Length of a story

[Lucien_Al]

Hi there,

I am in the process of writing Part 3 of an Early Life. I am finding that the directions this is taking me is ending up a lot longer than I had expected. At this stage I am at 8000 words and don't think I will be able to keep it under 12000 words.

Can the experienced writers here give me some advice on the suggested length of the story and whether I should consider making this into part 3 & 4?

On a similar topic I would appreciate feedback on whether the consensus is for multi part story or whether I should consider making it a novella. If Novella what are the number of words that would be considered a novella?

Thanks
Lucien_al

 

[Hypoxia]

The Novels & Novellas category doesn't get that many readers IIRC.

Story length -- there's no formula. I've written serials with a few 8k word chapters followed by a 13k word chapter. That's not a lot of LIT pages, at about 3500 words per page. If your piece flows together as a unit, don't feel you must split it.

 

[oggbashan]

The usual answer to "How long should a story be for Literotica" is:

As long as it takes to write the story.

It doesn't matter as long as you are not using too many unnecessary words.

Which category should it be posted in?

If it is long and the story covers several categories then Novels/Novellas is a possible category but it gets less attention. If the whole story is in one category then avoid Novels/Novellas even for 35,000 or more words in a single submission.

 

[NotWise]

Hi there,

I am in the process of writing Part 3 of an Early Life. I am finding that the directions this is taking me is ending up a lot longer than I had expected. At this stage I am at 8000 words and don't think I will be able to keep it under 12000 words.

Can the experienced writers here give me some advice on the suggested length of the story and whether I should consider making this into part 3 & 4?

On a similar topic I would appreciate feedback on whether the consensus is for multi part story or whether I should consider making it a novella. If Novella what are the number of words that would be considered a novella?

Thanks
Lucien_al

At 8000 words your story would be just over 2 full Lit pages. At 12000 words it would be a little over three Lit pages (using 3750 words/page). If you write much less than 8000 words you're likely to have readers asking for longer stories. Showing up as four Lit pages probably won't loose you many readers.

Either way, I wouldn't split it.

 

[EnglishTeacher]

How long depends and what you want to get accomplished. I’ve got a 5K formula I work with. Long enough to get people into it but short enough I won’t go mad getting out another chapter. But mine are meant to be on-going and chapterized. You need to figure out how far in advance the end will be and what you want to get done in-between.

 

[LadyMireille]

What OGG said... As long as it takes you to tell the story.

My personal experience/opinion...

As a reader... I usually find stories under 3 lit pages underdeveloped. I like the story as much as the erotica, so a story that focuses solely on scene after scene of sex isn't as appealing (to me) as a story with real characters.

As a writer... my stories have tended to be around 3-4 lit pages (12,000-16,000 words). However, my most recent story is 23,000 words, posted as one story. I was worried that it would be too long, but it is my best rates story to date.

I think if your story is good, people will read it to the end unless they are looking for a quickie (or it ends up totally not their cup of tea - for example, when there is too much BDSM or something else in a story in the romance or erotic coupling sections), and then they will just back out of the story.

As far as multi-part stories... what they said above. The novella section doesn't get as many views. I would just post it in the most relevant category. (Though, from experience, sci-fi and fantasy doesn't get many hits either.)

Good luck!

 

[RejectReality]

The readership in Sci-Fi & Fantasy and Non Human are far more engaged than the N&N readers, though. You'll get a lot more comments, emails, favorites, and more in-depth commentary.

I get more emails from a fantasy story that gets 100 votes than an incest story that gets 1000.

As far as multi-part stories... what they said above. The novella section doesn't get as many views. I would just post it in the most relevant category. (Though, from experience, sci-fi and fantasy doesn't get many hits either.)

Good luck!

 

[ElectricBlue]

At 8000 words your story would be just over 2 full Lit pages. At 12000 words it would be a little over three Lit pages (using 3750 words/page). If you write much less than 8000 words you're likely to have readers asking for longer stories. Showing up as four Lit pages probably won't loose you many readers.

Either way, I wouldn't split it.

Agree this. For longer story cycles, where you are really developing characters, 8k or 12k isn't considered "long" here on Lit. That's a fairly typical 3-4 Lit page chapter length.

 

[Areala-chan]

Hi there,

I am in the process of writing Part 3 of an Early Life. I am finding that the directions this is taking me is ending up a lot longer than I had expected. At this stage I am at 8000 words and don't think I will be able to keep it under 12000 words.

Can the experienced writers here give me some advice on the suggested length of the story and whether I should consider making this into part 3 & 4?

On a similar topic I would appreciate feedback on whether the consensus is for multi part story or whether I should consider making it a novella. If Novella what are the number of words that would be considered a novella?

Thanks
Lucien_al

The truth is, the length of the story has little to do with how well it's received. My highest-rated story fits on 1 Lit page. My lowest-rated story fits on 1 Lit page. My second-highest (and the one with the most comments and feedback received so far) spans 8 Lit pages. The one with the most views is 3 Lit pages.

One of the top stories for the Incest/Taboo category (JammyJimmy's "Threads: The Island") is 42 Lit pages long. Longhorn__07's "Uncertain Justice" in the Non-Erotic category made the Top List at 55 Lit pages. There's no magic number of pages that guarantees results.

Length doesn't matter. If you write a well-developed story, with a solid cast of characters, and you tell the story you set out to tell without obviously padding the word count or constantly digressing into other characters' lives that don't add directly to the main plot, the story will determine its own length.

Make your story long enough to reach its conclusion and you'll do fine.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Hi there,

I am in the process of writing Part 3 of an Early Life. I am finding that the directions this is taking me is ending up a lot longer than I had expected. At this stage I am at 8000 words and don't think I will be able to keep it under 12000 words.

Can the experienced writers here give me some advice on the suggested length of the story and whether I should consider making this into part 3 & 4?

On a similar topic I would appreciate feedback on whether the consensus is for multi part story or whether I should consider making it a novella. If Novella what are the number of words that would be considered a novella?

Thanks
Lucien_al

I've gone up to 20 lit pages with no drop off in views or readers but I do have readers that follow me. What I do if it's going over 3 or 4 lit pages, which almost all my stories do, is put a note in right at the start telling readers how long the story is (in lit page length). That warns off the ones that like short stories.

All of that said, a good story will get read regardless of length.

 

[Weird Harold]

Can the experienced writers here give me some advice on the suggested length of the story and whether I should consider making this into part 3 & 4?

You might want to give some consideration to keeping chapters of a long multi-part series roughly the same length. Do NOT chop longer scenes/chapters to fit an arbitrary word count. Find natural breaking points within +/- 10-15%, or so, of earlier chapter lengths. Try to avoid shorter chapters than your already established pattern, but also avoid very long chapters.

The needs of the Story should come first, but having consistent chapter lengths that your readers can anticipate will tend to keep a few more readers than a jumble of random chapter lengths would.

The best method of achieving consistent chapter lengths is to write the whole story before posting the first chapter and finding (or making) good break-points (or cliff-hangers) for posting. Writing the whole story before posting helps avoid writing your self into a corner trying to preserve continuity with already posted chapters.

 

[sr71plt]

The reader can easily see how many Lit. pages an entry is going to be. It's given at the bottom of the opening page. I don't see anything gained by also providing that information in a note on the top of the story.

 

[Voboy]

I’d have no qualms at all posting a 12000-word story. My stories here tend to hover around 18k-23k, and they get plenty of readers and quite a bit of love. I’ve never posted any of them as novels/novellas.

I broke up the first story I posted, and I remain sorry I did. Knowing what I know now, I’d have just gone ahead and posted it in one massive chunk.

 

[Hypoxia]

Some stories deserve to be one long chunk. Some are best chopped into coherent pieces, especially if each is clearly delimited by time, space, events, or POV shifts. Whether such units need to be submitted separately is up to the author's judgement.

I've written series where each 'part' contains 2-4 chapters too short IMHO to be posted separately. I've written medium-long tales that COULD have been chopped into chapters, but that would have impeded the flow. And I wrote a fairly-well-developed one-page stroker that reader demand turned into three one-pagers, each from a different POV. IMHO that worked better than if I'd clumped all three into one.

 

[Kantarii]

I’m a huge fan of quality over quantity. I don’t get hung up over the length of a story so long as the story having the right things to keep/ hold my interest. At the minimum, if a story can’t do that, no amount of words will make me want to finish reading a story. Kant

 

[likesgaystuff]

Re-post and Combining Parts of an old story line

Sorry - I should have started a new thread and not replied to an existing one. I can't figure out how to delete this reply tho....

Hi - Need advice. In 2012, I posted the start of a story in three parts but never finished it, and over the years they've gotten about 100K and they rate between 3.55 and 3.91. After re-reading them and getting some comments, I've combined them with major changes by developing the characters and the story. The new story is about 8000 words and takes the story past chapter 3 and would have been a 10 part story if not combined.

Does anyone think I should re-post the individual 3 chapters with the new text, risking having the people who favorited them missing key changes, or should I just put the new full story up there and keep or delete the three chapters already there?

Would love to hear some suggestions.

Thanks

 

[ChloeTzang]

The reader can easily see how many Lit. pages an entry is going to be. It's given at the bottom of the opening page. I don't see anything gained by also providing that information in a note on the top of the story.

There's a lot of lazy readers. I like to make it easy

 

[Kojak01]

I've never seen anyone complaining about a story being to long as long as there was actually something happening.
I've seen complaints about authors loosing themselves in overly detailed descriptions but I haven't seen a single comment "Great story, great sex scenes but just too much for one story..."

I've had and seen many comments complaining about short stories or chapters, though.