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Acceptable chapter length and other questions

JinSun

JinSun

dame un beso
Joined
Feb 11, 2013
Posts
1,478
I would like to upload my first chapter of what will hopefully be a small series. What is the acceptable chapter length? Or approximately how many words is recommended before I upload?

Also, I generally like to give my stories background and context. The first 5 or so pages of a standard word document hasn't even introduced the other partner yet, much less anything sexual. Is it still worth uploading or should I wait until there's actually something going on sexually?
 
Include in the chapter the number of words that the content requires. I know that isn't particularly helpful, but it's true, and the question doesn't have a better answer than that. It has to be at least 750 words to be posted and I've seen chapters here of 60,000 words that had readers salivating all over them (albeit a few "it's too long" comments as well).

I think you'll find that stories with substantial backstory at the front and nothing else won't do well here at all (or anywhere else either in current trends). But maybe yours will be the exception.

Welcome to Literotica.
 
Hi, welcome, and good luck. :)

However you'd like to write your story is fine. Believe it or not, there are stories on this site with little or no sex in them. There are stories that are nothing but short sex scenes, or a string of them, and others that go several chapters before introducing the sex. There's no right or wrong way.

For story length, the only limit on Lit is a 750-word *minimum*. If a story is good, it doesn't matter how long it is, people will read it.

In my personal experience, I have found that stories, or chapters of larger stories, of 8-12k words are a good length. That is about 3-4 Lit screen pages (which are roughly 3400 words, if you want to use that figure to estimate how long your story in Word will be on Lit). However, I have written stories longer and shorter than that, depending on the story.

If you are looking at a longer story that you'll publish in installments, you may want to wait until the entire story is written. Readers are often fickle and might lose patience if you take too long between chapters. There's always a debate on that -- some people need and want the feedback sooner because it encourages them to keep writing; some want to put up an entire story so as not to keep anyone waiting.

However you decide to tell your story is up to you.
 
sr71plt said:
Include in the chapter the number of words that the content requires. I know that isn't particularly helpful, but it's true, and the question doesn't have a better answer than that. It has to be at least 750 words to be posted and I've seen chapters here of 60,000 words that had readers salivating all over them (albeit a few "it's too long" comments as well).

I think you'll find that stories with substantial backstory at the front and nothing else won't do well here at all (or anywhere else either in current trends). But maybe yours will be the exception.

Welcome to Literotica.
Click to expand...

PennLady said:
Hi, welcome, and good luck. :)

However you'd like to write your story is fine. Believe it or not, there are stories on this site with little or no sex in them. There are stories that are nothing but short sex scenes, or a string of them, and others that go several chapters before introducing the sex. There's no right or wrong way.

For story length, the only limit on Lit is a 750-word *minimum*. If a story is good, it doesn't matter how long it is, people will read it.

In my personal experience, I have found that stories, or chapters of larger stories, of 8-12k words are a good length. That is about 3-4 Lit screen pages (which are roughly 3400 words, if you want to use that figure to estimate how long your story in Word will be on Lit). However, I have written stories longer and shorter than that, depending on the story.

If you are looking at a longer story that you'll publish in installments, you may want to wait until the entire story is written. Readers are often fickle and might lose patience if you take too long between chapters. There's always a debate on that -- some people need and want the feedback sooner because it encourages them to keep writing; some want to put up an entire story so as not to keep anyone waiting.

However you decide to tell your story is up to you.
Click to expand...

Thank you, you answered all my questions very clearly. Best wishes.
 
I think there's a difference between a chapter in a normal printed story and a chapter on Lit.

A few years ago I looked for the answer to "how low should a chapter be" and I got the answer (as Pilot already said) that a chapter should be as long as it needs to be to tell the story. In printed literature some chapters are a few paragraphs long, others are novellas.

Lit readers seem to like a fairly large piece of story to digest in one sitting. I'm not sure why that is, but that's the feedback I get and it's consistent with PennLady's response.

What I've done with my only multi-part piece is write the chapters at the length I think they need to be to tell the story, then post either one chapter or a group of chapters together. The Lit community seems to like ~6,000 words or more in a bite.
 
JinSun said:
Also, I generally like to give my stories background and context. The first 5 or so pages of a standard word document hasn't even introduced the other partner yet, much less anything sexual. Is it still worth uploading or should I wait until there's actually something going on sexually?
Click to expand...

The norm in Lit stories is to get to the sex early and often, but that varies a lot. If getting the highest rating you can get is your goal, then sex early and often is probably the way to go. If that isn't your goal, then you should write it the way you want.

There aren't a lot of stories up under my name, but I've written enough to say that I like telling stories more than I like describing mindless sex, and it has it's rewards. I got this comment from Anonymous on my most recent post:

"I find it refreshing when an author uses sexual situations to enhance a tale rather than using a poorly thought out plot as filler between sex scenes. This tale is a joy to read. Thank you"

I'm 20K+ words into the story and won't even introduce the primary antagonist for a while.

The comment was worth more to me than a red "H." The story might eventually earn the "H" anyway, but we'll have to wait and see.
 
Read a bunch of highly-rated stories and see for yourself how the authors structure them. Some work well as a series of 3700-word (one LIT page) chapters. Some (especially standalone contest entries) are fine as 70k-word 20-LIT-page novellas. Many series have 2-3-4 LIT-page chapters. Where you need to break narratives is most significant.

I'll suggest that you write a whole story on its own. Finish the sucker. Then see how and where it breaks, whether it's best as a serial or a standalone, and if it's a series, know where to end it, and signal that end.
 
JinSun said:
Also, I generally like to give my stories background and context. The first 5 or so pages of a standard word document hasn't even introduced the other partner yet, much less anything sexual. Is it still worth uploading or should I wait until there's actually something going on sexually?
Click to expand...

Depends very much on the category and on how you handle it.

My rule of thumb is, each chapter should have some sort of payoff for the reader. If your story is primarily about two people getting together and fucking, then you want to include some of that GTaF-ing in the first chapter. And if there's a lot of setup beforehand, you probably want to reassure readers about where the story is headed, e.g.:

"I'll always remember the night I spent with Anne... but before I tell you about that, I have to explain what brought me to Wagga Wagga on the night of the Drovers' Ball."

That right there tells the reader that the focus of this story is going to be on a night with Anne, so they can go into that long setup knowing what sort of payoff to expect. Without that, you're likely to lose them.

It's quite possible to do well with a story that isn't primarily about sex; I've written several like that. If you think the other material is compelling in its own right then you might be able to make a chapter just about that. Again, managing reader expectations is important here: show them up front what sort of story they're getting into, so they don't get to the end and feel cheated.
 
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