Chapterization in Lit stories

[KillerMuffin]

Is it just me or does it seem pretty much pointless to have "chapters" in a story with less than 2,000 words by the word processor?

 

[gauchecritic]

In a word yes.

Other than that I can see why some authors feel that a chapter break is needed. (A lot of the time is idleness and wanting to post before the story is complete)

But I'm guessing you mean within one post.

In which case, it seems that scene changes or time passage is favourite for chapters or even moving on to the next sex scene.

Maybe they use it as a reading 'breather' or possibly that's where they stopped typing for an hour.

Gauche

Frivolity here, ignore at will. What is 2000 words? According to typing speed manuals a word is 3 key strokes.

 

[Guest]

I agree with you both. I wanted my stories to be simply numbered as they are a series but they got labeled chapters.
P

 

[Weird Harold]

Is it just me or does it seem pretty much pointless to have "chapters" in a story with less than 2,000 words by the word processor?

In general, yes.

But it depends on the story and why the author used "chapters."

 

[KillerMuffin]

They got labeled chapters to preserve the uniformity of the index pages. There are tons of different ways to label the various "parts" that you can cut a story into when you have different webpages, but since parts at Lit means parts with internal chapters, chapters became the primary cut it up stuff.

I meant within a story. I just read one that ran 1600ish words in the processor and had 4 chapters.

 

[Guest]

Thank you amazingly informative KM; guess I'll stick w/chapters.

Perdita

 

[Guest]

categories

The only reason that I can see for having a story split if it is smaller than 2000 words is for the categories covered for the various combos of sex in the story.

I have one story I would like to pull down and repost as one story rather than the 4 "chapters". I originally posted it serially as I wrote it. The dilemma is whether to mess with it or not.

b

 

[Quasimodem]

I have been doing a bit of investigating about the layout on Literotica.

It seems that one can count on a page break every 16k characters. Depending upon word length, that means from (lowest word count) 3584 words to (highest word count) 3874 words before a page break is inserted.

Part of the difference, seems to be, because Laurel takes care not to allow a page break to fall in the middle of a paragraph.

Two questions:

[1] - - What is the absolute maximum amount of characters one can possibly squeeze onto one page?

[2] - - Is there any signal available – or one that can be initiated – to operate like a [Forced Page Break] in a word processor?

This would allow the writer to break a single entry into (approximately) page-length chapters. This would be one reason for breaking a longer story into chapters (page lengths) within the full-length file.

Before someone states the obvious, I understand that one would have to write chapters, or sections, of nearly the full page length, but that would allow the writer some small control over where the section separations fall.

Of course, this doesn't answer KM's original question about a 2,000 word story, but this seemed to be the place to post these observations, for comment.


Although this was by no means a terribly analytical investigation, nor was it exhaustive, but one thing I did notice. Choosing, at first, only stories - in various categories - that won an "H" to see what the popular stories were be doing 'right'. I noticed that most were no longer than one page. Quite a few were substantially shorter.

Except for one 'H' rated story which covered ten (10) pages. [Approx. 160k characters or approx 35,000 words.]

No hard and fast rule, but a trend to investigate.

 

[Guest]

I have been doing a bit of investigating about the layout on Literotica.

Although this was by no means a terribly analytical investigation, nor was it exhaustive, but one thing I did notice. Choosing, at first, only stories - in various categories - that won an "H" to see what the popular stories were be doing 'right'. I noticed that most were no longer than one page. Quite a few were substantially shorter.

Except for one 'H' rated story which covered ten (10) pages. [Approx. 160k characters or approx 35,000 words.]

No hard and fast rule, but a trend to investigate.

I think the voting public likes short and hot.

but I could be wrong

b

 

[Quasimodem]

I think the voting public likes short and hot.

but I could be wrong

b

Attention deficit, or premature ejaculation

 

[Madame Manga]

Don't get me started. On the fan fiction forums I look at, a "chapter" is often three paragraphs. It's how much the author happened to type before she had to get up for a pee, that's all. Naturally she posted it at once, before inspiration loss or spell checkers could intervene.

My chapters on forums are about 2500 words, because that's all that fits in a forum post. Otherwise, they are 8K to 15K. Yeah, chapters, not whole stories. ;-) That's one reason why I haven't posted many of those stories here!

MM

 

[Weird Harold]

[1] - - What is the absolute maximum amount of characters one can possibly squeeze onto one page?

[2] - - Is there any signal available – or one that can be initiated – to operate like a [Forced Page Break] in a word processor?

I've done a similar sampling of the page layout at Lit and came to roughly the same conclusions.

I use a word count of 3700 as the nominal Lit page length, although you're correct that is primarily based on the number of characters backed up to the previous paragraph break. It's done automatically by the scripts and there's apparently an Orphan Paragraph feature that can extend a page beyond the nominal target of 25Kb (including banners, headers and footers.)

I've never bothered to try and control where a story breaks, because it's difficult to be exact and only really necessary if you want to put a "cliff-hanger" at the end of a page for some reason.

If I were going to try to put a cliff-hanger at the end of a page, I'd set the page length in my word processor so I got a page break where Lit put one in a previously posted story. (about 3.5 times my normal page length, IIRC, but I don't use the default margin settings in MS Word.) You'd ned to adjust margins and page length to get the same line length and page length as a previously posted story on Lit and then test it against a collection of sample stories to see how well it matches up.

Since almost every author has a preferred font and font size that works best for their monitor, this is a process that would have to be done individually to suit unless you are willing to use 12 pt Verdana with 7.0 inch margins for all of your writing for Lit.

(Note: setting a page length longer than 11.5 inches in MS Word requires a custom paper type for your printer so word thinks it's an endless roll without perforations. Some printers have a Banner Paper option that allows for endless page lengths, but many don't.)

 

[The_old_man]

The one story that I broke into chapters had a word count of about 13k. I broke it where it would still read as a chapter, rather than let the scrips break it.

I have another story about the same length that I am still editing to break into chapters.

 

[Guest]

emission intermission

Attention deficit, or premature ejaculation

Or perhaps intermissions for appropriate clean up?

 

[Pookie]

Re: emission intermission

Or perhaps intermissions for appropriate clean up?

I sometimes get the "I came three times" type feedback. Maybe we could have a new rating system ... orgasms per pages read?

I don't really see the point of breaking up a story into chapters that is under 2000 words . My chapters tend to be no less than 5000 words, with most being much more. A story under 2000 words broken up into chapters would probably seem very "choppy" while reading it. But I may be biased as I tend to enjoy long stories more anyways.

Pookie

 

[Rainbow Skin]

I've had several that go over one page. Haven't felt the need for chapters yet.

Once I exchanged e-mails with Laurel about an issue, and happened to mention I didn't want the last line of page 1 as the first line on page 2; but she said it was automatic, out of her control.

* * *

The next morning, I inserted three asterisks and began what some might call chapter two of the current reply.

I really dislike page 2 consisting of the last four or five lines, and as the cut-off is automatic, I now post stories in Preview mode and see what it does to the pagination. My most recent one I had to edit to remove enough material to get those last five lines drawn back onto page 1.

I've been assuming everyone will see the page breaks at the same places I do.

 

[Quasimodem]

Please tell me if I am wrong, but I have been assuming that the number in the character count would not change, no matter what font the author is using, even if he uses one similar to the top line in an eye chart.

So many characters to the page, determine - depending upon average word length - the average number of words per page.

Also, just for argument’s sake, if Laurel will end a page at 2,000 words, because that is the end of the story, why would she be averse to decreasing the page length to (for example) 3,000 words per chapter, if that was how the author determined that the story best works.

It's not as if doing this wasted paper, or memory, or screen size. It just meant that the page breaks came at what (at least the author) imagines are the story’s aptest points.

Unless some author conceives that their work should be split up in 100 word blocks, I can foresee no especial drawback to this type of format.

If the chapters flow more legibly, the author will be better satisfied, the readers will be undisturbed if breaks fall at their most appropriate time, and Laurel can have no real objection to a practice which adds banners to an increased number of top/bottom’s of chapters, which are of shorter length, thus receiving a greater exposure for her advertising banners.

Can she?

The only difference to Laurel, would be that more advertising banners would show oftener, at the beginning of each shorter chapter length.

Provided this is employed to improve the readability, rather than fragments the story, how is this - for Laurel, for the writer, or for the reader - a bad thing?

 

[Rainbow Skin]

This site is programmatically complicated, but you very rarely see improvements or even changes in how things are done. I don't think they've got the time or expert capacity to implement good ideas. Other sites I'm on have changed significantly in the last twelve months; this is virtually unchanged in structure, despite, e.g. navigation being a pig.

<- pig (or closest available)

 

[MathGirl]

How many words?

I must be missing something. Without manually counting, how do you know how many words your story is? I use WordPad, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't count words. It doesn't spell check, either.
MG

 

[Pookie]

I use MS Word which has an option that displays things like how many words are in a document. I don't know if there is any freeware/shareware tools that you could use with a text file to do the same. I bet there is though.

Pookie

 

[Quasimodem]

How many words?

I must be missing something. Without manually counting, how do you know how many words your story is? I use WordPad, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't count words. It doesn't spell check, either.
MG

MathGirl

I use WordPerfect.

By checking under 'Properties' I can learn the character count, the word count, the sentence count, the line count, the paragraph count, and the page count (WordPerfect pages, as set up) plus the average word length, the average words per sentence, and the maximum number of words per sentence. This last feature is useful if you are still trying to overcome a tendency to write long ‘muthering’ sentences after the fashion of Charles Dickens, only not so acute.

A spell checker, which is only misleading about 60 percent of the time, and a grammar aid, which tries to mislead you 80 percent of the time, but at least brings the possible error to your attention.

Then, of course, there are the countless errors that spell checker’s and grammatiques have not been able to solve - English is such a uniform language!

Really, MathGirl, you should have some word processor that is more usefull than Notepad.


This url will take you to the Free Word Processors which can be downloaded from CNET.com


http://download.com.com/3120-20-0-1...unt=&daysback=&swlink=&os=&li=49&dlsize=&ca=

This is 'Free' as in 'no charge,' as opposed to 'Free' as used on the internet to mean, 'we won't charge you to sign up, but we will charge you for the service' free!

 

[gauchecritic]

Re: How many words?

I must be missing something. Without manually counting, how do you know how many words your story is? I use WordPad, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't count words. It doesn't spell check, either.
MG

I start most stories on Wordpad as it is the easiest to access, when it comes time to save the work the prog. asks if I want to save it in Word instead. I click yes. Word has counting thing.

My first story for Lit turned into a series. One of the reasons it became a series was that at the end of each part I was 'exhausted' and it seemed to be a good place to end. Hopefully each part of the story is singly enjoyable. Each part has a different title with a parenthesised sub-title link.

The other main reason for the serialisation was that I included hints and side-tracks which I couldn't leave alone.

Gauche

 

[KillerMuffin]

The scripts doesn't count in words. It counts in characters and lines. You get so many characters per line and so many lines per page. It can do word wrap, so a word isn't cut in the middle because it chooses to cut a line based on the token--the space--rather than because it ran out of room for characters.

She could manually get into the webpage, one would think, to alter the text. But that would be time-consuming and she would have to offer that service to every story. There are simply too many stories to do that.

This is one of the restrictions on posting in the web medium where an editor is responsible for updating the archive. You have to automate as much as possible in order to have stories put up in a timely fashion. I was here prior to the automated script system. We emailed the stories and about five or six weeks later they showed up. Now it's five or six days.

 

[cahab]

Attention deficit, or premature ejaculation

I don't have any attention deficit problems that I know of, but I definitely get frustrated by long Lit stories. I get bored very easily, much easier I think than I would get in actual print.

I think the problem is the medium, rather than the message.

Maybe we could include an option to display all of a story in one chunk for printing purposes, if the authors were agreeable?

 

[Quasimodem]

You can always cut and paste to the word processor of your choice, and the let your printer rip !!!!

But, oh my God, the Trees! The Trees!

How about a special printer that types out the stories on facial tissues.

That way, one could wipe up after oneself, when finished reading.