griffingirl
Experienced
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2011
- Posts
- 45
I am wondering how long a story should be. Is there a general guide for number of pages. What is too long? what is too short?
Happy writing.
Happy writing.
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As I have said before on this forum misquoting Mozart, "It should have exactly the right number of words." The story itself should tell you how long it is. Leave out nothing important; do not add irrelevancies just to reach some predefined word count.I am wondering how long a story should be. ...
It's just my opinion that when people say "they won't read longer than, or they have no interest in anything other than...." that that is insulting the average reader.
Tilt. When they say "they won't read anything longer than" xx number of Lit. pages, they are just reporting their personal preference for their own reads, not anyone elses. They aren't insulting anyone, certainly not other readers.
The classic definition of a short story is a story that can be read in one sitting. If someone won't read more than two or three Lit. pages at one go, they are honestly saying they don't want to devote the time to reading more than 7,500 words or 11,500 words at one sitting.
The industry optimum length guidance for today's fast-paced reading age is 3,000 to 3,500 words for a short story or a novel chapter.
It's not insulting anyone else to declare their own read (or even story) length limits.
And, no, I won't read more than three pages of a Lit. entry myself. I don't do reading in bigger single chunks than that. And if you want to look at the flip side of your belief on insulting someone, I consider it pushy for an author to expect me to sit through seven Lit. pages of a posting at one go.
When I used to post on Erotica Republic, they preferred a posting be kept to 10k words or less. At LushStories, they limit you to 10k words or 40k characters at one time (they told me this was related to a bandwidth issue). And I've been told by readers there that they prefer posts be, say, 3k words or less (this has resulted me in me breaking up stories into lots of pieces).
Personally, I don't usually have time, at any one sitting, to read much more than 10k words myself, which usually comes out to about 3-4 Lit pages. I don't care if it's a complete story or an installment, but I personally just don't have the time to sit and read much more than that.
Given that, I tend to keep my submissions to that length myself. If I can't do more than that, I don't like to ask readers to. Usually the only exception I make for that is a contest entry.
And I have a hard time keeping my stories short as well. I'm trying to write a 3-5k word short story at the moment, and well, it's a challenge.
I wrote several of the 100-word flash-fics to practice losing the extraneous information in a story. That made condensing a sentence from twenty words to ten an easy task. After I edited for a while, deleting sentences and paragraphs became a habit. You can lose a lot of words without changing a story.
Maybe I should try that. I don't think my problem is (exactly) having too many words, although maybe that's what it comes down to. I guess I want to "show" more than I have room for, and I should "tell" as concisely as I can to save the words for showing.
And sex.
A story needs sex?
*chuckle*
One thing that should be noted is that there is a 750-word (I think) minimum for prose on this site. Shorter submissions will be bounced. I'm sure somebody can correct me if I got the specific number wrong.
In this electronic age I have discovered that I can download stories into my own computer,and then put them on the screen full width in a font (and format) which is easier on the eyes, and larger, than Lit's. Then I can read as much as I want at a time and even put a bookmark of some kind (I use @~@) where I left off if I can't read the whole story at once.... Personally, I don't usually have time, at any one sitting, to read much more than 10k words myself, which usually comes out to about 3-4 Lit pages. I don't care if it's a complete story or an installment, but I personally just don't have the time to sit and read much more than that. ...
That is a site limit and does not invalidate my earlier comment about length. It means that if a particular story is only 650 words it needs to go on a different site, not that 100 words of padding needs to be added.You're correct regarding story submissions. The minimum is 750 words.
From experience writing on Literotica, a page I find is around 3,500 - 3,750 words. On Word where a page tends to be, depending on your page settings, around 400 words. This means a page on Literotica will be around 9 typed pages on Word. Based on my experience with Literotica I find 3 pages on Literotica is long enough to hold a reader's attention and if the story is extremely well written you can hold their attention for about 6 pages on Literotica. Therefore, I wold say a good guide for writting will be a story no longer than 10,000 - 12,000 words. If your story goes longer than that then I would recommend writing the story as chapters.
Only roughly, but if you write as most of us do, without too many long words then a word average of five letters, plus a space after each letter, gives the rule of divide by six to get the words. Sadly this applies only to .txt files.Is there some way of equating file size with number of words? Say a file of 25KB?
Only roughly, but if you write as most of us do, without too many long words then a word average of five letters, plus a space after each letter, gives the rule of divide by six to get the words. Sadly this applies only to .txt files.
Programs like MSWord add a lot of extraneous stuff, so there are much nearer seven characters per word, and a file using MSWord has an overhead of 20KB which needs to be subtracted first. This gives a word processed 25KB file as about 700 words, but in almost all word processors there is a word count function, so this arithmetic is not needed.
I am wondering how long a story should be. Is there a general guide for number of pages. What is too long? what is too short?
Happy writing.
You're correct regarding story submissions. The minimum is 750 words.
I do believe that the minimum is 700 words and I am currently attempting to locate the policy that states this. Just saying. Fifty words is miniscule, a few lengthy sentences.