Is this site catering/dumbing down to the mindless phone crowd?

[BridesforBBC]

First I was told to shorten my paragraphs to 300 words. Regretfully, painfully I broke up my precious story, chopping right in the middle of action sequences to get it to fit.
Then I get this edit back telling me to shorten my too lo-o-o-o-ng paragraphs to 3 to 6 sentences. What? How short do you want the paragraphs? You tell me that 'research' (I wanna see this 'research') shows that people have trouble reading paragraphs that are too long to fit on the screen of a mobile device.
Oooooh I get it now. We're supposed to dumb formatting down for the mindless cellphone lemmings.
I find that reading stories here to be tiring. It feels like a race with the constant scrolling because everything is broken into one or two lines. Have any of you read a book (the paper thing) lately? That's how stuff is supposed to look, not two lines, a space, two lines....
Here's an idea, bring your site into the 20's with a variable page view that will spread the site nicely across the modern crop of large monitors, and to heck with how it looks on cellphones. People should be concentrating on their driving, or where they're walking rather than reading dirty stories anyway. Oops, this paragraph is probably waaaay tooo long isn't it.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Who's telling you this stuff? The site or a beta reader?

There is certainly a theory that says modern readers prefer shorter punchier paragraphs which are easier to read on a phone. Personally, I don't have a problem reading longer paragraphs even on mobile.

However, even in serious writing (e.g. journal articles) a 300 word paragraph would be pretty long.

 

[alohadave]

Salty.

No one in this forum (or any others) has any control of the formatting of the site. You'd need to PM Laurel your 'suggestions'.

 

[BridesforBBC]

A 'Theory'? Where's this theory?
Folks wanting shorter, punchier writing sounds an awful lot like like catering to the lowest common denominator.

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

Have any of you read a book (the paper thing) lately?

I actually can't read books on paper. It's called being disabled. I'm cross-eyed which means even with glasses I don't pass the "how many fingers am I holding up?" test. Those fingers are very crisp but unfortunately I still see double of everything. It actually pisses me off that the standard for printed fiction books accommodates exactly ZERO visual or cognitive impairments.

If I want to read a book that's formatted poorly I have to use a screen reader, which takes away my ability to read quietly and privately. Something that is especially important for erotica for reasons I shouldn't havd to explain.

As someone with a cognitive disability and a visual impairment I physically cannot read blocks of text that are too long. And I'm not the only person in that boat. My parents have to turn the font size up to read because they're at the age where vision isn't their strongest asset. Even when they're reading on a laptop, long paragraphs become daunting.

Don't take it from me though. Take it from the web organization dedicated to making the internet legible to disabled people.

https://www.w3.org/WAI/tips/writing/
https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG2/supplemental/#cognitiveaccessibilityguidance

https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG2/supplemental/patterns/o3p05-succinct-text/

Formatting your work to be accessible to people with visual and cognitive impairments is not "dumbing it down for the cellphone lemmings".

Quit your complaining, get off your high horse and hit the enter key more often. It's not hard and it makes huge difference for people that need it.

 

[TheRedChamber]

A 'Theory'? Where's this theory?
Folks wanting shorter, punchier writing sounds an awful lot like like catering to the lowest common denominator.

It's mentioned fairly regularly around the Authors Hangout, but it's only a theory and one your unlikely to adopt, so I won't search out a link. But that advice would probably say to keep paragraphs at around 100 words (at a guess)


Irrespective of that, 300 words is a long paragraph already. If it's the site rejecting your stories then you are probably way over the extreme for paragraphs length. I write long paragraphs and have never had a problem and I've seen others publish who are way wordier than me.

There's nothing inherently dumber about having three 150 word paragraphs that say the same things as one 450 word paragraph. It's just kinder on your reader.

 

[KeithD]

The shorter paragraphs guidance isn't just for phones. It's been that way for computer reading since the start of personal computers. And the whole setup for this site is for electronic reading. That said, there's no rule anywhere on a maximum lines or words for paragraphs of Literotica stories.

 

[jsmiam]

More information needed. This is a two way street.

You were asked who said what to you, by a person trying to help. Unanswered.

I’m curious if you break dialog into separate paragraphs for each person speaking. Will that question be answered? It makes a big difference to the answer to your question, omitting that little piece of information.

Feel free to rant. It’s a forum, you can write anything you want.

But I think it’s a fair trade, that if you don’t provide any additional details, then nobody should bother trying to help.

 

[Gamina]

Yes who is giving you this advice?

Because generally, and this has been the case for several decades, the norm for a "good" paragraph is between 100 and 200 words, or five to six sentences. This is based on studies about human attention span and so on.

Even then if what you write is coherent and interesting, most people will have 0 issues with longer paragraphs, but if your paragraphs are incoherent, thesaurus diarea, or long for the sake of being long, you will lose your readers attention.

 

[FelHarper]

I cannot prevaricate. Such interlocution makes one long for an age when authors wielded an erudite virtuosity of language in the telling of their tales. But alas, the benighted masses thirst for facile pleasures, disdaining the eloquent in favor of the base.

But that’s just how things go, as the culture changes. I think that the best prose fades into the background, not calling attention to itself. The easier it is for the reader to absorb your words, the more deeply they can sink into the narrative. Shorter paragraphs take less effort to read and free up your readers’ minds to imagine the events of the story.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I actually can't read books on paper. It's called being disabled. I'm cross-eyed which means even with glasses I don't pass the "how many fingers am I holding up?" test. Those fingers are very crisp but unfortunately I still see double of everything. It actually pisses me off that the standard for printed fiction books accommodates exactly ZERO visual or cognitive impairments.

If I want to read a book that's formatted poorly I have to use a screen reader, which takes away my ability to read quietly and privately. Something that is especially important for erotica for reasons I shouldn't havd to explain.

Also, not everybody owns a big monitor, and for a lot of people a phone is their only regular private minimally-censored access to the internet.

I'm all for nurturing individual creative styles but unless one's doing stunt writing like Ogg's 750-word sentence story, it shouldn't be hard to fit in a paragraph break every couple of hundred words. If OP felt like posting that long paragraph here, I'm sure there are people who'd be willing to suggest options for adjusting it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I cannot prevaricate. Such interlocution makes one long for an age when authors wielded an erudite virtuosity of language in the telling of their tales. But alas, the benighted masses thirst for facile pleasures, disdaining the eloquent in favor of the base.

"Brevity is the soul of wit" - some guy or other.

 

[Lady2020]

I am eternally grateful that I no longer edit for precious ashats.

 

[jsmiam]

OP also sounds like they have a personal vendetta against phones.

I remember about 5 years ago, the first person I met who didn’t even own a PC anymore, their phone served as all the computer they needed. Now there’s (my circle only) dozens of people like that. I know I couldn’t live without a real computer. But people do!

The times they are a changing. Some things we like. Some we don’t. Yes, some things are ridiculous. But whether they are likes or dislikes, they’ll change anyway.

And full circle back on track. OP, there are/were people happy to help. They can’t without a little more info. So we’ll continue without you, changing the subject as we please.

Kittens. Who likes kittens?