LIT pages?

[astuffedshirt_perv]

I just submitted a story that, on the submission page, has 4 measly lines on the second page.
Is this something the site can adjust for by just making page 1 a wee bit longer?

Or should I resubmit by cramming 8 paragraphs into 4?

 

[Ewobbit]

I had one to the same thing, with one line on page two. (Under another name)

I don't think it would be a big deal to have a four line runover. Especially if they are crucial lines. But, if it bothers you, you might scan for paragraphs that have one or two word wordwrap and see if you can trim enough adjectives to squeeze it that way.

 

[sr71plt]

Of all of the problems that exist, that one is in the sub-sub-sub-basement. What's the problem? I saw recently where someone had sent in a edit, trimming words to avoid it, and I thought "what a waste of Laurel's time that could be spent on clearing someone else's story for posting."

 

[HeyAll]

The preview size is different than the final posting. The preview size is a few lines shorter, so in my opinion, those 4 lines should be gone and the story would be reduced by a page. Just my opinion.

Personally, I keep track of a story's length so that it doesn't spill over to the next Lit page by a few lines. If it does, I edit it down.

 

[oggbashan]

...

Personally, I keep track of a story's length so that it doesn't spill over to the next Lit page by a few lines. If it does, I edit it down.

In the past I have tried editing down after preview when the story goes a few lines into a new page.

It usually needs more words removed than the word total of the overlap to trigger the change.

 

[Weird Harold]

I just submitted a story that, on the submission page, has 4 measly lines on the second page.
Is this something the site can adjust for by just making page 1 a wee bit longer?

Or should I resubmit by cramming 8 paragraphs into 4?

The problem is that Lit (probably) already extended the page to find a suitable break point. Whatever they set as a maximum page length, there will always be someone in your situation.

I've never been able to figure out the exact algorithm used to place page breaks. I do know it is based on character-count (somewhere around 14-15Kb) and there is some orphan control included. "Lit Pages" average 3767 words (according to MSWord's word count function) but the margin of error is around 400 words. Overhead, like HTML tags, paragraph breaks, and extra spaces count towards the page breaks, even though you don't see them onscreen.

I think SR has the right attitude: let be and go on to write your next story. (or if you MUST do something, add a thousand words or so to your story so that the last page is worth loading. )

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I agree with Pilot...what a waste of time. Your's and Laurel's. It's four messily lines. If a reader complains tell them to go to another site were they can read for free and anonymously.

 

[oggbashan]

I agree with Pilot...what a waste of time. Your's and Laurel's. It's four messily lines. If a reader complains tell them to go to another site were they can read for free and anonymously.

One of my stories overruns from page 1 to page 2 by a single short sentence. I ahven't bothered to change it.

 

[HeyAll]

I don't know about anyone else, but before I write, I think how many pages it's going to be.

If there's a plot or characters, I make it 3 pages. Everything else falls under 2 pages. Once and a while I'll make a 1 page sex story, but that's rare.

Then I write the appropriate amount of build up based on that.

 

[Handley_Page]

I just submitted a story that, on the submission page, has 4 measly lines on the second page.
Is this something the site can adjust for by just making page 1 a wee bit longer?

Or should I resubmit by cramming 8 paragraphs into 4?

You might consider writing a few more paragraphs, perhaps?

 

[Privates1stClass]

Weird Harold wrote:

I've never been able to figure out the exact algorithm used to place page breaks. I do know it is based on character-count (somewhere around 14-15Kb) and there is some orphan control included. "Lit Pages" average 3767 words (according to MSWord's word count function) but the margin of error is around 400 words. Overhead, like HTML tags, paragraph breaks, and extra spaces count towards the page breaks, even though you don't see them onscreen.

After doing some research on my own (cutting from a LIT page and pasting into a text editor), I've found that a full LIT page is 20,000 characters, plus or minus 500 characters. I recently submitted a story that had approximately 81,000 characters, and sure enough, it spilled over to 5 LIT pages on the preview before I submitted it. I cut out a few sentences, and at 79,500 characters, it fit into four LIT pages.

I hope this helps.

 

[legerdemer]

I betcha it has something to do with numbers of lines per page...

But I agree with Pilot as well. Save yourself some time and go on to your next story.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I don't know about anyone else, but before I write, I think how many pages it's going to be.

If there's a plot or characters, I make it 3 pages. Everything else falls under 2 pages. Once and a while I'll make a 1 page sex story, but that's rare.

Then I write the appropriate amount of build up based on that.

I write until the story is done. I don't think about pages or words or characters, I just tell the story. We're writers, not page layout technicians.

Just write the fucking story and damn the page count.

 

[astuffedshirt_perv]

Yeah, I just write until a break point occurs. I guess I'll see how it looks when it posts, sounds like it could be a little different than the submit page. Those 4 lines were a last-second questionable add anyway.

 

[JKendallDane]

One of my stories overruns from page 1 to page 2 by a single short sentence. I ahven't bothered to change it.

I have one of those also. I never bothered to do an edit because I figured I would end finding six words to cut out, but also end up adding another couple of paragraphs too, by second guessing myself. I just left well enough alone instead.

If that's all a reader can find to bitch about with your story, then you did better than most authors here.

.

 

[sr71plt]

I don't see any evidence that readers have complained about this. This seems like author nonsense to me.

 

[RejectReality]

It's not so much reader complaints as massive dropoff of eyes with every extra page number at the bottom.

What I usually do when something runs into another page only by a paragraph or two is note that in an author's note at the top of the story. I've had people tell me that made the difference between reading and clicking away, so it worked for me at least a couple of times.

 

[TxRad]

Since I find it hard to stay under four or five pages, i don't see the problem.

 

[Carnevil9]

This is a valid issue. The difference between one page and two pages is a 2:1 ratio. At least in the mind of the casual reader who doesn't want to bother to click to see how full the second page is.

If I'm reading an author that I already trust and like, fine. It can be a dozen pages. But if it is an author who I don't know, the difference between committing to a one-pager or a two-pager is huge. So it is a valid concern.

 

[sr71plt]

Only if you are obsessed by such minutia. And even there, more seem to complain about one-page stories than two-page ones, so you've probably hooked more readers if the story dribbles on to page two. If you've written the story you want to write and start going back and bothering (yourself and Laurel) with deletions to get rid of material to prevent dribbling over, you more than likely were too wordy to begin with. You certainly, I think, have compromised your work for a pretty silly reason.

 

[lovecraft68]

Only if you are obsessed by such minutia.

It seems many are just by going by some of the topics we see here. I do know someone here who said they won't read anything over one page and another who says if its not at least three they don't bother.

It comes down to the false assumption a one page story has to be a stroke piece and three or more means 'substance'

Bogus of course, I have a couple of six page stories here I would call stroke because its a whole lot of sex with very little conflict and there are one pagers here who manage to put a solid story into that short amount of space.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I was the one who recently did an edit (Pilot knows that, he's being polite) because TWO words went to a fourth page. You've got be fucking kidding, two words - put the page break after them, how hard can that be?

If it was a paragraph or two, no big deal, I'd have let it run. But two words just looked stupid by themselves on their own page. I thought WTF, readers would have thought WTF. Particularly given how long it takes to "turn" a page.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I was the one who recently did an edit (Pilot knows that, he's being polite) because TWO words went to a fourth page. You've got be fucking kidding, two words - put the page break after them, how hard can that be?

If it was a paragraph or two, no big deal, I'd have let it run. But two words just looked stupid by themselves on their own page. I thought WTF, readers would have thought WTF. Particularly given how long it takes to "turn" a page.

If it's so easy...write the code for it and send it to Manu. I'm pretty sure he would appreciate it. By the way, the pages are constructed on the fly. Just to give you a hint, the text is stored in a LOB column in the database.

The LOB datatypes BLOB, CLOB, NCLOB, and BFILE enable you to store and manipulate large blocks of unstructured data (such as text, graphic images, video clips, and sound waveforms) in binary or character format.

The maximum size of a LOB is 128 terabytes depending on database block size.

As for turning pages, when I go to the next page it's instantaneous, no wait, it's just there. The story side is fast, the BB side is slow, even in the this day and age where disk space and high speed servers are cheap.

 

[astuffedshirt_perv]

This is a valid issue. The difference between one page and two pages is a 2:1 ratio. At least in the mind of the casual reader who doesn't want to bother to click to see how full the second page is.

That's what I think as a reader, and this works the other way also: story was just getting interesting, on to page 2...WTF, 1 paragraph?

Anyway, I resubmitted and violated a few rules of grammar and squished dialog together...and the same freaking lines stay on the second page. So I just submitted it as it is.