How do I change my story's name?

[Duleigh]

I wrote a series years ago and I'm cleaning it up now, I know how to update the content of a story, but I have a need to change the name also. I wrote it with the chapters titled in alphabetical order, which confused many readers. I want to change the name putting in Chapter numbers and relegating the previous name of the chapter to the body of the story. Does Miss Laurel allow that? I can't find a FAQ on changing a story's name

 

[WittyUserName]

I wrote a series years ago and I'm cleaning it up now, I know how to update the content of a story, but I have a need to change the name also. I wrote it with the chapters titled in alphabetical order, which confused many readers. I want to change the name putting in Chapter numbers and relegating the previous name of the chapter to the body of the story. Does Miss Laurel allow that? I can't find a FAQ on changing a story's name

Based on this: https://www.literotica.com/faq/publishing/change-published-work-title You can definitely change the title of your story. "If you need to change the Title, Category, or Description of your published story, please follow the instructions found in the FAQ question titled I’ve edited my story and want to replace the published version with a new edit. How do I do that? Let us know what changes you are making to the story (Title, Category, or Description) in the Author’s Note field on the submission page before submitting the edit."

It's just that the format isn't 100% clear. What I would do is place "Story title - EDITED" using the NEW title. Then in the notes to admin say "this is to replace OLD TITLE" and explain. I think? At the worst, Laurel will send it back explaining why what you're doing is incorrect. Adding '-EDITED' will ensure she won't just post it as a new story.

 

[Duleigh]

Thank you so much! I went ahead and promised a lot of readers that I would straighten out the timeline, title, and crappy editing before I new I could do some of that.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Doesn't the new series feature allow you to use any titles you want and order them any way that you like? If so, you could just edit the series to put them in whatever order that you like without changing any titles.

 

[PennyThompson]

Doesn't the new series feature allow you to use any titles you want and order them any way that you like? If so, you could just edit the series to put them in whatever order that you like without changing any titles.

Yep! All the stories in my series have totally different titles

You just need to enable beta features and then you can manage series manually without having to worry about titles!

 

[Duleigh]

Doesn't the new series feature allow you to use any titles you want and order them any way that you like? If so, you could just edit the series to put them in whatever order that you like without changing any titles.

Most readers have no idea what the series feature is or if they do, how to find it. Personally I use the series feature quite often, but the best part of the Series feature is if you number your chapters, the series feature grabs them and stuffs them in the series automatically.

 

[PennyThompson]

the best part of the Series feature is if you number your chapters, the series feature grabs them and stuffs them in the series automatically.

It will still do this even if your series has different titles for each chapter



EDIT: oh wait, I think I misunderstood! When publishing a new story with Beta Series enabled, there's just a menu option on the New Story interface to select a series to add it to, and it will automatically add it as the last entry to the series. And you can manually re-order them in the Series management page after the fact, or add an already-published story to the series.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Most readers have no idea what the series feature is or if they do, how to find it. Personally I use the series feature quite often, but the best part of the Series feature is if you number your chapters, the series feature grabs them and stuffs them in the series automatically.

That's always been the way it's worked. The site runs an alphanumeric sequencing algorithm that links chapters automatically, as soon as the second chapter is published. You don't need to use the "Series Feature" to do that - you don't need to do anything except put Ch.02 in your story Title.

The Series feature enables you to join together chapters that's don't have chapter numbers in the Title - as @PennyThompson shows in her post.

 

[WittyUserName]

Most readers have no idea what the series feature is or if they do, how to find it. Personally I use the series feature quite often, but the best part of the Series feature is if you number your chapters, the series feature grabs them and stuffs them in the series automatically.

I've never used the series feature and now I'm worried I screwed up. Yesterday I submitted Chapter 55 of my main series. I woke up this morning and it had a posting date for Wednesday. For some reason, Laurel had added 55 before the start. I edited the submission to remove it and my chapter still says 'new' in my pending queue. Not sure when it'll actually come out or why that was done...

 

[Duleigh]

It will still do this even if your series has different titles for each chapter

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EDIT: oh wait, I think I misunderstood! When publishing a new story with Beta Series enabled, there's just a menu option on the New Story interface to select a series to add it to, and it will automatically add it as the last entry to the series. And you can manually re-order them in the Series management page after the fact, or add an already-published story to the series.

The problem is that a new reader will see a new story and read it. That by itself is not a problem, but if it's individually named the new reader has no idea that it's part of a series unless he looks for the series tag first, which nobody does. Our short descriptions are far too short to give the reader an idea of what is going on in the story AND tell him it's part of a series. Giving the story a name that says Chapter 1 lets the reader know that this was part of a series. I use the series feature to include side stories into the flow of the story, which I've done with We're a Wonderful wife (Four side stories) Andi's Dream (Three side stories) and Enchantress (One side story)

Another plus with giving a series story a Chapter number name, is that you can cut way back on exposition. To properly sell a story to a reader without a chapter number you have to re-introduce every character every time. Failure to do so invites a high score of a 3 and comments containing the words "Confusing" and "I was lost"

 

[PennyThompson]

The problem is that a new reader will see a new story and read it. That by itself is not a problem, but if it's individually named the new reader has no idea that it's part of a series unless he looks for the series tag first, which nobody does. Our short descriptions are far too short to give the reader an idea of what is going on in the story AND tell him it's part of a series. Giving the story a name that says Chapter 1 lets the reader know that this was part of a series. I use the series feature to include side stories into the flow of the story, which I've done with We're a Wonderful wife (Four side stories) Andi's Dream (Three side stories) and Enchantress (One side story)

Another plus with giving a series story a Chapter number name, is that you can cut way back on exposition. To properly sell a story to a reader without a chapter number you have to re-introduce every character every time. Failure to do so invites a high score of a 3 and comments containing the words "Confusing" and "I was lost"

Those are all fair points! I haven't had those problems, but I've been doing a few things that probably minimize the downsides:

I put an author's note at the top of each story, and I say "This is Number 4 in a series -- The Adventures of Penny Thompson. Each story is self-contained, but they're best read in order!" and then I include a link to the series page.

I also include one or two in-line links to previous chapters, as a form of recap. "The two hadn't really talked about the first night in their dorm room, when Mikayla had discovered that Penny was a futanari."

I think a lot of people don't realize they can link to other Lit stories in their Lit story

 

[Duleigh]

Those are all fair points! I haven't had those problems, but I've been doing a few things that probably minimize the downsides:

I put an author's note at the top of each story, and I say "This is Number 4 in a series -- The Adventures of Penny Thompson. Each story is self-contained, but they're best read in order!" and then I include a link to the series page.

I also include one or two in-line links to previous chapters, as a form of recap. "The two hadn't really talked about the first night in their dorm room, when Mikayla had discovered that Penny was a futanari."

I think a lot of people don't realize they can link to other Lit stories in their Lit story

Those are all great ideas. However I wrote the Stormwatch series before I knew any of that. I'm going back through the series and cleaning up a lot of issues, and since it's related to the Andi's Dream series, I have a lot of legitimate time line complaints to deal with. That, and back then I would slip around in past vs present tense so since I'm rewriting the entire series and adding chapters I might as well give the readers what the majority had been asking for - chapter names. There was no series when I wrote Stormwatch so that option wasn't available. There are headaches to Chapter number stories vs named stories in a series. I had big problems with that in a previous series and found it easier to wait for the entire story to be complete before building the series.