Story Length

I hope this is not off-topic. If it is, please feel free to let me know.

Anyway, I am getting ready to submit my first story and I am unsure at what point a story is too long for a single submission. I've read many stories that are in parts so I think I have a feel for how long it should be, but I suspect that the fomatting in MS Word probably differs quite a bit from the formatting on the site. My story will be about 10-12 pages in 12 pt. Arial font and will be about 4500-5000 words once it is completely finished.

If someone who edits or submits regularly could give me some guidance or point me at a resource regarding this query, I would appreciate it.

Lit doesn't have an upper limit that I know of, so there's no maximum length. There is a minimum length of 750 words, but you're well past that.

A Lit screen page has approximately 3400 words, so your story would be a little over one page after you submit it.

The only stat you need to work with is wordage. Your story is a fine size for Lit.

VanillaJade09 said:

I hope this is not off-topic. If it is, please feel free to let me know.

Anyway, I am getting ready to submit my first story and I am unsure at what point a story is too long for a single submission. I've read many stories that are in parts so I think I have a feel for how long it should be, but I suspect that the fomatting in MS Word probably differs quite a bit from the formatting on the site. My story will be about 10-12 pages in 12 pt. Arial font and will be about 4500-5000 words once it is completely finished.

If someone who edits or submits regularly could give me some guidance or point me at a resource regarding this query, I would appreciate it.

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A Literotica page is about 3500-3700 words so your piece is only about 1.5 LIT pages. The last contest winner was 19 LIT pages long, almost 70k words. IIRC someone did a test submission of ten million words and didn't break the system. So don't worry about story length on that basis.

How long should a submission be? Many here say that 2-3 LIT pages (7k-10k words) is a sweet zone for readers, and that shorter pieces tend to get more views while longer one get higher vote scores, highly dependent on category chosen. The basic rule is that a story should be as long as necessary. Have fun!

Thank you both so much for your replies--they were very helpful, especially the parts about the size of LIT pages--that really gives me a better idea of how my story compares to the stories that I've read. Thank you for the information

Here's a trick I use to see how my stories will look: I write with the free Jarte editor, a nice tool but it's not for final edits. I open a finished story in Word 2004 (my latest version) for spell and grammar checks, and save it as a vanilla .TXT file with HTML tags embedded for <i>talic and <b>old etc effects. I paste that text into the LIT Submissions pane and Preview it WITHOUT submitting it. The previewed version is not *exactly* like the published version, but it's close enough to judge page count and overall formatting. I may work with the copy I've pasted in the Submissions pane too, scanning through it to see if my browser has caught any spelling errors. If so, I make corrections, then paste that text back into the Jarte or Word edit window and save it so I always have the latest version.