Do you split into different series

[Husband18]

Is it better to do parts 1,2,3 etc of a story or split into different story’s that tell a sidebars and a wider story or in my case a journey?
My stories are mostly non-fiction with a decent amount of fiction mixed in?

 

[anthrodisiac]

If you have a main story, probably best to keep that as a single submission or a series of chapters. But if you have side stories that could be read separate from that main series, I'd split those off into either something like chapter 6.5 or as a completely separate submission if you can read it without needing the rest of the series.

 

[THBGato]

I think the question is: do readers need to read all parts in order to understand all parts? If so, create a series.

If each story could stand alone, I would say make them separate stories but drop an author's note at the end (with hyperlink to other relevant stories).

For example, at the end of Loving Wives, I put this note:

Lots of the side characters here have their own stories. If you're interested, Nadine, Mel, Priya, Kate and Leila all first appear in The Third Date. Marama and Luna first appear in What a difference a day makes... Twenty tells Mikayla, Poppy and Lauren's story, while Thirty tells that of Jane and María. Suzy and Clara, who made a brief appearance, first appeared (briefly) in Eve & Lucy and then more significantly in Clara and the Star. Dr James & Dr James' story is told in Pygmalion 3.0. Keisha I borrowed from DawnDuckie's random wanderings.

You didn't need to have read any of those for Loving Wives to make sense. In my author bio I give a recommended reading order for those who want to avoid spoilers.

 

[RejectReality]

If it's a genuine multi-part story where you need to read part 1 to understand what's happening in part 2, then it's almost irrelevant how you present it. People willing to read long stories don't seem to have a significant preference between a single long submission or parsing it out into chapters.

If it's a series of connected stories that each have their own beginning, middle, and end, but which have a chronology, then use the series feature, give them all individual titles, and use the series feature to group them in chronological order. People are more willing to give complete, connected stories a chance than a single long narrative.

( Manually created series have low priority and may take a long time to approve. Adding the existing stories to it and then using the button on the submission form to add new entries as they are submitted may speed things up. You may have to preview new submissions and then go back to "make changes" before the series button shows up on the submission form )

 

[ElectricBlue]

Is it better to do parts 1,2,3 etc of a story or split into different story’s that tell a sidebars and a wider story or in my case a journey?
My stories are mostly non-fiction with a decent amount of fiction mixed in?

It's not clear from your post whether each chapter or part is stand-alone, or whether the whole thing only makes sense when read in the correct sequence. If it's the former, the Manual Series is handy, to cluster them together but with, for example, different titles.

If it's a single chaptered story, the site's auto-sequencing algorithm works fine:

Story Title
Story Title Ch.02
Story Title Ch.03

will automatically join them up, and you don't need to create a series, the site does it for you.

It depends what you're doing with each bit. Check out my story list for a bunch of different examples.

 

[liliput1]

There are a number of successful authors here who publish 1-4 chapter stories in a common universe, and occasionally a bit longer.

It does get a little weird though when chapter 3 of one series happens between chapters 4 and 5 of another. It's probably best if you don't have to read the stories all in the exact chronological order to enjoy them.

In real life you have to take things like "I had a bad breakup and it still affects me" on faith for a time until you finally get the full story out of that person. You can have the readers find out on the same timeline as one of your characters, particularly if that makes the storylines less entangled. Just be careful about spoilers.

 

[Husband18]

Its all about the journey as a stag but many different stories.
Like starting off is about my first GF as part of the journey that kicks it off, and multiple stories as part of the journey but could be its own story. I have been blessed with many events that have got me to being a stag.
Then progresses over a span of 30 years, but not 30 years of stories, but multiple chapters of a lot of events that some could be their own stories. I say this because a lot of stories I have read are mostly about 1-5 intense situations, and my journey has a lot more than that. My stag journey is about 70% non-fiction, and I want to do parts, but for readers that seems a bit wasteful to keeping repeating things, if I do multiple stories and not parts, like descriptions of myself, or the people I am writing about, but overall the stories or parts meet at the finish line.

I just dont want to bore people by reading the same descriptions of stuff many times covered in multiple stories.
I want to do a chronological order of stories, but also want to entice readers upfront with the end result of my journey as a stag married to a submissive wife, which I lead on about in the first tester story I posted.

I have so many hot and you could say fetish stories that would likely generate a lot on interest especially since there is more non-fiction than fiction.

Advice?

 

[anthrodisiac]

Its all about the journey as a stag but many different stories.
Like starting off is about my first GF as part of the journey that kicks it off, and multiple stories as part of the journey but could be its own story. I have been blessed with many events that have got me to being a stag.
Then progresses over a span of 30 years, but not 30 years of stories, but multiple chapters of a lot of events that some could be their own stories. I say this because a lot of stories I have read are mostly about 1-5 intense situations, and my journey has a lot more than that. My stag journey is about 70% non-fiction, and I want to do parts, but for readers that seems a bit wasteful to keeping repeating things, if I do multiple stories and not parts, like descriptions of myself, or the people I am writing about, but overall the stories or parts meet at the finish line.

I just dont want to bore people by reading the same descriptions of stuff many times covered in multiple stories.
I want to do a chronological order of stories, but also want to entice readers upfront with the end result of my journey as a stag married to a submissive wife, which I lead on about in the first tester story I posted.

I have so many hot and you could say fetish stories that would likely generate a lot on interest especially since there is more non-fiction than fiction.

Advice?

You don't need to do a ton of description. Honestly, a lot of stories benefit from having more vague descriptors of characters/people so the reader can fill in the details themselves with however they want to imagine it. For the side stories, only focus on details that are absolutely pertinent to that side story, the ones that, if they were absent, would make the story harder to understand. Everything else can be chucked. People who've read the main series can see things that people who didn't will miss, but those who didn't read the main series will still be able to follow the story for the most part.

 

[Husband18]

So for what I am trying to achieve make separated stories that stand on their own and some notes in chronological order . Don’t repeat very descriptive paragraphs and do link other stories as a baseline to not repeat in side stories.
Write in chronological events with maybe some notes as above mentioned. But yet tell the story. ?

 

[Husband18]

Last thing how should I name the stories? Make new names that only reflect the current story or reflect the series of stories?

 

[StillStunned]

I think most of these questions are probably best answered during writing. Allow yourself flexibility, write organically, see what works best in the moment.

Stories take on a life of their own. If you commit too early to a particular structure, you might find yourself trying to reconcile the two.

 

[Husband18]

Thank you so much. I have learned a lot and being a week old writer but always want to do this and got the guts to share now. I greatly appreciate even one’s feed back and hope my stories not only excite others but also give others the courage to tell their own stories. We are not alone!

 

[Writer61]

Is it better to do parts 1,2,3 etc of a story or split into different story’s that tell a sidebars and a wider story or in my case a journey?
My stories are mostly non-fiction with a decent amount of fiction mixed in?

It is not completely clear what you are thinking of, but what I do might help.

I mostly write in series set in a single universe. Most notably, there are three episodic series that tell the story of Adam at different stages of his life; each story in each series could be read out of sequence (though I don't recommend that). Whereas the two series describing Laura's life should definitely be read in sequence. Within the Adam and Laura series, there is a little overlap, but it is not necessary to have read the other.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Its all about the journey as a stag but many different stories.
Like starting off is about my first GF as part of the journey that kicks it off, and multiple stories as part of the journey but could be its own story. I have been blessed with many events that have got me to being a stag.
Then progresses over a span of 30 years, but not 30 years of stories, but multiple chapters of a lot of events that some could be their own stories. I say this because a lot of stories I have read are mostly about 1-5 intense situations, and my journey has a lot more than that. My stag journey is about 70% non-fiction, and I want to do parts, but for readers that seems a bit wasteful to keeping repeating things, if I do multiple stories and not parts, like descriptions of myself, or the people I am writing about, but overall the stories or parts meet at the finish line.

I just dont want to bore people by reading the same descriptions of stuff many times covered in multiple stories.
I want to do a chronological order of stories, but also want to entice readers upfront with the end result of my journey as a stag married to a submissive wife, which I lead on about in the first tester story I posted.

I have so many hot and you could say fetish stories that would likely generate a lot on interest especially since there is more non-fiction than fiction.

Advice?

What you describe sound similar to my current WIP.

It is a fictionalized recollection of relationships that a guy has had over his lifetime. My approach is to write the whole thing, and then once it is complete, decide how or when to break it up.

There can sometimes be a fine line between redundancy and continuity in a story. Keeping it whole until the end allows for the best determination of each factor.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I have so many hot and you could say fetish stories that would likely generate a lot on interest especially since there is more non-fiction than fiction.

That's not a discriminator, whether it's truth or fiction. To be frank, readers can't tell the difference, if the writing is good enough.

It's the quality of writing that matters, not whether it's true or not.

I've got a bunch of stories here where readers have commented, "Thank you both for sharing," which means they thought the story was autobiographical; whereas both characters where completely fictional. I've got other stories which start of as true anecdotes and then become fantasy, but I'd challenge readers to identify the sentence or paragraph where the true recount stops and the fantasy story kicks in.