Changing and condensing a story.

[Dearelliot]

About a year or so ago I submitted a story here, maybe 25K words, a bit too long I know. I have since written chapter 2, but the problem of having to rehash so much of the information from the original is mind-boggling. So I thought it might be better, to just condense, rewrite, and rename the original story and re submit as chapter one and two of a new series, and add my latest chapter 3 to it..
My question is, how do you submit a story with three chapters? One at a time, or all three together...or?

 

[alohadave]

Why do you need to rehash Ch 1? It's already in Ch 1.

25k words is not too long. Plenty of stories are that length.

 

[Dearelliot]

Reading Chapter two without knowing some of the info from the original leaves too many unanswered questions and adding a chapter two to a story written maybe 18 months ago, few readers will bother looking up the old story and when they see the length of it...they'll forget the whole thing.
besides, the original story was too long, and confusing with the time changes.

 

[djrip]

I wrote a chapter 2 five years after the first part. And I changed categories.

 

[Mastered_again]

You can always add a personal note ahead of the main story on where to read the background. I'm in the midst of a serial and I do make a few, very brief references to earlier chapters. First to add context to the current story. The second is perhaps an underhanded way to coerce the reader to visit the earlier installments (the chapters change category, so if the reader is in Erotic couplings, he/she might be tempted to read the NC/R or V&E installments).
But totally rehashing the first part has a few drawbacks
-making the story too long
-confusing the reader
-boring the reader (especially if they've read the first one)

 

[BobbyBrandt]

About a year or so ago I submitted a story here, maybe 25K words, a bit too long I know. I have since written chapter 2, but the problem of having to rehash so much of the information from the original is mind-boggling. So I thought it might be better, to just condense, rewrite, and rename the original story and re submit as chapter one and two of a new series, and add my latest chapter 3 to it..
My question is, how do you submit a story with three chapters? One at a time, or all three together...or?

Base on what you have told us, I can offer a couple of suggestions:

If I understand your dilemma, you posted a story and didn't title it as the first chapter and think that now posting a chapter 2 will confuse readers. If this is the case, it is relatively easy to request that Laurel change the title by adding the "CH1" to it. She just changed the name of one of my stories this week to correct an error in it.

I write predominantly chapter stories and a couple of series stories. My stories are typically longer ones, between 50K and 150K, so they generally go into the Novels/Novellas category. I mention this because readers in the different categories react differently to long stories with a lot of chapters versus chapters broken out and submitted separately. I suggest that you see how other writers have submitted stories in your category of choice and read the comments from readers.

 

[KeithD]

My chaptered stories are all done before I submit the first chapter. They then post fast enough that they don't need any recapping.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Reading Chapter two without knowing some of the info from the original leaves too many unanswered questions and adding a chapter two to a story written maybe 18 months ago, few readers will bother looking up the old story and when they see the length of it...they'll forget the whole thing.
besides, the original story was too long, and confusing with the time changes.

The first chapter will be linked on the second chapter page. One of mine, the chapters are about a year or apart written. Every time I added a chapter, I could see people have went and read the previous ones.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Base on what you have told us, I can offer a couple of suggestions:

If I understand your dilemma, you posted a story and didn't title it as the first chapter and think that now posting a chapter 2 will confuse readers. If this is the case, it is relatively easy to request that Laurel change the title by adding the "CH1" to it. She just changed the name of one of my stories this week to correct an error in it.

I write predominantly chapter stories and a couple of series stories. My stories are typically longer ones, between 50K and 150K, so they generally go into the Novels/Novellas category. I mention this because readers in the different categories react differently to long stories with a lot of chapters versus chapters broken out and submitted separately. I suggest that you see how other writers have submitted stories in your category of choice and read the comments from readers.

Don't even need to ask her, just give ch2 the same title with "ch2".

 

[JaxRhapsody]

My chaptered stories are all done before I submit the first chapter. They then post fast enough that they don't need any recapping.

Even if they didn't, they still wouldn't need it.

 

[Dearelliot]

Suppose I just do what I said, will Literotica allow such a change?

 

[Bamagan]

Suppose I just do what I said, will Literotica allow such a change?

If you intend to make changes to the text of the original story the revised version will need to be submitted with a 'note to admin' to replace the original story with the new version once it is approved. That's true whether or not you re-release it as one, two, or some other number of chapters, each of which would be submitted separately if you intend them to be separate entities on the site as opposed to one continuous entity with 10 or 20 pages. All of the metadata (comments, votes, views, etc.) associated with the original story will be lost.
If you're committed to making the changes, chop the old one in half or whatever, make your edits and submit it as the first chapter with the note I mentioned above. You can submit the second and third chapters at the same time, but might want to include a note to admin not to post them until the previous chapter has been posted, in case any of them get rejected for whatever reason.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If you intend to make changes to the text of the original story the revised version will need to be submitted with a 'note to admin' to replace the original story with the new version once it is approved. That's true whether or not you re-release it as one, two, or some other number of chapters, each of which would be submitted separately if you intend them to be separate entities on the site as opposed to one continuous entity with 10 or 20 pages. All of the metadata (comments, votes, views, etc.) associated with the original story will be lost.

Not if it's submitted as an Edit. Metadata remains if you do that.

My suggestion, @Dearelliot, is to edit your first part, get it published. Then submit your second and third chapters. The auto-series software will kick in and join them all up.

 

[Bamagan]

Not if it's submitted as an Edit. Metadata remains if you do that.

My suggestion, @Dearelliot, is to edit your first part, get it published. Then submit your second and third chapters. The auto-series software will kick in and join them all up.

OP was talking about a major rewrite, more or less chopping it into two stories, which made me think it wouldn't fly as a simple edit. But, I've never tried that so I could easily be mistaken as to what level of changes would require re-submitting as a new story.

 

[ElectricBlue]

OP was talking about a major rewrite, more or less chopping it into two stories, which made me think it wouldn't fly as a simple edit. But, I've never tried that so I could easily be mistaken as to what level of changes would require re-submitting as a new story.

You could chop a story in half in an Edit, if you wanted to.

To be honest, I reckon the OP is over-thinking this. I see it all the time, people futzing with their last story. Leave it be, write a new story. That way, you'll have two stories, not one over-worked old one.

It's not as if they're the next great American novel.

 

[Dearelliot]

Yes agreed, I think I'll just add a few pieces of info from the old story here and there and do without dredging up the old story.