Getting shorter stories through

[CottonCandyLvr]

Hello, I'm a new author and my first three stories published but now the next four which very similar to the first three, have being too short and not developed enough. They are each an encounter between my two characters and I give a brief recap of who they are at the beginning. I haven't counted the words but they all are similar in length as well. Any ideas for me? I wrote the stories sic months ago and and am not feeling motivated to go back and work them, especially because I don't exactly know what to change. Guidance?

 

[yukonnights]

Hello, I'm a new author and my first three stories published but now the next four which very similar to the first three, have being too short and not developed enough. They are each an encounter between my two characters and I give a brief recap of who they are at the beginning. I haven't counted the words but they all are similar in length as well. Any ideas for me? I wrote the stories sic months ago and and am not feeling motivated to go back and work them, especially because I don't exactly know what to change. Guidance?

The only thing that comes to mind is to combine them into one...but perhaps use page breaks and an indication that they are different scenes. This may not work in your particular case, but since they all use the same two characters it seems doable.

 

[Alice_Rosaleen]

Scrap or Recycle

Or save for later. Sometimes a story won't move forward until you do. And exposition/recap about your characters or the past events doesn't count towards content unless it's believably incorporated into dialog or narrative. Otherwise you're stretching to fill the page. Stories can be any length as long as they're fully realized.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I wrote the stories sic months ago and and am not feeling motivated to go back and work them, especially because I don't exactly know what to change. Guidance?

If you're not motivated, why bother?

Why would you expect readers to be interested in something when you're not? I'd say put it in the bin or your seconds file.

 

[SamScribble]

I just went and had a quick skim of a couple of the stories that you have already posted. My question is: Why are you writing? For yourself? Or for a reader base that you would like to develop?

What you have written so far strikes me as being a bit half-arsed – as if you couldn’t quite be bothered. And yet you seem to have pulled in a few readers. I imagine that, if you put in a bit more effort, you could do OK. You could develop a bit of a following.

And, as for length, there’s nothing wrong with short stories – just as long as they are well done. And that usually means paying attention to the craft of story-telling and to the craft of writing. Of course, only you know if you can be bothered to do this.

Good luck.

 

[Weird Harold]

Hello, I'm a new author and my first three stories published but now the next four which very similar to the first three, have being too short and not developed enough. They are each an encounter between my two characters and I give a brief recap of who they are at the beginning. I haven't counted the words but they all are similar in length as well. Any ideas for me? I wrote the stories sic months ago and and am not feeling motivated to go back and work them, especially because I don't exactly know what to change. Guidance?

Lit has a minimum story length requirement of 750 words. There is no upper limit.

MSWord and most other word-processors have a word-count function that will tell you how many words are in a document (or selected text within a document.) If your stories don't meet the 750 word minimum, then bundle them into a single submission, such as Oggsbashan regularly does to post his flash-fiction efforts. I believe he has needed as many as ten flash-fiction vignettes to meet the 750 word minimum. Bundling short-shorts is the only way to post them at Lit.

The only other option is to pad the stories to 750+ words. Since the stories in question are about the same couple, a C&P infodump about the characters would satisfy the Lit minimum, if not your readers.

 

[oggbashan]

... If your stories don't meet the 750 word minimum, then bundle them into a single submission, such as Oggsbashan regularly does to post his flash-fiction efforts. I believe he has needed as many as ten flash-fiction vignettes to meet the 750 word minimum. Bundling short-shorts is the only way to post them at Lit.

...

I write 50-word stories. I need 15 of them to reach the 750 word minimum. In practice, with my copyright notice and the 15 short titles the end result is closer to 900 words.

If you want to write to a shorter length than 750 they can be submitted as 'Poetry'. That is what I did with my early attempts at 50-word stories.

 

[lovecraft68]

The good thing about lit is there is literally something for everyone here. Whatever someone can think to write, there's people here looking for it.

Although there is a faction of people here who like a developed story and some depth with their smut, there is a larger faction(IMO) that is here for quick one handed reads which leave the reader thinking nothing beyond that was hot.

Looked you up and what I see is as you said recurring characters just having one sexcapade after another. No real story just a "okay so now Candy and Cotton are going to fuck here....

So it seems you just become enamored with a sex scene and slap it up there. There's nothing wrong with that as long as that's what you want to to write. There are times I get hit with a scene and write it, but I then put it in a folder and eventually a story idea comes along I can slip it into.

Only thing I would suggest is this is what you want to keep doing is maybe make it a series? The erotic times of Cotton and Candy? Make each scene a chapter? Might get more looks that way.