Screen breaks in stories

Hi again, authors.

(sorry to be a pain, i could probably find this out myself)

My story which hasn't yet been submitted has about 9,000 words in it. I want to break it up into chapters, so that you don't get "part 2 3.." etc at the bottom.

I know it's not going to be an exact number, but does anyone know roughly the maximum number of words I should make each chapter to prevent this happening?

Is there a way to preview it?


I guess it doesn't really matter, but my own preference, is i like my sex short and sweet. (unlike my story, which is long and savoury )

thanks.

inkstain said:

Hi again, authors.

My story has about 9,000 words in it. I want to break it up into chapters, so that you don't get "part 2 3.." etc at the bottom.

I know it's not going to be an exact number, but does anyone know roughly the maximum number of words I should make each chapter to prevent this happening?

I guess it doesn't really matter, but my own preference, is i like my sex short and sweet. (unlike my story, which is long and savoury )

Click to expand...

A lot depends on what you write in. For me 12 pages is about two lit pages. So it would seem that about 6 pages in word is one lit page. Sorry I can't be more exact, but most of mine cover three ormore lit pages.

inkstain said:

Hi again, authors.

(sorry to be a pain, i could probably find this out myself)

My story which hasn't yet been submitted has about 9,000 words in it. I want to break it up into chapters, so that you don't get "part 2 3.." etc at the bottom.

I know it's not going to be an exact number, but does anyone know roughly the maximum number of words I should make each chapter to prevent this happening?

Is there a way to preview it?


I guess it doesn't really matter, but my own preference, is i like my sex short and sweet. (unlike my story, which is long and savoury )

thanks.

Click to expand...

It's a little over 3,000 words per Lit page (3,200, I think!). That, of course, depends on how much dialogue there is, and how many paragraphs.

I think you'd be pretty safe splitting up the 9,000 words into three chapters. The question now is: will the scenes comfortably split that way?

Lou

Re: Re: Screen breaks in stories

Colleen Thomas said:

A lot depends on what you write in. For me 12 pages is about two lit pages. So it would seem that about 6 pages in word is one lit page. Sorry I can't be more exact, but most of mine cover three ormore lit pages.

Click to expand...

Colly, do you have Word Count in your tools menu or is that a Mac thing? It would still not be an exact answer for inkstain because of margin settings and other variables, but it would provide an estimate.

Thanks, colleen, and tatelou.

I think i can make it into three chapters. I just need to have two more climaxes, that shouldn't be too hard!

inkstain said:

Thanks, colleen, and tatelou.

I think i can make it into three chapters. I just need to have two more climaxes, that shouldn't be too hard!

Click to expand...

Or, it will be very hard, depending upon which way you look at it.

Re: Re: Re: Screen breaks in stories

shereads said:

Colly, do you have Word Count in your tools menu or is that a Mac thing? It would still not be an exact answer for inkstain because of margin settings and other variables, but it would provide an estimate.

Click to expand...

thanks, shereads.

i have a word count. but you're right, it's a rough indicator. i look at it much too often sometimes when things are a bit slow in the old bonce department.

Tatelou said:

Or, it will be very hard, depending upon which way you look at it.

Click to expand...

yes, we wont go there (as my ex said to me much too often!) and nowadays i don't get to "look at it", let alone anything else, ergo the writing

Re: Re: Screen breaks in stories

Tatelou said:

It's a little over 3,000 words per Lit page (3,200, I think!). That, of course, depends on how much dialogue there is, and how many paragraphs.

Click to expand...

Lit's scripts actualy use the character count to create page breaks roughly every 14,000 characters. but even the character count in Word won't give a solid estimate because the scripts also look for the nearest Paragraph Break to place the actual split.

A Lit page averages 3,767 words (by Word's Word count function) but the way the page breaks are placed it's a plus or minus range of about 750 words.

If you wish to avoid Lit's scripts placing a page break in your story, then each submission should be less than 13,000 characters and/or less than 3,000 words -- as those are well below the break points Lit's scripts use.

Note: the random sampling of 100 multi-page Lit stories I used to arrive at those numbers was done about three years ago and the scripts have been revised at least once since then. The precise numbers may have changed, but they should still be close to accurate.

Re: Re: Re: Screen breaks in stories

shereads said:

Colly, do you have Word Count in your tools menu or is that a Mac thing? It would still not be an exact answer for inkstain because of margin settings and other variables, but it would provide an estimate.

Click to expand...

From mine, it seems to break around 3K words. I don't see any absolute number from the ones I looked at.

Longer story question

OK. You’ve got me hooked. I’m not sure whether it’s the rapier wit or the subject, but I must speak up and ask a question along the same lines. (And thanks for the humor, BTW)

I’m just finishing a longish story. Microsoft Word tells me it’s about 50,000 words. I think all the chapters are between 2700 and 4500 words, most right in the middle. Each of the chapters is relatively complete (in terms of finishing oneself by the end, I hope, as it is supposed to be erotica), but there is a story line that does come to a conclusion at the end of the last chapter. Jumping in at a later chapter might be confusing. Ergo, I’m thinking of submitting it as a whole.

If I do submit it as one piece, what are your random thoughts on publishing the story at Literotica? Should I ask for a chapter per week? If so, should I preface every chapter with a recommendation to begin at the beginning? I’ve asked this before, but none of the responses (and there were quite a few people who were generous with their thoughts) gave me an “Aha!” kind of reaction.

Still trying to figure it out.

Oh, and one other issue is bugging me. In a standard novel there are many breaks in a chapter, sometimes there's a squiggly thing, sometimes just space between sections in a chapter. How might I do that in one of my chapters? Would something like: = = = = work? Or would that just look silly left justified with all the other paragraphs?

Thanks for any assistance,

Carol

Re: Longer story question

Global Carol said:

I’m just finishing a longish story. Microsoft Word tells me it’s about 50,000 words. I think all the chapters are between 2700 and 4500 words, most right in the middle. Each of the chapters is relatively complete (in terms of finishing oneself by the end, I hope, as it is supposed to be erotica), but there is a story line that does come to a conclusion at the end of the last chapter. Jumping in at a later chapter might be confusing. Ergo, I’m thinking of submitting it as a whole.

Click to expand...

If you submit it in one piece, it gets one score and basically just the seven days it remains on the New Stories List to collect votes.

If you submit it in ten installments over ten weeks -- like a Saturday Morning Serial at the movies -- you have Seventy Days or so to attract readers and ten sperate scores to show you where the weak points in your story telling are.

If I do submit it as one piece, what are your random thoughts on publishing the story at Literotica? Should I ask for a chapter per week? If so, should I preface every chapter with a recommendation to begin at the beginning?

Click to expand...

I wouldn't preface each chapter with a note to start at Chapter one -- most people are bright enough to look for chapter one and read from the beginning.

One Chapter a week is a pretty slow pace and you're likely to get people champing at the bit and sending you feedback pleading for a new chapter. However, It's the pace that takes the maximum advantage of the seven day new stories listing for keeping your story in the top lists -- where most readers go to find a story to read -- and thus in the readers' notice longest.

Since the story is complete, you can pretty much decide the posting schedule for yourself. If you submit all ten chapters separately on the same day, Laurel will pace them at one chapter per day unless you request a different schedule in the comments.

Oh, and one other issue is bugging me. In a standard novel there are many breaks in a chapter, sometimes there's a squiggly thing, sometimes just space between sections in a chapter. How might I do that in one of my chapters? Would something like: = = = = work? Or would that just look silly left justified with all the other paragraphs?

Click to expand...

I use "***" -- an Ellipsis of asterisks -- for a chang eof scene of a time lapse within a chapter. That usage fits within the definition of an Elllipsis as a punctuation showing that "something is left out;" in this case, the time lapse or travel from one scene to another being what is "left out" of the story.