Is there a maximum limit to a stories lenght?

[squarejohn]

I' working on a story which is turning out to be rather long. A father and son move into a new neighborhood. An attractive divorced woman next door introduces herself to the father and son. Shes has them over to dinner, and in due course the son has to leave for an internet webcam chat. The woman and the father have a marathon sex session

Later while, having breakfast, the subject of getting the son's ashes hauled come up, as he is a virgin and the father would like to remedy that. The son gets laid, with the attractive neighbor, and also the woman who is having bi-sexual relations with the original woman.

This story is growing into a long story and I wonder where the point is in which the story becomes a novella. Lesbian sex, hetero sex, young/old sex three way sex will happen.

It's already over 8,000 words and will probably run into another ten thousand word when done. It's long because I am paying attention to character development.

Can I simply submit the entire story as as is without putting it into a novella catagory? Or should I break it up into Part 1, Part 2, etc.?

Any thoughts will be welcome.

 

[bronzeage]

Break it up into sensible chapters. It is your choice if you want to put it in the novels category, or a more specific category.

 

[sr71plt]

18,000 isn't long for a story on Lit. (in fact, it's within the standard length of a short story--anything under 20,000 traditionally is a short story) That would be contained in 5 Lit. pages. You could tool around and see that there are a lot of stories posted here that long and longer.

 

[KillerMuffin]

There's a story up on Lit somewhere that's over 50,000 words long in a single posting. It has, like 27 or more Lit pages. I think that's kind of a stupid decision on the author's part because it makes navigating to the last bit read a bit more difficult for the reader than posting each chapter as a separate "story." It's easier to remember which chapter to go to rather than which page you were on.

So, nope, no upper limit. Lower limit is 750 words of story, not including any author's notes, subtitles, acknowledgements, or other non-story blather authors love to include.

 

[scouries]

its up to you...

Service by TryAnything, the second most viewed story on LITEROTICA (almost 5 million reads) and one of the most commented on stories on the site (190 comments) is 19 LIT pages long (about 66,000 words).

And its success is not atypical. There are many similar examples.

There are good arguments that can be made for either submitting your story in chapters or submitting it as a complete work.

The one suggestion I would make though is that you should finish your story before you submit it to LITEROTICA if you choose the Chapters route.

jrs esq

 

[ilike2read82]

The one suggestion I would make though is that you should finish your story before you submit it to LITEROTICA if you choose the Chapters route.

Yes, please... it's very frustrating for us readers to start a story that ends up being abandoned. Which happens all too often. Lately, I make it a general rule not to start any multi-chapter story until it seems to have reached its conclusion. The best alternative to pull us in is if you have a solid track record of completing your stories and posting regular, frequent updates as it progresses.