How long is too long

[Dark_Logan_]

If you’ll pardon the pun... how long is too long?

Looking for some advice, come feedback as I’ve just started hosting a story (my first here) that I’ve largely got prewritten so I find myself breaking it down to upload.

Any general advice and recommendation on suitable story length based on reader preferences.

My first two submissions have been 20k words and 23k words give or take (6 and 7 pages respectively)

Obviously I could upload more... but I’m concerned a story could be seen to be too weighty and may dissuade readers.

Equally at the current break down into bite size chunks I’m wondering if too many parts to the one story will be perceived as over kill. (Likely that I’ll run to about 10 parts at current run rate)

I won’t do the whole link thing because I’m not here to be self promoting, just looking for feedback from others on this matter.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Bramblethorn]

The story should be as long as it needs to be. There's no limit on story length here (or at least, none that you're ever likely to hit) and you're not getting paid for it, so you might as well focus on what feels right to you rather than trying to maximise viewers.

We discuss this pretty regularly on Authors' Hangout but I don't think we've ever conclusively established what the best way is to segment a story. If you post in lots of small chapters, you will see the view count drop off over the series, because some readers will decide it's not for them. If you post in one big piece, I suspect the exact same drop-off will occur, but you won't be able to measure it because you'll only get one view count for the piece.

200k words in ten parts is not unreasonable, IMHO.

 

[KeithD]

Too long is when readers disengage and waltz off before finishing reading the story. There is no way of knowing when that is going to happen until it has. And there's no one reader here, so "the reader" isn't going to do anything definitive for you about anything.

 

[SimonDoom]

Sounds like you are doing it the right way. You don't say how long the entire story is, or is expected to be.

The most common mistake people make in posting long stories broken into separately submitted chapters is that the chapters are too short. If you want to optimize reader response for a long, long story, make each submitted chapter at least 3 pages. You've done that. That's smart. Your chapters will get higher scores, as a result, and they'll be more successful over the long haul. There's an easily observable phenomenon at this Site that chapters/stories that are very short do not do as well.

There's no such thing as an overall story that is too long. Literotica readers have a history of accepting very long stories, so don't worry about that. I recommend publishing it in the form of chapters that are 3-6 Literotica pages long (where each Lit page = 3750 words).

 

[Kay_Evans100]

How is too long?

I have started to wonder about this as I submitted a new Chapter to my story and it has just been sitting pending for over 2 weeks now.

I just checked and it is 10,800 words so well within the sort of numbers being discussed here.

I checked with some other authors and their submissions are being turned around in 2 or 3 days - admittedly a lot shorter but I thought it was done in order of submission not length?

 

[KeithD]

I have started to wonder about this as I submitted a new Chapter to my story and it has just been sitting pending for over 2 weeks now.

I just checked and it is 10,800 words so well within the sort of numbers being discussed here.

I checked with some other authors and their submissions are being turned around in 2 or 3 days - admittedly a lot shorter but I thought it was done in order of submission not length?

Two weeks is too long. Something's wrong. Either you didn't really get it submitted or you are justified to query Laurel, the site submissions editor, via PM on whether it has fallen in the cracks.

 

[8letters]

If you’ll pardon the pun... how long is too long?
:
What are your thoughts?

I can give you thoughts, but there's nothing to back it up. I agree with SimonDoom on the length. Three pages seems to be the minimum to adequately immerse the reader into your erotic situation before reaching a satisfactory conclusion. But that is based on stand-alone stories. I have no idea how that applies to chapter stories. And every chapter story is different. Maybe a one-page chapter would be quite sufficient given the lead in from the prior chapter. Or a length that may or may not work for when you are publishing a chapter every so often may work better or worse once a reader is reading the series after it is all published.

So do whatever feels right to you.

 

[KeithD]

A successful story can be managed in one Lit. page. In fact, nearly all short story contests in the mainstream have maximum word limits that wouldn't go onto the next Lit page. If you're only writing for Lit, yes, verbosity is the norm. If you're hoping to write in the greater world, though . . .

 

[lovecraft68]

A successful story can be managed in one Lit. page. In fact, nearly all short story contests in the mainstream have maximum word limits that wouldn't go onto the next Lit page. If you're only writing for Lit, yes, verbosity is the norm. If you're hoping to write in the greater world, though . . .

So the entirety of the greater world of writing is short stories?

Crazy how all those thousands of novels keep making it onto the shelves. Someone must not be doing their job.

Or maybe the correct answer is in a short story contest there is a word limit, in everything else there is not?

Now if you'll excuse me I need to contact Stephen King and tell him there is no room for his verbosity in the writing world.

 

[KeithD]

So the entirety of the greater world of writing is short stories?

Crazy how all those thousands of novels keep making it onto the shelves. Someone must not be doing their job.

Or maybe the correct answer is in a short story contest there is a word limit, in everything else there is not?

Now if you'll excuse me I need to contact Stephen King and tell him there is no room for his verbosity in the writing world.

When the subject is short stories, then we're talking short stories. I specified "short stories," and I guess you're back to being the discussion board bully again. Fuck off. We're going to experience you in waves of gone mixed with being back and full of piss?

 

[SimonDoom]

A successful story can be managed in one Lit. page. In fact, nearly all short story contests in the mainstream have maximum word limits that wouldn't go onto the next Lit page. If you're only writing for Lit, yes, verbosity is the norm. If you're hoping to write in the greater world, though . . .

But keep in mind we're not talking about a short story here. The question is how to break up a long story. There's no need to ponder the strangeness of Literotica short story tastes. They are what they are, and to me, at least, if you've got a long story it makes sense to break it up in whatever way is going to get the best reception. Based on what I've seen breaking one's story into 10,000 or so word chapters makes a lot more sense than breaking it up into 3500 word chapters. That's just the way Literotica is.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I’ve got a 104k novel which ran across 17 chapters, each with a self contained plot element. It ran fine , and I can see the ebb and flow of readers across the whole thing.

 

[KeithD]

But keep in mind we're not talking about a short story here. The question is how to break up a long story. There's no need to ponder the strangeness of Literotica short story tastes. They are what they are, and to me, at least, if you've got a long story it makes sense to break it up in whatever way is going to get the best reception. Based on what I've seen breaking one's story into 10,000 or so word chapters makes a lot more sense than breaking it up into 3500 word chapters. That's just the way Literotica is.

We're not not speaking of short stories here, either. Neither you nor 8Letters differentiated between short stories, novelettes, novellas, and novels. 8Letters blanket says you can't develop a XXX (not excepting short story) in less than three Lit. pages, when you jolly well can develop a good short story in less than three Lit. pages and the mainstream mostly demands that you do. So, if your writing life is going to be contained in Lit., yes, it's fine to go with padding as many words as you can into it (because it's true that that will win you contests), but if you are planning to develop to writing short stories in the mainstream, you need to do some rethinking. I posted because verbosity is encouraged here without a reference to the real world, including in discussion posts.

 

[8letters]

We're not not speaking of short stories here, either. Neither you nor 8Letters differentiated between short stories, novelettes, novellas, and novels. 8Letters blanket says you can't develop a XXX (not excepting short story) in less than three Lit. pages, when you jolly well can develop a good short story in less than three Lit. pages and the mainstream mostly demands that you do. So, if your writing life is going to be contained in Lit., yes, it's fine to go with padding as many words as you can into it (because it's true that that will win you contests), but if you are planning to develop to writing short stories in the mainstream, you need to do some rethinking. I posted because verbosity is encouraged here without a reference to the real world, including in discussion posts.

Let's look at the numbers from my statistical analysis of stand-alone stories:
By number of pages:
[tr][td].[/td][td]

.​

[/td][td]

Average​

[/td][td]

Average​

[/td][td]

.​

[/td][td]

Average​

[/td][td]

Average​

[/td][td]

%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td].[/td][td]

.​

[/td][td]

# of​

[/td][td]

# of​

[/td][td]

Average​

[/td][td]

# of​

[/td][td]

F-K Grade​

[/td][td]

Stories​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]# of Pages[/td][td]

Count​

[/td][td]

Views​

[/td][td]

Favorites​

[/td][td]

Rating​

[/td][td]

Comments​

[/td][td]

Level​

[/td][td]

Red H​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]1[/td][td]

674​

[/td][td]

11.7K​

[/td][td]

10.5​

[/td][td]

3.93​

[/td][td]

3.3​

[/td][td]

8.5​

[/td][td]

6%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]2[/td][td]

312​

[/td][td]

17.0K​

[/td][td]

18.5​

[/td][td]

4.13​

[/td][td]

6.2​

[/td][td]

8.4​

[/td][td]

22%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]3[/td][td]

119​

[/td][td]

19.5K​

[/td][td]

28.4​

[/td][td]

4.21​

[/td][td]

9.7​

[/td][td]

8.4​

[/td][td]

41%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]4[/td][td]

61​

[/td][td]

17.3K​

[/td][td]

23.4​

[/td][td]

4.39​

[/td][td]

8.0​

[/td][td]

8.8​

[/td][td]

56%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]5[/td][td]

27​

[/td][td]

26.3K​

[/td][td]

34.8​

[/td][td]

4.32​

[/td][td]

19.5​

[/td][td]

8.1​

[/td][td]

46%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]6[/td][td]

25​

[/td][td]

19.7K​

[/td][td]

36.1​

[/td][td]

4.62​

[/td][td]

10.4​

[/td][td]

9.4​

[/td][td]

84%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]7[/td][td]

11​

[/td][td]

19.6K​

[/td][td]

45.4​

[/td][td]

4.58​

[/td][td]

9.5​

[/td][td]

8.8​

[/td][td]

82%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]8[/td][td]

8​

[/td][td]

26.9K​

[/td][td]

36.3​

[/td][td]

4.52​

[/td][td]

10.3​

[/td][td]

8.2​

[/td][td]

57%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]9[/td][td]

7​

[/td][td]

29.0K​

[/td][td]

60.1​

[/td][td]

4.72​

[/td][td]

33.1​

[/td][td]

7.6​

[/td][td]

100%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]10[/td][td]

3​

[/td][td]

79.5K​

[/td][td]

187.3​

[/td][td]

4.67​

[/td][td]

59.7​

[/td][td]

12.5​

[/td][td]

100%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]11[/td][td]

1​

[/td][td]

28.5K​

[/td][td]

30.0​

[/td][td]

4.59​

[/td][td]

7.0​

[/td][td]

9.7​

[/td][td]

100%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]12[/td][td]

2​

[/td][td]

22.4K​

[/td][td]

51.0​

[/td][td]

4.52​

[/td][td]

14.5​

[/td][td]

9.2​

[/td][td]

50%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]25[/td][td]

1​

[/td][td]

27.9K​

[/td][td]

32.0​

[/td][td]

3.66​

[/td][td]

88.0​

[/td][td]

6.2​

[/td][td]

0%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]26[/td][td]

1​

[/td][td]

6.1K​

[/td][td]

8.0​

[/td][td]

4.74​

[/td][td]

3.0​

[/td][td]

7.2​

[/td][td]

100%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]35[/td][td]

1​

[/td][td]

2.4K​

[/td][td]

6.0​

[/td][td]

3.68​

[/td][td]

4.0​

[/td][td]

5.5​

[/td][td]

0%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]----------[/td][td]

----​

[/td][td]

-----​

[/td][td]

----​

[/td][td]

----​

[/td][td]

---​

[/td][td]

----​

[/td][td]

----​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]All[/td][td]

1253​

[/td][td]

15.0K​

[/td][td]

17.1​

[/td][td]

4.07​

[/td][td]

5.8​

[/td][td]

8.5​

[/td][td]

20%​

[/td][/tr]

Ignoring the really long stories, one page stories get the fewest views, favorites and comments, and the lowest rating. And two-page stories doing the second worst. I define success as more views, favorites, comments and a higher rating. Whatever their flaws, those measures provide an objective way of assessing a story. KeithD, we all know you are a writing god. Maybe you can achieve success with a one-page story. But for us non-deities, writing three or more pages gives us our best chance at success.

 

[KeithD]

Sorry, I'm a writer, not a statistician of numbers on an Internet story site (which was the most polite response I could think to give).

 

[8letters]

Sorry, I'm a writer, not a statistician of numbers on an Internet story site (which was the most polite response I could think to give).

Well, let me give you a statistical analysis of your stories. The sr71plt account has published 1000 stories, one of which has voting turned off. Here's the stats based on the type of story:
[tr][td]Type[/td][td]

Average Rating​

[/td][td]

Count​

[/td][td]

% Red H​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]First Chapter[/td][td]

4.36​

[/td][td]

61​

[/td][td]

19.7%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]Later Chapter[/td][td]

4.42​

[/td][td]

293​

[/td][td]

35.5%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]Stand Alone[/td][td]

4.32​

[/td][td]

645​

[/td][td]

19.5%​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]-----[/td][td]

----​

[/td][td]

---​

[/td][td]

-----​

[/td][/tr][tr][td]All Stories[/td][td]

4.35​

[/td][td]

999​

[/td][td]

24.2%​

[/td][/tr]

So the average two-page stand-alone story is more likely to get a red H than your stand-alone stories.

 

[SimonDoom]

We're not not speaking of short stories here, either. Neither you nor 8Letters differentiated between short stories, novelettes, novellas, and novels. 8Letters blanket says you can't develop a XXX (not excepting short story) in less than three Lit. pages, when you jolly well can develop a good short story in less than three Lit. pages and the mainstream mostly demands that you do. So, if your writing life is going to be contained in Lit., yes, it's fine to go with padding as many words as you can into it (because it's true that that will win you contests), but if you are planning to develop to writing short stories in the mainstream, you need to do some rethinking. I posted because verbosity is encouraged here without a reference to the real world, including in discussion posts.

For the umpteenth time, you're getting on a bandwagon and not paying close attention to what people are really saying. The OP started this off with a question about a story that appears to have around 200K words, and he wants to know how long the chapters should be. That's it. This isn't about how long short stories should be. That's a different and completely unrelated issue that has nothing to do with anything I've posted on this thread.

I am well-read and am very well aware that the standard short story "out there" in the public publishing world is quite different from, and shorter than, stories that tend to do well here at Literotica. This fact seems to stick in your craw. It does not in mine. It's what it is. People come to Literotica to read stories for purposes that are different from the purposes that drive them to read stories in the New Yorker. When you accuse people of "padding" stories I think you're being unfair and inaccurate. They write stories that please them as authors and that please their readers. There's nothing wrong with that.

Like 8Letters, I believe there's knowledge in numbers. Statistics aren't everything, but they do give us a clue about what readers want, and, although that's certainly not everything, it's a piece of data that can inform us about whether we are doing our craft as writers in the best way possible. I don't believe one has to choose between the "do whatever you want and don't care about readers" school and the "write what your readers want" school. You can learn from both schools and keep getting better as a writer.

 

[KeithD]

Sorry, the art of writing isn't well informed by statistical analysis on readers at a porn site, most of whom come here to jerk off. I'll leave you two to believing this is the real world.

It wasn't the OP's topic that brought me to post. It was the assertion of what can be done for a successful story in less than three Lit. pages. It's simply nonsense--nonsense pushed at Literotica--that a good story requires that--or even a third of that--in wordage. A good writer can establish a character with no more than two well-chosen adjectives.

 

[8letters]

Sorry, the art of writing isn't well informed by statistical analysis on readers at a porn site, most of whom come here to jerk off.

You're just now figuring out that most of the readers come to Literotica to jerk off?

I'll leave you two to believing this is the real world.

People come to these forums for advice on writing stories for Literotica. Giving them advice on what they should do if they're entering a short story contest is not helpful.

It wasn't the OP's topic that brought me to post. It was the assertion of what can be done for a successful story in less than three Lit. pages. It's simply nonsense--nonsense pushed at Literotica--that a good story requires that--or even a third of that--in wordage. A good writer can establish a character with no more than two well-chosen adjectives.

It's hard to believe your claims of years and years of professional writing experience when you can't consistently write literotica stories that people actually like.

 

[GoofyRob]

My limit is about four pages unless it's an extremely interesting story.

 

[StrappingMan]

My long (and first) story is now up to 79.5k after 13 chapters. Being a newbie author I had made the double mistake of making the chapters too short in the beginning and not having the entire story ready when starting to submit them.

Due to that I think I have received a lot of one star reviews from perturbed readers as I had to take a four month hiatus where I could only work on the story from time to time.

Now that it is rolling out again I am getting pretty good ratings by fewer readers.

I do agree with SimonDoom that you need to keep the chapters close to the same length. If I had kept each chapter over 8k then I do think that the overall readership would have been more positive and there would have been at least 3 less chapters.

How long is too long? When the story no longer is interesting to you.

 

[lovecraft68]

You're just now figuring out that most of the readers come to Literotica to jerk off?


People come to these forums for advice on writing stories for Literotica. Giving them advice on what they should do if they're entering a short story contest is not helpful.


It's hard to believe your claims of years and years of professional writing experience when you can't consistently write literotica stories that people actually like.

Being you're a stats person.

When someone has 1000 stories over 10+ years but is on 2420 fav pages, that's 2.4 favs per story. Considering hundreds are in one category that shows that even in that category few are favoriting them.

Toss in the factor that some of the older stories have double digit favs from being around for yeas that means the newer ones have next to nothing.

Category-as in popularity-has no bearing on that. Yes, not every cat is I/T or LW or a couple others with heavy fav numbers, but when someone has triple digit story number and a decade in that name....well, what I'm saying is this isn't the person to listen to for what works here.

And here-Literotica-is where we are. The reason we have to endure the claims of real world success is we can all see the lack of it here so we need to go into make believe.

Now, years ago this person-when I first started selling-said there are ways to track i people are selling or not, a shot at me saying he'd know if I were having any success.

They're right, there are ways to track close enough to have an idea of what someone is doing in the market and...let's say its the same result as here.

So then we have to go further into the fairy tale of well he has mainstream success under pen names he'll never divulge here so no one can check on those.

At which point we can put stats aside and go with the common sense of no one with real mainstream success would spend all their time caring so much about how they're perceiver here and need constant affirmations-from themselves-about how great they are.

Those who have proved it to themselves have nothing to prove to others, those who haven't...keep trying to prove it.

 

[lovecraft68]

My long (and first) story is now up to 79.5k after 13 chapters. Being a newbie author I had made the double mistake of making the chapters too short in the beginning and not having the entire story ready when starting to submit them.

Due to that I think I have received a lot of one star reviews from perturbed readers as I had to take a four month hiatus where I could only work on the story from time to time.

Now that it is rolling out again I am getting pretty good ratings by fewer readers.

I do agree with SimonDoom that you need to keep the chapters close to the same length. If I had kept each chapter over 8k then I do think that the overall readership would have been more positive and there would have been at least 3 less chapters.

How long is too long? When the story no longer is interesting to you.

I did that. The first few chapters of my Siblings with benefits series I forced myself to stay within two pages. Then I got tired of that and went into three....a few chapters later I was posting 10 page chapters because I no longer cared about forcing a breaking point and didn't want the thing to end up 60 chapters(instead of the 39 it ended up)

There are people who will click off something when they see its above whatever number of pages they feel is worth a read, but others who don't care at all. Some look for longer pieces and I've had comments over the years with the "I usually don't read stories this long, but glad I did"

So my feeling and experience is its not worth fretting much about.

 

[Nakedart]

If you’ll pardon the pun... how long is too long?

Looking for some advice, come feedback as I’ve just started hosting a story (my first here) that I’ve largely got prewritten so I find myself breaking it down to upload.

Any general advice and recommendation on suitable story length based on reader preferences.

My first two submissions have been 20k words and 23k words give or take (6 and 7 pages respectively)

Obviously I could upload more... but I’m concerned a story could be seen to be too weighty and may dissuade readers.

Equally at the current break down into bite size chunks I’m wondering if too many parts to the one story will be perceived as over kill. (Likely that I’ll run to about 10 parts at current run rate)

I won’t do the whole link thing because I’m not here to be self promoting, just looking for feedback from others on this matter.

What are your thoughts?

Well from a reader point of view, i like long stories (120K), but i would not discount reading a story if its shorter but if under 1000 words i normally skip it i would say 10k - 20k is a good read , but as some have said it depends on the story tbh. i have read some good stories i wish was longer or had a part 2 and some i got 1/3 way in and stopped reading it, good luck with your story,
Nakedart

 

[Kay_Evans100]

Well from a reader point of view, i like long stories (120K), but i would not discount reading a story if its shorter but if under 1000 words i normally skip it i would say 10k - 20k is a good read , but as some have said it depends on the story tbh. i have read some good stories i wish was longer or had a part 2 and some i got 1/3 way in and stopped reading it, good luck with your story,
Nakedart

It is pointless writing a longer story for this site as they appear to be ignored.

I submitted a longer story and submitted it on 2nd February; today a month later it is still languishing pending review.

I have attempted to find out why but no emails or PMs are responded to.

For a site that is supposed to encourage erotic literature it seems they have lost that sense of purpose.

The previous parts to my story appear to have been well received and it was you the readers who encouraged to write a final Chapter. It is sad that having put many hours into that effort none of you will get to read it.