MarkLivingston
Virgin
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2018
- Posts
- 23
Hi, all. I find myself with a self-induced conundrum, searched here for a solution, didn't quite find it, so now I'm asking. (The easiest option is to just leave it all alone and keep chugging forward, but if I had my druthers...)
In February I had a silly idea for a story I planned to release in chapters (I only had one story here before, 4 years prior, 2.5 Lit pages.). So: 1) I started writing it and was putting out silly 1- and 2-page chapters (I didn't know better. And really, didn't know how Word pages translated to Lit pages. They seemed 'long enough' in Word, and were at natural breaking points). 2) I gave it a too-descriptive title that: a) I now can't stand, and b) the story has veered away from.
The Chapter lengths are embarrassing now, and they could be naturally stitched together like this:
Chapters 1-4: New Ch. 1
Chapters 5 & 6: New Ch. 2
Those could be under the old dumb title.
Chapters 7-11 should definitely be combined, and this is where the story turns away from the plot I'd started with, and has morphed into something that's going to be much longer. And I'd like it to have a different name.
As I'm writing this it occurs to me that the first 6 chapters could be combined under the old title (or similar, and would just be 10 pages long), but then what do you do at the end of that to link to the new lineage? Because it's all good stuff that tells you who the male MC is. I doubt those older bits would get any new readers, so that likely doesn't even matter. (And honestly, that's not what I'm looking for, combined earlier submissions getting New tags or anything.)
But I'll admit this, and this is at the root of my Chapter-collapsing question: I read here the other day someone saying that if they found a New story but it was Chapter 20-something of an ongoing series they wouldn't read it. And I have to admit I'm somewhat the same way, but if the title or byline or tags intrigue me, and the rating is high, then maybe I'd go back and start at Chapter 1.
And not an exact analogy, but if I didn't discover Harry Potter until say Book 4 was published, but everyone else was saying how good the series was, would I not start reading at Book 1?
My later chapters are averaging about 6 pages each, but maybe even that should be higher.
So yeah, thoughts? Thanks.
In February I had a silly idea for a story I planned to release in chapters (I only had one story here before, 4 years prior, 2.5 Lit pages.). So: 1) I started writing it and was putting out silly 1- and 2-page chapters (I didn't know better. And really, didn't know how Word pages translated to Lit pages. They seemed 'long enough' in Word, and were at natural breaking points). 2) I gave it a too-descriptive title that: a) I now can't stand, and b) the story has veered away from.
The Chapter lengths are embarrassing now, and they could be naturally stitched together like this:
Chapters 1-4: New Ch. 1
Chapters 5 & 6: New Ch. 2
Those could be under the old dumb title.
Chapters 7-11 should definitely be combined, and this is where the story turns away from the plot I'd started with, and has morphed into something that's going to be much longer. And I'd like it to have a different name.
As I'm writing this it occurs to me that the first 6 chapters could be combined under the old title (or similar, and would just be 10 pages long), but then what do you do at the end of that to link to the new lineage? Because it's all good stuff that tells you who the male MC is. I doubt those older bits would get any new readers, so that likely doesn't even matter. (And honestly, that's not what I'm looking for, combined earlier submissions getting New tags or anything.)
But I'll admit this, and this is at the root of my Chapter-collapsing question: I read here the other day someone saying that if they found a New story but it was Chapter 20-something of an ongoing series they wouldn't read it. And I have to admit I'm somewhat the same way, but if the title or byline or tags intrigue me, and the rating is high, then maybe I'd go back and start at Chapter 1.
And not an exact analogy, but if I didn't discover Harry Potter until say Book 4 was published, but everyone else was saying how good the series was, would I not start reading at Book 1?
My later chapters are averaging about 6 pages each, but maybe even that should be higher.
So yeah, thoughts? Thanks.