How long?

[Lord_Johnny]

So, it's kind of a quick question on my end, but one that didn't seem covered in the FAQ. When writing (I'm using Word), does length in the writing program have a 1:1 ratio for length on Lit? For example, if I fill 1 page while I write, does that correlate to 1 page on Lit? If not, is there a pretty standard formula that I can use to estimate the length of a story post here on Lit? I'm not overly concerned with length, as I want to write the story I'm going to write, but at the same time, I do want to get an idea for how long the length of each story submission would be so that I can have a future gauge for what length works best for the audience.

Thank you in advance for your help all!

 

[Bamagan]

So, it's kind of a quick question on my end, but one that didn't seem covered in the FAQ. When writing (I'm using Word), does length in the writing program have a 1:1 ratio for length on Lit? For example, if I fill 1 page while I write, does that correlate to 1 page on Lit? If not, is there a pretty standard formula that I can use to estimate the length of a story post here on Lit? I'm not overly concerned with length, as I want to write the story I'm going to write, but at the same time, I do want to get an idea for how long the length of each story submission would be so that I can have a future gauge for what length works best for the audience.

Thank you in advance for your help all!

The short answer is no. There's a rough 'formula' for determining how many pages something will be on the site, though.
Each page on Lit will have somewhere around 3750 words, give or take about 250. It's apparently based on characters, not words, and things like html markup are counted in that limit. So it can vary a good bit. They also generally parse page breaks between paragraphs, to prevent them overlapping from one page to the next.

 

[Lord_Johnny]

Thank you!!

 

[iwatchus]

I am also relatively new here. As you saw above, people here tend to talk in word count, not pages. Pages in a word processor depends on your font size among other things. For me, it's about 6 pages in a word processor to one Lit page.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

What would be nice? How about having the Preview function show us the story as it actually appears on the site, including page breaks?

The thing is, the tiny tech staff is much more focused on the user experience than on us writers.

-Annie

 

[Voboy]

After I got a few stories written, I stopped thinking in terms of page count and began thinking in terms of word count, as @iwatchus suggests many do. As I gained a "feel" for how I constructed my stories, I developed guidelines for myself based on when I expected myself to make certain things happen within the story; if I can't meet those guidelines, I often abandon that story.

The only real problem with this sort of thing occurs when you write a story that laps just a line or two onto its last page. That's annoying as fuck, and it's happened to all of us at one point or another. Annie's solution would presumably prevent that by allowing us to cut out a line or two elsewhere so that we could Lit-paginate as we'd wish, but that's not a concern for the site admins. In practice it probably doesn't matter much, but it's annoying to anyone with even a SLIGHT tendency toward OCD.

 

[WittyUserName]

So, it's kind of a quick question on my end, but one that didn't seem covered in the FAQ. When writing (I'm using Word), does length in the writing program have a 1:1 ratio for length on Lit? For example, if I fill 1 page while I write, does that correlate to 1 page on Lit? If not, is there a pretty standard formula that I can use to estimate the length of a story post here on Lit? I'm not overly concerned with length, as I want to write the story I'm going to write, but at the same time, I do want to get an idea for how long the length of each story submission would be so that I can have a future gauge for what length works best for the audience.

Thank you in advance for your help all!

I also do all of my writing in a word program. I use LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Word, though. As others have said, there is definitely not a 1:1 ratio. One of my stories is 170 pages in LibreOffice, which translated to 31 Lit pages. I've noticed some of my best rated chapters have been around 25 LibreOffice pages. It does seem that longer chapters turn off some readers. I got a lot of complaints about my one-off 31 Lit-page story. You're better off keeping track of word count than page length. I know another writer who does everything on his phone. He ends up with several hundred page stories that translate to 5-6 lit pages. Focus on word count for your chapter lengths, don't worry about page numbers.

 

[StillStunned]

From a few weeks ago:

 

[ronde]

I also write in Word and my stories use a lot of dialogue, hence I also have a lot of "white space". I average about 3200 words per Literotica page.

 

[NuclearFairy]

After I got a few stories written, I stopped thinking in terms of page count and began thinking in terms of word count, as @iwatchus suggests many do. As I gained a "feel" for how I constructed my stories, I developed guidelines for myself based on when I expected myself to make certain things happen within the story; if I can't meet those guidelines, I often abandon that story.

The only real problem with this sort of thing occurs when you write a story that laps just a line or two onto its last page. That's annoying as fuck, and it's happened to all of us at one point or another. Annie's solution would presumably prevent that by allowing us to cut out a line or two elsewhere so that we could Lit-paginate as we'd wish, but that's not a concern for the site admins. In practice it probably doesn't matter much, but it's annoying to anyone with even a SLIGHT tendency toward OCD.

It's also annoying to readers who only have a finite amount of internet data every month. It feels like a waste of data to load a whole new page for just one short sentence.

 

[Gamblnluck]

I've noticed some of my best rated chapters have been around 25 LibreOffice pages.

How do you count pages in Libre? count as you scroll? I use the same program and just use the word count in tools. I generally try for chapters of 12 to 15K words per chapter.

 

[WittyUserName]

How do you count pages in Libre? count as you scroll? I use the same program and just use the word count in tools. I generally try for chapters of 12 to 15K words per chapter.

Same as in Word. The bottom bar displays a word count and page count. I don't try too hard to keep track of word/page length. If a chapter seems to be getting too long I'll split it up, that's about it.

 

[Gamblnluck]

Same as in Word. The bottom bar displays a word count and page count. I don't try too hard to keep track of word/page length. If a chapter seems to be getting too long I'll split it up, that's about it.

Thanks. Been using that program for several months and never noticed. My latest chapter of my ongoing story Gotta Pay the Piper was 18 pages on Libre and 4 on Lit. Word count was 12.8K. If you want a reference.

 

[WittyUserName]

Thanks. Been using that program for several months and never noticed. My latest chapter of my ongoing story Gotta Pay the Piper was 18 pages on Libre and 4 on Lit. Word count was 12.8K. If you want a reference.

Yeah, that's about accurate. It seems to vary based on Lit not wanting to cut off paragraphs, but page length seems pretty standard. I love LibreOffice. I can't imagine writing on a phone or anything like that. Too annoying.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

How do you count pages in Libre? count as you scroll? I use the same program and just use the word count in tools. I generally try for chapters of 12 to 15K words per chapter.

Writing processors pages are basically A4 paper pages, because that's common paper to use, if you don't mess with them from stock settings. Libra, Word, WPS, Office Suite, etc, is gonna be the same.

It's these websites that allow for more room, and Lit is sorta an outlier in both character amount, and populating it's own pages. In my experience. Most other writing sites have a 10k character limit for a page, and leaves extra pages for the creator to do.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

What would be nice? How about having the Preview function show us the story as it actually appears on the site, including page breaks?

The thing is, the tiny tech staff is much more focused on the user experience than on us writers.

-Annie

There is one, if you copy/paste.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

I am also relatively new here. As you saw above, people here tend to talk in word count, not pages. Pages in a word processor depends on your font size among other things. For me, it's about 6 pages in a word processor to one Lit page.

That's about right. I have a story with two chapters that were 14 pages, and on here, I believe one was three pages, and the other was four.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

There is one, if you copy/paste.

It doesn't break the pages, at least when I use it.

--Annie

 

[ElectricBlue]

There is one, if you copy/paste.

Doesn't show page breaks on my Preview. It shows the font, lets me check paragraph breaks and any html, also allows me to edit last minute typos, but it doesn't show the Lit page breaks. That might be device dependant - I use a Lenovo tablet.

 

[LexxRuthless]

So, it's kind of a quick question on my end, but one that didn't seem covered in the FAQ. When writing (I'm using Word), does length in the writing program have a 1:1 ratio for length on Lit? For example, if I fill 1 page while I write, does that correlate to 1 page on Lit? If not, is there a pretty standard formula that I can use to estimate the length of a story post here on Lit? I'm not overly concerned with length, as I want to write the story I'm going to write, but at the same time, I do want to get an idea for how long the length of each story submission would be so that I can have a future gauge for what length works best for the audience.

Thank you in advance for your help all!

I also use Word. I found that if I set the margins to half an inch all the way around, seven pages in Word is almost exactly one full page on Lit.

 

[SinclairGroupLLP]

When I can convince my SO to read my stories they almost invariably ask how long the story is. I give them the word count because that’s what I'm used to saying on here and that means nothing to them.

“How long is it?”

"Oh, it’s a shorter one, like 15k words.”

<Sends the word doc>

“Short! This is 40 pages!”

“It’s only 5 on the site!”

This was worse when I sent my On the Job story, lol.

 

[Lifestyle66]

When I can convince my SO to read my stories they almost invariably ask how long the story is. I give them the word count because that’s what I;m used to saying on here and that means nothing to them.

“How long is it?”

‘Oh, it’s a shorter one, like 15k words.”

<Sends the word doc>

“Short! This is 40 pages!”

“It’s only 5 on the site!”

This was worse when I sent my On the Job story, lol.

When I can convince my wife to read one of my stories, She asks the same "How long is it?" But she also doesn't comprehend the word count in any meaningful way.

I've learned to tell her in minutes how long it will take her to read it. Since I convert my stories to audio with a text-to-speech converter as part of my review and editing to catch misspelling and clunky passages, I have that as a metric. She reads slightly faster than the length of the audio of my MP3 file. So, for a story with 5.8K words, I'd tell her it takes about 20 to 25 minutes, since the converted audio story is 30 minutes.

 

[PennyThompson]

When I can convince my SO to read my stories they almost invariably ask how long the story is. I give them the word count because that’s what I'm used to saying on here and that means nothing to them.

“How long is it?”

"Oh, it’s a shorter one, like 15k words.”

<Sends the word doc>

“Short! This is 40 pages!”

“It’s only 5 on the site!”

This was worse when I sent my On the Job story, lol.

Yeah but if you send your ADHD-addled beta-reader just 5k at a time, you can trick them into reading a novel

 

[M_K_Babalon]

It doesn't break the pages, at least when I use it.

--Annie

Doesn't show page breaks on my Preview. It shows the font, lets me check paragraph breaks and any html, also allows me to edit last minute typos, but it doesn't show the Lit page breaks. That might be device dependant - I use a Lenovo tablet.

I didn't know. I've never used it, I just knew it was there.

 

[LexxRuthless]

Doesn't show page breaks on my Preview. It shows the font, lets me check paragraph breaks and any html, also allows me to edit last minute typos, but it doesn't show the Lit page breaks. That might be device dependant - I use a Lenovo tablet.

It does not show page breaks on my desktop PC either.