How long is too long?

[JennaMonroe]

In story length not body parts! lol

What is the best length for a lit story (in word count)?
Or if it's a long story that is broken up into chapters, how many words should be in each chapter?

Thanks!

 

[ElectricBlue]

In story length not body parts! lol

What is the best length for a lit story (in word count)?
Or if it's a long story that is broken up into chapters, how many words should be in each chapter?

Thanks!

No rules, except minimum length = 750 words.

A Lit page is around 3750 words, give or take. You'll find plenty of one page stories, you'll also find plenty of 10+ page stories. A sensible chapter break seems to be 2-3 Lit pages.

There are as many schools of thought about story length/chapter length as there are pages in the universe.

My view, for what it's worth (ie: zero) is, your chapter breaks should suit whatever your writing style/subject matter/plot movement requires.

 

[SamScribble]

In story length not body parts! lol

What is the best length for a lit story (in word count)?
Or if it's a long story that is broken up into chapters, how many words should be in each chapter?

Thanks!

Depends who is reading it. There seem to be many readers who baulk at more than two or three (Lit) pages. Others grumble if there aren't at least five or six. Take your pick. Make your story as long or as short as you want to. Just keep in mind that you are never going to please them all.

Good luck.

 

[NotWise]

Or if it's a long story that is broken up into chapters, how many words should be in each chapter?

That depends on what you mean by a chapter. In normal Lit usage a chapter is part of a story posted as a unit. It should be about the length of a stand-alone story (2-3 Lit pages). Shorter will get complaints. I don't know what happens with longer chapters. I've only gone there once.

In published literature a chapter is normally a story within your larger story. The best advice I've seen is that the chapter should be exactly as long as it takes to tell the story.

If you write in short chapters then you can combine them to get the 2-3 Lit pages that the readers expect. If you write longer stories that need to be broken into chapters, then you can break them up internally with chapter names and/or numbers and still post it all as a single chunk of text. The story I'm writing now looks like it will probably end up around 25k words in a single post, but it will be broken up into chapters, some of which are only a couple hundred words, because that's all it took to tell the story.

 

[Nezhul]

Online novel authors often break their stories in chapters of 3000-5000 words. That's a comfortable length to read.

But really, it highly depends on your story. The chapter needs to be consistent and follow the same rules as a story: have a beginning, main part and ending. The best way is when it ends at a cliffhanger.
If your style makes it so that your chapters are 20k words long - that's fine, but you should try to make it less if you can.

If you ask about the entire story length, there's no limitations as long as you can keep it interesting. Some stories I've read are insanely huge, numbering thousands of chapters (xiaxia) with many arcs and plots. That's fine as long as you have the fuel.

 

[Handley_Page]

In story length not body parts! lol

What is the best length for a lit story (in word count)?
Or if it's a long story that is broken up into chapters, how many words should be in each chapter?

Thanks!

I'd suggest about 12000 - 15000 words (three - five Lit pages)
Anything longer requires more reading time.

 

[KindofHere]

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[SusanJillParker]

In story length not body parts! lol

What is the best length for a lit story (in word count)?
Or if it's a long story that is broken up into chapters, how many words should be in each chapter?

Thanks!

I had a Creative Writing Professor who answered when asked, how long should a story be, "A story needs to be as long as it needs to be."

If you look at the top list of the most read 250 stories, some of those stories are novel-length, no chapter stories, of 50 to 90 thousand words.

There are just as many readers who won't read chapter stories as there are readers who won't read novel-length stories.

Actually, the story length more depends on you. Once you have a following, they'll read anything you write, even poetry.

"Honey? What are you doing upstairs? The whole house is shaking. Are you masturbating again? Don't be silly. I'm reading, um, poetry. Yeah, poetry. That's it, written by a new writer on Literotica.

Of course, if you write a mother and son incest story, it doesn't matter how long, how short, or how many chapters it has (lol).

"I love you, Mommy," was the name of my most read story, #63, on the 250 most read list, that I wrote under my WmForrester name. It was the most read story for 2010. I would have had two others on that list written under my BostonFictionWriter name but I deleted them to publish them as e-Books.

Soon, you'll have fans masturbating over everything you write. Good luck.

 

[ChloeTzang]

How'd you figure that one out professor?

Stopwatch?

Abacus?

Common Sense?

In my experience, limited as it is, over three pages is when you start to get readers complaining about being too long. I don`t ever get complaints about too short altho sometimes there`s comments saying they`d prefer longer....

 

[KindofHere]

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[ChloeTzang]

There are a lot of stories on this site longer than five pages that are well liked, those who complain seem to be in the minority. So you can either ignore them and write how you like or you can write a more captivating story.

Oh yes. A lot of mine are 8-10 pages and they do okay on the ratings and comments. I usually put a comment at the front about length tho, to warn off anyone that doesn`t like looooooong stories or chapters. The complaints are few.... I don;t worry about them. I write what I write....

 

[NOIRTRASH]

When I went to work for this state, word processing was new, and our system allowed about the same word count as TWITTER....say 12 lines or so for the whole shebang. In 1993 we had 87 lines of space, then 40 pages of space when I retired.

The early 80s report was kinda like this: IN MAY OF 1942 OR MAYVE 43, WE SAILED WITH CAPTAIN CHARLIE THE CHICKEN OF THE SEA. WE DIDNT FIGHT THE BISMARXK, WE DIDNT FIGHT AT ALL, WE SPENT THE WAR IN NASSAU DRINKING ROT GIT ALCOHOL. We were little more than headline scribblers. You make do with the space you get.

But there are optimal lengths, a popular song performs well with 32 bars. Stephen King recommends 5000 word stories, because 5000 words is the limit of his writing memory. Writers such as John O'Hara and Thomas Harris packed whole erotic scenes into brief paragraphs. George V .Higgins wrote a scene where one Mafia shooter fucks a prostitute, argues with his partner about a hit, and both men quarrel with the hooker about her fee, all in 1000 words or so. The 1st chapter of THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE is 750 words.

Use the space you need for your dulcet words, and cut the rest.

 

[my_other_life]

This is a really timely thread for me. I'm about a submit a 12k word story that lends itself well to being broken into three parts. But, after reading the posts and checking other stories I'm going to keep it as a single story. Thank you Virgins to Gurus for asking the right questions and letting a new author learn from your experience.

 

[sr71plt]

When you have started throwing in elements that don't directly serve the plotline, you're into "too long."

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Long stories rate better; people who don't like the premise generally bail out before they get to the stars. It doesn't prevent 1 bombs.

I recently did 4 short chapters in a new story. Ratings were low (4.2-4.4), by my lights. I pulled them, combined the chapters. did some minimal cleanup, and posted with a new name as a single 9 page unit. Once the 1-bombs are swept it will end up 4.7+. Same story, characters... and a 0.5 change in score.

This is part of why I say that scores are pure noise. Minor factors have major results.

There are people who are turned off by long sections - and plot, character devel, etc. - but I'm not writing for them and they wouldn't like my stuff anyway, so longer pieces work for me.

 

[jsmiam]

When I'm reading, I absolutely ignore stories in (lit) chapters. That's me, and I know some others feel the same way. But just as many others love chapters. I do appreciate that chapter stories are clearly labeled, it makes it easy for me to skip. (or seek out, for people who like them)

In other words, be aware of as many viewer opinions as you can, but knowing that you can't please everyone, you gotta please yourself. (Somebody should write a song about that.. )

 

[8letters]

When I'm reading, I absolutely ignore stories in (lit) chapters. That's me, and I know some others feel the same way.

I think this true for most but not all categories. Why read chapter 1 of a series that may never be finished? Why not read a comparable-rated complete story instead?

However, Sci-Fi and Fantasy is ruled by chapter stories. Readers there are expecting a massive world to be built and you can't do that in a single story.

 

[rjordan]

The early 80s report was kinda like this: IN MAY OF 1942 OR MAYVE 43, WE SAILED WITH CAPTAIN CHARLIE THE CHICKEN OF THE SEA. WE DIDNT FIGHT THE BISMARXK, WE DIDNT FIGHT AT ALL, WE SPENT THE WAR IN NASSAU DRINKING ROT GIT ALCOHOL. We were little more than headline scribblers. You make do with the space you get.

In 1979, I was writing 300 page books on a TRS-80 using Michael Shrayer's Electric Pencil. It had 48K memory and a single 5" floppy that might have held 100K after formatting. You should have bought word processors that plug in the wall or use electricity in some way.

Nevertheless, my personal limit for reading online is about 2-3 Lit pages. Anything less is a pleasant diversion. Anything more requires a commitment few offerings here can justify. That's not an indictment of the quality available here. It's a matter of competing interests.

rj

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Every Sci-Fi story I have ever written, the readers always want more. Doesn't matter if it's already 100,000+ words or just a short 2 lit page story. They always want more. And it doesn't even have to have any sex in it if the story line interests them.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

In 1979, I was writing 300 page books on a TRS-80 using Michael Shrayer's Electric Pencil. It had 48K memory and a single 5" floppy that might have held 100K after formatting. You should have bought word processors that plug in the wall or use electricity in some way.

Nevertheless, my personal limit for reading online is about 2-3 Lit pages. Anything less is a pleasant diversion. Anything more requires a commitment few offerings here can justify. That's not an indictment of the quality available here. It's a matter of competing interests.

rj

I remember one of the first stories I wrote, long since lost in time. It was on a Prime Computer 450 Minicomputer using Runoff a simplistic page layout program for writing program documentation. Every thing was all caps. There were no lower case letters as far a the first versions of Runoff. Later version added lower case.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

In 1979, I was writing 300 page books on a TRS-80 using Michael Shrayer's Electric Pencil. It had 48K memory and a single 5" floppy that might have held 100K after formatting. You should have bought word processors that plug in the wall or use electricity in some way.

Nevertheless, my personal limit for reading online is about 2-3 Lit pages. Anything less is a pleasant diversion. Anything more requires a commitment few offerings here can justify. That's not an indictment of the quality available here. It's a matter of competing interests.

rj

I used the Model 3 for Army MARS rtty

 

[KindofHere]

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[NOIRTRASH]

WAR & PEACE is a marvel of human transactions, someone should index it and catalog all its wonderful depictions, but 1500 page sis too much. Stephen King could pare IT to 600 pages and have a better book. Writers need to be laconic. But LACONIC comes with experience, and most of us blabber out our asses.

 

[rjordan]

I remember one of the first stories I wrote, long since lost in time. It was on a Prime Computer 450 Minicomputer using Runoff a simplistic page layout program for writing program documentation. Every thing was all caps. There were no lower case letters as far a the first versions of Runoff. Later version added lower case.

I did a lot of contract work for a Mtn View company in 1971 (before it was called Silicon Valley) who had an IBM Compositor (I think that's what it was called). I wrote everything on an IBM Selectric, then literally with scissors and rubber cement, cut and pasted edits. A typist was allowed to retype my manuscript one time before final edits, then another typist would enter the whole fucking manual into the Compositor. Then the galleys from that were cut and pasted for final pages.

If they were in a big hurry for an interim document, I had to dictate the manual from blueprints and parts in my hand, send the tape to a transcriber and hope I had a chance to edit before it went to type and out to their customers.

You REALLY had to want to write in those days.

I have to laugh at the pissy complaints about LibreOffice and the rest. I'd still be Satan's bitch for even a glimpse of Notepad in those days.

rj

 

[KindofHere]

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