COVID-19 RESOURCES
LIT CAMS (200 Free Tokens)ADULT TOYSVOD MOVIES

At what point do you break an erotica e-book into chapters?

Jessicathe69

Jessicathe69

Literotica Guru
Joined
Jun 28, 2016
Posts
1,344
At what point do you break an erotica e-book into chapters?

I've started my first book and it's currently at 5.5k words. I expect it to go to 10-15k at the very least and probably more (and make it into a series of books). Is there a general rule of thumb when it comes to chapterization of an e-book? Say my book goes to 15k, break it down to three chapters at 5k each? Two at 7.5k? No chapters at all?

Just trying to get a feel for what others have done or what you, as both a writer and a reader of erotica, prefer and why.

Thanks in advance!
 
Jessicathe69 said:
At what point do you break an erotica e-book into chapters?

I've started my first book and it's currently at 5.5k words. I expect it to go to 10-15k at the very least and probably more (and make it into a series of books). Is there a general rule of thumb when it comes to chapterization of an e-book? Say my book goes to 15k, break it down to three chapters at 5k each? Two at 7.5k? No chapters at all?

Just trying to get a feel for what others have done or what you, as both a writer and a reader of erotica, prefer and why.

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

I've heard 3k was a good length of chapters. On the other hand, I feel like they should be as long as it takes to tell the story.

Are you talking about breaking the story up and posting different parts? Or are you talking about adding chapter organization within a single post?

There is no need to break a story into parts. 15K is only about four Lit pages, and some very successful stories on lit are many times that size.

I find it helps me if I organize a long story into chapters, even if it's all published in a single post. I also hope that helps readers set a long story down and come back to it instead of feeling like they need to skim through it.

For instance, "Love is Enough" (linked in my signature) is all one post and eight pages long, but it's broken internally into twelve numbered chapters. I tried to keep the chapters around the same length, but not all the stories fit that length. Some are longer, some are shorter.
 
NotWise said:
I've heard 3k was a good length of chapters. On the other hand, I feel like they should be as long as it takes to tell the story.

Are you talking about breaking the story up and posting different parts? Or are you talking about adding chapter organization within a single post?

There is no need to break a story into parts. 15K is only about four Lit pages, and some very successful stories on lit are many times that size.

I find it helps me if I organize a long story into chapters, even if it's all published in a single post. I also hope that helps readers set a long story down and come back to it instead of feeling like they need to skim through it.

For instance, "Love is Enough" (linked in my signature) is all one post and eight pages long, but it's broken internally into twelve numbered chapters. I tried to keep the chapters around the same length, but not all the stories fit that length. Some are longer, some are shorter.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I probably should have specified I was planning to upload the story to Smashwords as an e-book and maybe Amazon one day, but not here. I'm thinking I'll wind up playing this by ear as I go and find my own style, especially as a final and published e-book. I do like your idea of breaking it into chapters simply as an organizational tool though. I probably need to go break up the current 5.5k into chapters simply to show a break from one scene (no, not a screenplay!) to another.

Thanks again!
 
It probably depends on why you're breaking the story into chapters. Some authors use chapters to switch from one POV character to another. Others use chapters to separate periods of time or individual scenes. Sometimes each chapter is a story unto itself. In cases like those, word count is probably irrelevant.

Another reason to break a story into chapters is to give readers a stopping point - someplace they can put the book down and come back to it without losing the thread of the story. Usually they end in some kind of cliffhanger. If that's your purpose, then I'd say 7,500 to 10,000 words is about right.
 
LoquiSordidaAdMe said:
It probably depends on why you're breaking the story into chapters. Some authors use chapters to switch from one POV character to another. Others use chapters to separate periods of time or individual scenes. Sometimes each chapter is a story unto itself. In cases like those, word count is probably irrelevant.

Another reason to break a story into chapters is to give readers a stopping point - someplace they can put the book down and come back to it without losing the thread of the story. Usually they end in some kind of cliffhanger. If that's your purpose, then I'd say 7,500 to 10,000 words is about right.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Excellent points. Yes, the "why", as usual, rules the day and it makes perfect sense to use it in this case, too. Like I eluded to earlier, I think periods of times or individual scenes, as you mentioned, will be my guide for now. I have several POV switches in the 5.5k so far that are small paragraphs but I think they're fine without breaks, but I'll keep that in mind as well.

Thanks again!
 
My long novel The Dark Chronicles is twelve chapters here (103,000 words), but when preparing it for e-book I broke it down to about twenty chapters, so on face value that's 5,000 words per chunk. But I didn't apply any hard rule, just broke it where it made sense to do so. Within chapters I'll often use breaks * * * * within the text - for the reasons Loqui mentions..

Lit "reads" differently to other publishing platforms because of its format, and over time I think most authors here gravitate to thinking in 3,750 word chunks, and work within the Lit "page" for guidance.

But, if you are self-publishing you have more freedom, and I'm not sure there are cookie cutter guidelines which "must" be followed - unless you want to be like everybody else ;).

Also, you might find reedsy.com useful. It has a free compositing tool that prepares all formats ready for publication. I bounced TDC into it and did quite a bit of tidying up and re-formatting in not much time at all. It also sucks in cover art, so its output is publication ready (including print ready).
 
I use natural breaks in the content/context control where chapter breaks are. Chapters, like the work as a whole, should have arcs with natural breaks by content as much as by wordage. But, yes, 3,000 (more in the era of ebooks) to 5,000 (more in the era of print) are typical chapter lengths.
 
electricblue66 said:
My long novel The Dark Chronicles is twelve chapters here (103,000 words), but when preparing it for e-book I broke it down to about twenty chapters, so on face value that's 5,000 words per chunk. But I didn't apply any hard rule, just broke it where it made sense to do so. Within chapters I'll often use breaks * * * * within the text - for the reasons Loqui mentions..

Lit "reads" differently to other publishing platforms because of its format, and over time I think most authors here gravitate to thinking in 3,750 word chunks, and work within the Lit "page" for guidance.

But, if you are self-publishing you have more freedom, and I'm not sure there are cookie cutter guidelines which "must" be followed - unless you want to be like everybody else ;).

Also, you might find reedsy.com useful. It has a free compositing tool that prepares all formats ready for publication. I bounced TDC into it and did quite a bit of tidying up and re-formatting in not much time at all. It also sucks in cover art, so its output is publication ready (including print ready).
Click to expand...

Thanks! I like the "*****" break and think I may have used them already. They's work great between POVs, too.
 
KeithD said:
I use natural breaks in the content/context control where chapter breaks are. Chapters, like the work as a whole, should have arcs with natural breaks by content as much as by wordage. But, yes, 3,000 (more in the era of ebooks) to 5,000 (more in the era of print) are typical chapter lengths.
Click to expand...

Thanks!
 
Jessicathe69 said:
Thanks. I probably should have specified I was planning to upload the story to Smashwords as an e-book and maybe Amazon one day, but not here.
Click to expand...

You're certainly arrogant enough to be a good writer. Very first book and already thinking of where to publish it, anywhere but here?

Writers are naturally competitive, so don't take it personally.
 
Jessicathe69 said:
At what point do you break an erotica e-book into chapters?
Click to expand...

Are you thinking of "chapters" as separate eBooks, or internal divisions of a single novel.

If you're thinking of "Chapters" the way most mainstream publishers do, insert "Chapter <number>" into the text wherever there is a significant change of scene or time lapse.

If you're thinking of breaking a 15K-word story into multiple Smashwords eBooks, Don't! Maybe if you hit 150K-words, that might be workable, but 15K-words is barely long enough to publish as a "book"

If you're thinking in terms of multiple Smashwords postings, Find or manufacture a logical stopping point (or cliffhanger) somewhere between 50K-words and 100K-words in a longer work of over 100K-words.
 
Jessicathe69 said:
At what point do you break an erotica e-book into chapters?

I've started my first book and it's currently at 5.5k words. I expect it to go to 10-15k at the very least and probably more (and make it into a series of books). Is there a general rule of thumb when it comes to chapterization of an e-book? Say my book goes to 15k, break it down to three chapters at 5k each? Two at 7.5k? No chapters at all?

Just trying to get a feel for what others have done or what you, as both a writer and a reader of erotica, prefer and why.

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Like a few people have said 15k isn't that many words. The last chapter on my latest series was a little over 9000 words and that was chapter 9 so I can only imagine how many words the whole series is already.

For a book published somewhere other than an online setting like here, I can't see anyone paying to read a few hundred or thousand words.
 
My last published story was 153,000 words long.

The first part I posted was about 41,000 words long.
The Second - sixth parts were about 13,600 words long.
The last part was about 52,000 words long.

I had no complaints from the readers about the length of the parts. In fact most expressed that they liked the way it was posted.
 
Jessicathe69 said:
At what point do you break an erotica e-book into chapters?

I've started my first book and it's currently at 5.5k words. I expect it to go to 10-15k at the very least and probably more (and make it into a series of books). Is there a general rule of thumb when it comes to chapterization of an e-book? Say my book goes to 15k, break it down to three chapters at 5k each? Two at 7.5k? No chapters at all?

Just trying to get a feel for what others have done or what you, as both a writer and a reader of erotica, prefer and why.

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

I think that focusing on word count is a bit sterile; your plot/prose should dictate the natural seperation of it into chapters. If you are writing to order (I sometimes do), keep a goal in mind and make sure to form an arc in each chapter so that the rise and fall of it makes sense as opposed to randomly picking a cut off.

That being said, for Lit at least, what I've discovered is that you will get less trolls with a longer chapter/story. I aim to keep my chapters a consistent page count (around 12k-13k words for example). In one of my ongoing stories, the first chapter was about 5k words and is the lowest count/vote rating of them all. Since then it has gotten consistently better and I've had comments stating that readers would read longer chapters if posted.

My longest single post short story is about 45k and has the highest rating of all of my submissions, though not the highest vote count (53). So it seems that if someone is willing to read through the entire deal, about 16 Lit pages, then they most likely have enjoyed the story and will vote accordingly.

All of this assumes you are publishing on Lit and care about ratings, of course.
 
The story I'm working on today for Monday's contest is into 7600+ words.

3866 first
1005 second
2729 third

The third will probably be another 1500 words by the time the story finishes.

It changes naturally when scenes change, major characters change (POV) or action.

That being said I have 50K + stories with maybe three or four chapters.

Write it the way you want to write it. Numbers don't matter.
 
gordo12 said:
The story I'm working on today for Monday's contest is into 7600+ words.

3866 first
1005 second
2729 third

The third will probably be another 1500 words by the time the story finishes.

It changes naturally when scenes change, major characters change (POV) or action.

That being said I have 50K + stories with maybe three or four chapters.

Write it the way you want to write it. Numbers don't matter.
Click to expand...

Thanks.
 
CoffeeWithMonkeys said:
For a book published somewhere other than an online setting like here, I can't see anyone paying to read a few hundred or thousand words.
Click to expand...
gordo12 said:
Write it the way you want to write it. Numbers don't matter.
Click to expand...
Those are the bounds. Posting on LIT, length doesn't matter, as long as any submission (except poetry) is 750+ words. But I doubt many 750-word stories would SELL even at a penny each, except to a magazine seeking vignettes. I'm not sure of the current market for Feghoots.

I'll guess that fat books sell better than thin books. More words for the money.
 
Jessicathe69 said:
At what point do you break an erotica e-book into chapters?
Click to expand...

My chapters almost mirror my outline, and I tend to follow two different beat styles for plot structure.

Consequently, my books tend to divide into either 9-12 chapters.

I have never written a story in which the narration's perspective change, but it I put books down if the narration head-hops in the middle of a chapter. So if your story's narration changes from The Heroine, to the Hero, and the back to the Heroine, than definitely needs to be chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3 in at least my case. I'm probably not alone in that.
 
Maeven_quinn said:
My chapters almost mirror my outline, and I tend to follow two different beat styles for plot structure.

Consequently, my books tend to divide into either 9-12 chapters.

I have never written a story in which the narration's perspective change, but it I put books down if the narration head-hops in the middle of a chapter. So if your story's narration changes from The Heroine, to the Hero, and the back to the Heroine, than definitely needs to be chapter 1, chapter 2, and chapter 3 in at least my case. I'm probably not alone in that.
Click to expand...

Thanks.
 
jp55665566 said:
One chapter per orgasm. In the story, not the reader.
Click to expand...
That produces many many chapters in Group stories. Nineteen multiorgasmic women in an oral daisychain? We will run out of document space.

A chapter is whatever it demands to be. A parallel situation, as described by an old Western humorist who trained as a printer, is:
I never did learn how to spell, – but I did learn the typesetter's rule, – "Set up type as long as you can hold your breath without turning blue in the face, then put in a comma. When you gape, put in a semicolon, and when you want to sneeze, that's the time to make a paragraph."
Click to expand...
Hold your breath longer for chapters. Or wait for burps.
 
Chapters. Basically if you feel as though your story is too long and needs to be broken down. I wouldn't spread it into parts though unless some time between events has taken place. Or well, time and place. Some chapters can be filled with erotic behaviour and some can be pretty thin with it, as long as the story makes sense.
 
Doctor Johnson the lexicographer boasted that he could recite an entire chapter of

Tilforladerlige eferetninger om Island Natural History of Iceland, published in 1752 in Danish 1758 in English.

Chapter Heading 72 'Concerning Snakes'


"No snakes of any kind are to met with throughout the whole island"

and that's the whole chapter. :)
 
From the reader perspective-if you look at the main points of the story-big scenes, introduction, conclusion, it’s helpful to break into chapters. Lots of people like to read here and there-and chattering makes that easier.



QUOTE=Jessicathe69;90287571]At what point do you break an erotica e-book into chapters?

I've started my first book and it's currently at 5.5k words. I expect it to go to 10-15k at the very least and probably more (and make it into a series of books). Is there a general rule of thumb when it comes to chapterization of an e-book? Say my book goes to 15k, break it down to three chapters at 5k each? Two at 7.5k? No chapters at all?

Just trying to get a feel for what others have done or what you, as both a writer and a reader of erotica, prefer and why.

Thanks in advance![/QUOTE]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

M
Merge older Chapters? Change Series title mid-stream?
Replies
18
Views
367
BobbyBrandt
BobbyBrandt
AG31
Do you remember your introduction to erotica?
4 5 6
Replies
136
Views
3K
tristianc
T
joy_of_cooking
Whether/how to break up this story with slow burn and heterogeneous content?
Replies
21
Views
342
SimonDoom
SimonDoom
Red_Herring4
Advice on Novel Chapters
Replies
22
Views
374
Bramblethorn
Bramblethorn
JC_WELLS
Is It Possible? Is it allowed?
2
Replies
31
Views
633
oneagainst
oneagainst
Back
Top