful. You then end up with ridiculousness like a guy from IT insisting that widely popular and simultaneously critically acclaimed book is actually bad, because it does not conform to whatever random statistics he misapplied.

This is just Goodhart's law in action: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure..

The measure still might be interesting, but it shouldn't be used as a target to guide decisions about what is or isn't a good book.

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#54

Post by carlmr »

bccdee wrote: post #40
passion__desire wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humanities department generally / traditionally haven't believed in insights that come from mathematics.

Mathematics can only give you insight into things that can be quantified. When people try do things like (say) perform a statistical analysis of the tone of a narrative, they have to either go through and numerically quantify the tone of each passage (time-consuming & of dubious value) or feed the whole thing through sentiment analysis software (practically useless). You'll learn much more from a close subjective rea…

But we're talking about chapter lengths here, something that is trivially measurable.

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#55

Post by carlmr »

watwut wrote: post #51
jb1991 wrote: post #9

The larger question for me is the long-term effect of rapidly vanishing attention spans in our population. The short-form format across tweets, tiktok, much on youtube, instagram, SMS vs. voicemail -- even email is often considered "too long" for newer generations -- what is the likely consequence of this? It seems dangerous in the long-term, but maybe not. Is it just a temporary cultural shift, or is it resulting in…

On the other hand, you have people binge watching long series. Which is something that would not exist a generation ago. A movie used to be 2 hours. Now it is something unserious, serious stories have one mega story over 20 hours of a watching time.

I think this is because of two things.

1. the commitment for one more 45-minute episode is a lot less than a 3h movie, even if you then spend 6h bingeing it because you're hooked.

2. Netflix allowed binge watching which wasn't possible before, except after the series ended and you got the complete DVD collection.

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#56

Post by treetalker »

qingcharles wrote: post #33
sebastiennight wrote: post #27

When I was re-writing one of my books in 2016, I spent the whole summer asking successful entrepreneurs (my reader audience) what was their favorite business book, and why. It turned out that the "favorite book" answer was fairly varied (aside from a couple of big-name bestsellers), but the "why" answer almost always revolved around: - "bite-size chapters" - "really quick read" - "short and to the point" - "one idea,…

James Patterson's books are generally the worst I've ever read, but his short 2-3 page chapters are surely one of the reasons for his success. They're like popping M&M's -- you're thinking, "I can just do one more."

Renowned author Dan Brown, who walks with his feet while not writing renowned books as the author of them, has renowned books that (quite successfully) fall in this same category of books with short chapters with short sentences that read quickly because they are all short, not to mention renowned.

https://onehundredpages.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/dont-make-f...

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#57

Post by watwut »

carlmr wrote: post #55
watwut wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, you have people binge watching long series. Which is something that would not exist a generation ago. A movie used to be 2 hours. Now it is something unserious, serious stories have one mega story over 20 hours of a watching time.

I think this is because of two things. 1. the commitment for one more 45-minute episode is a lot less than a 3h movie, even if you then spend 6h bingeing it because you're hooked. 2. Netflix allowed binge watching which wasn't possible before, except after the series ended and you got the complete DVD collection.

Yeah, but people intentionally set themselves to binge watch. They wait till whole series is out and plan to watch multiple episodes at the same time.

I agree it is possible only due to technologically advancement.

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#58

Post by watwut »

passion__desire wrote: post #52
watwut wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of bad science consist on applying math on subjective things with unclear definitions (ideal chapter) and then insisting that this is useful. You then end up with ridiculousness like a guy from IT insisting that widely popular and simultaneously critically acclaimed book is actually bad, because it does not conform to whatever random statistics he misapplied.

So according to you, subjective analysis of subjective things is ok because humans are in charge, knowing fully well how many biases we carry around?

No. And what you wrote suggests that you do not actually know what "humanities departments" or in this case literature departments actually do.

Also, misapplied statistic is not "objective" despite containing numbers.

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#59

Post by watwut »

carlmr wrote: post #54
bccdee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematics can only give you insight into things that can be quantified. When people try do things like (say) perform a statistical analysis of the tone of a narrative, they have to either go through and numerically quantify the tone of each passage (time-consuming & of dubious value) or feed the whole thing through sentiment analysis software (practically useless). You'll learn much more from a close subjective rea…

But we're talking about chapter lengths here, something that is trivially measurable.

The term "ideal chapter length" is not objective measurable term.

Re: What is the ideal chapter length? (2023)

#60

Post by passion__desire »

watwut wrote: post #58
passion__desire wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So according to you, subjective analysis of subjective things is ok because humans are in charge, knowing fully well how many biases we carry around?

No. And what you wrote suggests that you do not actually know what "humanities departments" or in this case literature departments actually do. Also, misapplied statistic is not "objective" despite containing numbers.

misapplied literary analysis is also exactly that. what is your point?
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