Multi-part story question (non-erotic chapters)

[Nezhul]

Hello, I'm currently writing a long-ish story that I plan to break into several chapters.
My question is this: Is it okay if the first chapter doesn't have sex in it? I tend to not cut corners on the plot, when I'm writing (because I actually write mainly for the plot), and I have a rather long introductory scene that is just long enough to be a chapter. I'm afraid that If I bunch it up with what's planned for ch.2 - it will be too long, I ideally want to limit it to 1-2 lit pages per chapter, and release them all at once or in quick succession.

My first chapter still has a lot of action. The story is non-con about slave auction, and it basically depicts the heroine arriving on the facility and being processed. It is erotic if you are into it, but only just.

Should I make longer chapters so that each chapter has something explicitly sexy in it?
Should I make shorter, more readable chapters that may end up not having sex at all?
Or maybe I should release all of it as one bulk of a text, 10-15 lit pages long?

I would appreciate your thoughts.

 

[sr71plt]

If your chapters rarely go over one Lit. pages, expect complaints in comments at Literotica--and a few even if they don't go very long onto page two. Conversely, Lit. readers don't seem to mind fifteen Lit. pages at one go, ignoring the general publishing understanding that short stories are meant to be able to be read in one sitting. In fact, the Lit. rating structure seems to favor godawfullong one-chunk postings.

Initially in the published world of erotica, publishers' guidance was that every chapter have sex in it, yes. That doesn't seem to be an expectation at Literotica.

I'm not in favor of defensive explanatory slugs on top of stories/chapters, but this is a case where many here would want you to put an explanation on top of chapter one that nonconsent material comes in later. Starting in nonerotic for over a chapter and then moving to nonconsent would seem to be the extreme case of "you didn't tell me what I was getting into."

Haven't seen what you've written but chances are good that if I did I'd find too much background and extraneous "kitchen sink" material and too little of the main category of your story up front, causing a structural problem.

 

[Ldy_Sea]

Leave it how it is. I've read some really good stories on here that had little to no sex. I have a series that starts with the main characters being underage, so of course their is only one extremely erotic kiss but no sex.

I did put an authors note at the begining to inform readers that there isn't any sex in that chapter.

To compare this chapter to chapter two where my heroine loses her virginity

Both chapters were posted within a day of each other.

Ch. 01 Posted: 5/6/12 Rating: 3.95 Votes: 122 Views: 27,827 Comments: 2

Ch. 02 Posted: 5/7/12 Rating: 4.12 Votes: 128 Views: 21,033 Comments: 0

Based on these stats I would say go ahead and post it as is.

 

[Nathan_Brazil]

My 2 cents

Most of my favourite authors are low-sex practitioners. For me, what goes on in their heads is what is truly erotic.

One handers are okay, once in awhile, but there will always be time in my life for a compelling story.

Take your time and write for people who will dig what you want to write. Or...write cheap smut and watch your page views sail and your brain cells die.

 

[sr71plt]

I agree that you should write what you want to write, but I'll point out that this is an erotica story site. Don't expect a whole lot of readers not to understand that just because we have some writers on the AH trying to sell the notion that sex doesn't matter much here.

 

[8letters]

I'd suggest posting it as one big story.

My guess is that the first chapter gets the most reads of any chapter. If you post the first chapter in non-erotic, I would assume you're not going to get a lot of views/votes/comments because most people come to this site for erotic stories.

When you post chapter two in non-con, people there are going to say, "I haven't read Chapter one, so I'll not bother with this one." You're going to have a small audience.

I've only posted a few stories, so here is my little experience:
I posted Heather & Michael Ch 01 on 7/19/13. 2 pages. Kissing and groping in story, but no sex. 4.43 score, 992 votes, 110610 views, 10 comments
I posted Heather & Michael Ch 02 on 7/23/13. 2 pages. Sex in story. 4.63 score, 921 votes, 96410 views, 20 comments
I posted Cruise Doubledate With My Sister on 4/29/15. 9 pages. 4.69 score, 946 votes, 90914 views, 36 comments

My 3-4 page stories have a lot more votes and views than the any of the above stories.

 

[Nezhul]

I'm not in favor of defensive explanatory slugs on top of stories/chapters, but this is a case where many here would want you to put an explanation on top of chapter one that nonconsent material comes in later. Starting in nonerotic for over a chapter and then moving to nonconsent would seem to be the extreme case of "you didn't tell me what I was getting into."

I'm planning to post everything in a non-consent category. Because even if there is no sex in chapter one, it is erotic to a point, what with people bound, dragged to the rooms and forced to strip naked, and it is definitely non-con. And yes, there will be a foreword, describing what the readers may and may not expect in the story, as well as a disclaimer. For example, even if there is torture in the story, I will not write about blood, injury, beatings or heavy bruising. It will basically be something that you could see in harder BDSM porn like insex - at most - and most of the times it will be milder than that.

Haven't seen what you've written but chances are good that if I did I'd find too much background and extraneous "kitchen sink" material and too little of the main category of your story up front, causing a structural problem.

Believe me, even without sex, what you see up front in my story is very relevant to the non-con category. There's no long backstory about what happens before and how the heroines life was. There's like, two or three paragraphs. So I don't expect someone to be bored. To the plot I have in mind, the first impressions of slave processing/auctioning facility are important to establish the atmosphere. It would be quite silly, unrealistic, if the first thing such an organization did was raping the victim.

Again, guys. It's not about what I want to write and how I want to write it. I'm always writing and posting only stories that I find exciting myself. The question is about how should I post it, not where do I post it or what I write. I saw two good suggestions for now - to post it as a single piece or, if it is to be chapters, to make them closer to 2-3 lit pages long.

Conversely, anyone knows how many words/characters is a lit page? How do I measure it before posting?

 

[Ldy_Sea]

Of course you could always start with the rape then do a flashback to how it all started. This would make the strolers happy and put a sex scene up front, but I dislike doing that unless I wrote myself where I need to explain something that I dodn't know was going to happen.

 

[sr71plt]

Conversely, anyone knows how many words/characters is a lit page? How do I measure it before posting?

For my stories, a Lit. page is consistently about 3,750 words.

 

[NotWise]

Should I make longer chapters so that each chapter has something explicitly sexy in it?

I don't have a lot of experience, but the experience I do have says that people will read and enjoy sections of a story with or without sex. You may have some trouble keeping some readers engaged, and probably the story shouldn't end without sex.

Should I make shorter, more readable chapters that may end up not having sex at all?

There's no reason I know of that the chunks of stories that you post should consist of one and only one chapter, or even that a chunk of the story as posted must have sex. The best advice I've read on the length of a chapter is that it should be as long as it takes to tell the story. The Literotica readers seem to have a pretty clear preference for longer chunks -- say, two Lit pages or more. You can write the chapters any way you want and still please the readers by including more than one chapter in a posted chunk of the story.

Or maybe I should release all of it as one bulk of a text, 10-15 lit pages long?

I haven't tried that, but more experienced writers than I say that it works for them.

 

[Nezhul]

Of course you could always start with the rape then do a flashback to how it all started. This would make the strolers happy and put a sex scene up front, but I dislike doing that unless I wrote myself where I need to explain something that I dodn't know was going to happen.

I'm not planning to change my stories that way to try to suck up to certain readers. I want my free stories to be just as I want them. Story, plot, immersion - come first. Sex scenes second. It's just like any other book for me - each book needs a start.