How long is to long for a story

bob03567

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Hi I'm in the process of writing several stories. My question is how long is to long.

What I mean by this is, I write in "ms word" and so far an average story is about 30 pages.

Is there a conversion difference when you upload your story. Meaning 30 pages in word, is 10 pages once uploaded.

Or would you suggest I break it down in chapters and post it that way.

Thank you for your time.
 
Don't know whether this helps, bob, but one of the volunteer editors gave me the following piece of advice, "If you are writing for the Literotica audience, the general consensus seems to be that larger stories should be broken up into chapters, usually consisting of 6-8 thousand words or so, which translates into about 10-12 pages. Each chapter should contain all of the elements of an actual short story, with a 'hook' at the end to keep the reader turning the page."

I've recently got involved in a thread in Authors Hangout about either writing a whole story first then publishing it in chapters or writing and publishing chapter by chapter. Here, the consensus seems to be write the whole thing first, then you don't get stuck in the embarrassing situation of having to explain in a later chapter stuff that you hadn't thought about earlier on. But that's only a consensus, and isn't universally agreed.

You might want to try the Author's Hangout forum for possible ideas on this subject.
 
Hi I'm in the process of writing several stories. My question is how long is to long.

What I mean by this is, I write in "ms word" and so far an average story is about 30 pages.

Is there a conversion difference when you upload your story. Meaning 30 pages in word, is 10 pages once uploaded.

Or would you suggest I break it down in chapters and post it that way.

Thank you for your time.

This gets asked a lot and many people say it's good to keep a story or chapter to a couple of lit pages (around 7600 words or so)

However, to me it depends greatly on the reader and what they are looking for.

Many readers see 3+ pages they click away. These are usually readers looking for stroke and they don't want a lot of "story"

Personally I am the opposite. I see one page and I think "yeah jerkoff material" When I see 3+ pages it peaks my interest because I enjoy a nice build up, to me that is what erotica is all about. Not the act but getting there and making me look forward to the fun when it comes.
 
A short story is defined as a story that can be read in one sitting. And novels are only in chapters at all to give some heed to this one-sitting read concept. As an author, you need to give some thought to what is likely a "single setting" for attention span in reading a chunk of story in today's world. I think reality is that you will have more readers by giving smaller chunks than larger ones. So, it's really your choice on how many readers you want to attract to start reading your stories. There are those who say they won't read anything here of only one Lit. page. I won't open one that's over three. So, you just have to gauge the risks for yourself.

Incidentally, the competition lengths for short stories in the mainstream world rarely go above 3,500 words (which is one Lit. page). So one Lit. page can hardly be assumed to be too short for plot and character development. It's just cutting down on the verbosity and irrelevance.
 
Couple of months back I posted a 6 page incest story. According to one school of thought I could have found a good "breaking" point and put it into two chapters. It may have worked well that way as many do go that route.

However, it picked up over four hundred votes, a very solid score and close to 30 comments. No one (at least not publicly) complained of the length. Many complimented the build up.

Then again, there is always the idea of how many may have not read it seeing six pages?

As you see this could just go round and round. I used to sweat the length of my stories now I just let them rip. It's trial and error and at the end of the day the only pattern to what works with LIt readers is there is no real pattern.
 
I've recently got involved in a thread in Authors Hangout about either writing a whole story first then publishing it in chapters or writing and publishing chapter by chapter. Here, the consensus seems to be write the whole thing first, then you don't get stuck in the embarrassing situation of having to explain in a later chapter stuff that you hadn't thought about earlier on. But that's only a consensus, and isn't universally agreed.

You might want to try the Author's Hangout forum for possible ideas on this subject.

I would have to agree with this. One of my stories started as just a single story, and turned into a multi-chapter piece. By the 5th chapter I realized that where the story was going didn't work with the way the previous chapters were written. So I had the fun task of going back and revising the tense and point of view of the previous 4 chapters.


If I was planning on writing a long multi-chaptered story, I would write the whole thing at once, then go back and break it up into chapters for submision.

For reading, I like 3 to 4 Lit pages for a single sitting, but that's just personal preference as I do most of my reading at work :)
 
too long

For me nothing longer than 3 pages it helps when you have an after sex story too
 
Right now I am working on a story in Word that is 15 pages, so far, and about 4,100 words long, which means pages is not a good indicator of the number of pages on Literotica. In the tools section of Word there is a section called "Word Count," and "Word Count" will tell you how many words you have. From my experience I find one page on Literotica is around 3,500 words. As a reader I prefer a story that is no more than 3 pages but there have been a limited number of stories that I have enjoyed that have been in the 5 - 7 pages range on Literotica. This means for me, an ideal story length is less than 10,500 words. If your story is more than 10,000 words then I would suggest consider either breaking it down into chapters or if you want to place the whole story as one piece then consider placing it in the "Novels / Novella," section on Literotica.
 
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About 15 - 30 pages for me. If you keep it interesting though, you could go on and on forever!
 
Too long is when you run out of story to tell but you're still typing.
 
when a story no longer holds your attention or want to read the next page then its 2 long
 
I have very limited continuous chunks of time to sit and read. Nothing peeves me more than a build up that doesn't suck you in and make you feel as if you have used your precious spare time well. If I have to sit and read long descriptions of what everyone is wearing and each character's personal history then I will opt out before the end of the first page. I don't necessarily expect full on fucking right from the get go but I do expect SOMETHING to happen that is interesting.

If my interest is grabbed I can read forever.

In my blog at the moment I am completing a challenge to write a 100 word story every day for a month. Each story is complete in itself. It has been a great lesson in being concise and only expressing the important points.
 
Some of my stories are long and posted as a single unit e.g. Miranda the Witch at 8 Lit pages. That doesn't seem to deter readers.

Some of my stories are split into separate chapters e.g. 12 chapters of Flawed Red Silk (50,000 words in total written as a NaNoWriMo entry). The later chapters seem to get progressively less views and votes.

Many of my stories are only 50 words long, posted in sets of 15 to meet the minimum 750 word target. They get views but not always votes. Some people don't appreciate the 50 word format.

My advice: A story is as long or short as it needs to be. If you, and the readers, think that it is too long, it probably needs editing either to reduce the length, or to add more action.
 
The biggest reason I would consider separating a story into chapters is if these sections all fit best into different categories.
 
To go back to the original question and, by no means ignoring the excellent advice above, a "page" in an "MS Word" (MSW) document depends on the settings you have in MSW, such as margins, font size, line spacing, and so on. Much better to count the number of words which MSW will do for you.
 
No matter what you decide, I like to tell readers right up front what to expect. If it's a long story with the sex picking up around the middle, there's nothing wrong with saying so.

A lot of people like stories with a lot of build-up (I do), but there are a lot of people who want the first two paragraphs to have something to do with a cock and a pussy and an anus and one or more of them mingling together, and those people aren't shy about letting you know that they didn't want to "wade through" your story.
 
The truest guide is what the story demands...

Write what wants to be written and content yourself as an author that you've done justice to what it is that you've tried to express. In the end you only need please yourself.
 
How long is right?

It depends on what your goals are when you write.

If you have that story which you believe just has to be told and told in your way, at your pace, then set your own standards and make it as long as you feel is needed to make it work. The chances are, if it's more than three pages a good number of auto-eroticists won't bother to read it.

But possibly you'll get some satisfaction fro the quality of your work and the knowledge that even if a story rates poorly for reads on this site, it will be read far more often than the average author's work in the real world.


However I do get a buzz from the fact that people are actually reading my stories and the more reads the bigger the buzz.

So I decided to write for numbers and produced what is one of my worst "A Brother's Revenge". It took as many hours to write as some stories take weeks. It went pretty well and still gets a thousand reads a week despite a low ranking.

These are the rules I set myself, but more experienced authors could probably add to this.

- Two pages max
- A title which arouses some curiosity and sets the scene. A story relies on its title when a surfer is spending 7 seconds scanning a page deciding what to read.
- Include incest and/or virginity. These are easy writers' ploys to create a sense of "forbidden" or "new territory" tension without having to write anything.
- Set the scene in the first two paragraphs although the sex can wait a bit - not too long tho'.
- A surprising one: get the grammar and spelling right.
 
Let me amend my statement.

I see lots of advice in this thread about what is the maximum number of pages an "average" reader will tolerate. That might be the tactic you want (either the OP or anyone interested in this topic) - maximizing reads.

But what about quality? Is it such a foreign concept that a reader might get immersed in a story? That an author might want to tell the best story he/she can?

Personally, I wander all over the map. I have written short and hot, long winded story with just some sex. Sex with some good story. Short pieces that only allude to sex. They all find readers.

Rather than worry about story length (and I have been in contests with tight word count limits more than a few times), I'd rather worry about making the story as complete as possible. Be it 500 words or 10,000+.

While I do want my stories to get read, I don't consider word count as important as story elements or finding the right niche in which to post.
 
I agree that a story should be 'as long as it needs to be', in fact I doubt you will find anybody who disagrees that that. I think the original question was more asking how long a story should be before it is broken down into chapters rather than left whole.
 
Yes, but another dimension that doesn't seem to be getting much play is what is too long to attract a reader. "A story is as long as it needs to be" is a nice concept--from the author's point of view. But the decision to read a story is from a reader's point of view, not the authors'.

I suggest that this is why the question of length is a valid one to discuss. Are there volume limits to what will prompt a reader--most readers--not to even open a story? I think there probably are (I won't open one that's over two Lit. pages, for instance)--and that this is why longer pieces are best cut into digestible chunks so the reader can feel that they can read at least a purposefully cut chunk of a story in the time they normally have to do so in a single sitting.
 
True, that is a valid discussion. Unfortunately I don't think it's one that will have a particularly solid conclusion (as you argued strongly yourself in the discussion about reader demographics, it is impossible to know anything about readers for sure).

Personally I am quite particular about story length, specifically:

- I won't usually read anything that is only one lit page long, as personally I need longer than that to get into a story and its characters.
- I won't read anything that seems to be an unfinished serial. I like my stories to have a definite ending, I'm not big on soaps.
- I won't start to read even finished serials that are longer than 4 chapters. In my experience even the best written ones seem to ramble on and become stale after a while.

There are probably other people like me, but I know for sure there are others who think the exact opposite of all of the above. It seems no matter what length your story there will be people willing to read and vote on it.

I would be interested to hear what you think is the 'magic length' to maximise your views/votes/comments as I don't have the experience to know yet. I would assume it varies somewhat by category and theme. I know categories such as Incest, First Time and Interracial have a reputation (deserved or otherwise) of being 'stroke' categories where the reader will usually want a shorter story.
 
I tend to go by word count instead of pages in MS Word. Reason being depending on how you format your pages (e.g. font, font size, margins, and line spacing) it will either increase the number of pages or decrease the number of pages. As a general rule I find approximately for every 7 - 10 pages double spaced using 12 pt Times New Roman in MS Word, and 1" margins all around will mean approximate 1 page on Literotica. This means a 42 page typed story in word will most likely be somewhere between 5 - 6 pages on Literotica.

Moving on to answer you question, as a reader I feel if the story exceeds about 10,000 words or more than 3 pages on Literotica then the story should be broken down into chapter. I find that after reading 3 pages on Literotica, unless the story is well written I tend to loose interest in reading it. However, as an author I find 10,000 words can add enough detail for a story. Therefore my advice would be if the story is significantly more than 10,000 then I would consider writing the story in chapter format.
 
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