Longer Stories

[lithium_haze]

Hi there. I've been wanting to post on Literotica for some time. But the stories all seem so short, while mine are quite long. This didn't used to be a problem as I once had a Ning site (until they began throwing out all the mature Ning social networks) where I'd post my stories for free. I'm not sure my stories would really work edited into small bits here or there, as they can go on for several pages setting up the literary money shots (so to speak). Since my stories are all based on true experiences I personally have had, they can't benefit from the speed and ease at which fictional tales get right to the point.
Does anyone have any advice for how I might contribute here or know of some sites which accept longer tales? I'd really like to share my stories. I'm an avid writer, and have produced a large volume of work. Those who have read my stories all enjoyed them very much.
Any advice is much appreciated.

 

[sr71plt]

Submit the stories as you like to write them. There seem to be audiences for the whole spectrum of stories. If you aren't shooting for "most favorite author" and are satisfied with a few hundred fans, you'll do just fine (if the stories are well written).

 

[lithium_haze]

Thanks. I'll do that. I'd be pleased with a dozen constant readers, tbh. It's just nice knowing others appreciate my work.

 

[Darkniciad]

There are stories on here that are quite long, both as single submissions and as multi-chapter works.

The nice thing about Lit is that there's a readership for darn near anything. It may not be the biggest on the site in some cases, but the potential for it to be bigger than you're going to get anywhere else ( at least for erotica ) is about as good as it gets.

 

[Martha39]

http://www.infoocean.info/avatar3.jpgThere are stories on here that are quite long, both as single submissions and as multi-chapter works.

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

You may like to think about http://www.literotica.com/s/anna-11 which is 114K words 30 Literotica pages and still has the magic H.

Length doesn't have to cause a story to fail.

 

[AsylumSeeker]

You may like to think about http://www.literotica.com/s/anna-11 which is 114K words 30 Literotica pages and still has the magic H.

Length doesn't have to cause a story to fail.

Poking my eyes out as we speak!

 

[cocput]

Anna is just one example. There are lots more.

I have read a 42-page long story (falling short of 150,000 words, unfortunately incest category) and my comment to the author essentially said why the fuck did he cut some of the parts that should have been told! That story is still on top of hall of fame for the category. (I like to brag about how i finished the entire story in a single sitting.)

My point being it is not how long the story is, but how much substance is there in the story. Maybe the experienced people here can say whether there is an upper limit on story length. But as far as I as a reader is concerned, length is not an issue. In fact, there is a sizable population in this site who won't open any story less than 3 lit-page.

Start pushing the stories. Please ensure that you get a good editor though. Readers of long stories turn out to be more demanding in terms of both language and story development.

EDIT: I hope that the comment no longer looks equally offensive. I am sorry to have offended anyone. I will take defense on being non-native English speaker here.

 

[snoopercharmbrights]

... my comment to the author said "Why the fuck did you cut some of the parts that should have been told?" ...

I know you are not a native English speaker, but do you realise how very abusive that is?

 

[cocput]

I know you are not a native English speaker, but do you realise how very abusive that is?

I am sorry, punctuation mistake. The usage was intended, and it was not posted on the public comment. My mistake was that I should not have put it in the quote in the earlier post. My apologies.

My intention was only to say that when a reader invests time on reading a novel, he expects returns. There are a few things that he would be happy to imagine on his own, but there are some key incidents in the story that the reader would not be interested to imagine, or would expect to be elaborated/reinforced. In the present instance, I as a reader had felt that the author should have written explicitly a couple of scenes, because as a reader I felt that these were central to the story. The author need not agree with me, but he would definitely remember my comment sub-consciously the next time he writes a similar length story. By the way, I had voted 5, and had written a long comment praising him, before this small single line crept in. He is an excellent author, and he is in my favorites list.

 

[Etaski]

I am sorry, punctuation mistake. The usage was intended, and it was not posted on the public comment. My mistake was that I should not have put it in the quote in the earlier post. My apologies.

Hum....are you sure snooper wasn't just pulling your leg? With or without the punctuation, native speaker or not, I understood exactly what you meant, and without the clarification. I didn't see it as abusive, but rather enthusiastic. You cared about how the story was told, and yes, sometimes parts of the story are glossed over (perhaps in favor of cutting down on the length?) and sometimes they should have been written.

I've been told that on other works (nothing here--just short stuff here). Almost verbatim. "Why the fuck did you skip that part?? I wanted to read how that went down!"

The basic idea being: Sometimes writing it out explicitly helps the reader put a finer point on the power-balance between characters in a story/book. The story graduates from "because the script said so" to "this is the only way it could have gone, given what happened."

 

[Etaski]

Does anyone have any advice for how I might contribute here or know of some sites which accept longer tales? I'd really like to share my stories. I'm an avid writer, and have produced a large volume of work. Those who have read my stories all enjoyed them very much.
Any advice is much appreciated.

Welcome, Lithium Haze.

Be sure to put a "copyright (year) Lithium_Haze for Literotica.com" within the text at the beginning of anything you want to share, as they do get lifted for other sites.

Long stories are not a problem; you can even post them as Chapters. As others have said, you can even post it as one long beast (I saw a 34-Lit-page story a while back, which would probably come up to a 300+ page document in Word), and there are still readers for it.

What genre do you write that have been enjoyed by your earlier readers?

 

[cocput]

Hum....are you sure snooper wasn't just pulling your leg? With or without the punctuation, native speaker or not, I understood exactly what you meant, and without the clarification.
........
The basic idea being: Sometimes writing it out explicitly helps the reader put a finer point on the power-balance between characters in a story/book. The story graduates from "because the script said so" to "this is the only way it could have gone, given what happened."

Thank you for making me feel better.

Yep, ultimately adding or not adding a scene is writer's choice.
It's just that when the story is in third person omniscient, readers think that they have the right to peeve.

 

[_Lynn_]

Welcome, Lithium Haze.

Be sure to put a "copyright (year) Lithium_Haze for Literotica.com" within the text at the beginning of anything you want to share, as they do get lifted for other sites.

Long stories are not a problem; you can even post them as Chapters. As others have said, you can even post it as one long beast (I saw a 34-Lit-page story a while back, which would probably come up to a 300+ page document in Word), and there are still readers for it.

What genre do you write that have been enjoyed by your earlier readers?

What purpose does the additional information have? Anyone wanting to lift a story doesn't care and can delete that line easy enough.

 

[sr71plt]

Be sure to put a "copyright (year) Lithium_Haze for Literotica.com" within the text at the beginning of anything you want to share,

A copyright sign has been obsolete since the United States signed the Berne Convention in 1988. It's also meaningless in the United States unless you actually registered the copyright. You can't get any legal action without holding a formal copyright. Anyone in the know who sees such a copyright sign on erotica posted to a free site just gives it the horse laugh. For everyone else it's just garbage to wade through on their way to the story.

 

[Etaski]

What purpose does the additional information have? Anyone wanting to lift a story doesn't care and can delete that line easy enough.

Some lifters are done by bots, and they take the text wholesale, including the note with copyright and your user name and the mention of Literotica, which at the very least points them back here. I've seen it done. It's, at the very, very least, a salve to have your name go with a stolen story, since it's going to happen anyway.

I don't know how many thieves do it manually, but sure, they could take it out. *shrug*

Ask Darkniciad for a bit more detail, if you like. He's a good source of information like this.

 

[_Lynn_]

Some lifters are done by bots, and they take the text wholesale, including the note with copyright and your user name and the mention of Literotica, which at the very least points them back here. I've seen it done. It's, at the very, very least, a salve to have your name go with a stolen story, since it's going to happen anyway.

I don't know how many thieves do it manually, but sure, they could take it out. *shrug*

Ask Darkniciad for a bit more detail, if you like. He's a good source of information like this.

Yes, there are sources here for that information, but I'll pass, thanks.

 

[sr71plt]

The less garbage you slap on the front of your story (including here on Lit.), the less amateurish you look. And a copyright symbol is not just amateurish, since 1988, if you slap it on your story in the United States and you don't actually have formal U.S. copyright, you are violating the U.S.copyright law. (Not that anyone's going to track you down--but also not that you're fooling most of them who steal the stuff.)

 

[Derroreaper]

The less garbage you slap on the front of your story (including here on Lit.), the less amateurish you look. And a copyright symbol is not just amateurish, since 1988, if you slap it on your story in the United States and you don't actually have formal U.S. copyright, you are violating the U.S.copyright law. (Not that anyone's going to track you down--but also not that you're fooling most of them who steal the stuff.)

You might want to get your facts straight.

The below is from the US Copyright.gov PDF (took ten seconds to find)

Use of Copyright Notice
Copyright is a form of protection provided by U.S. law to authors of “original
works of authorship.” When a work is published under the authority of the
copyright owner (see definition of “publication” below), a notice of copyright
may be placed on all publicly distributed copies or phonorecords. The use of
the notice is the responsibility of the copyright owner and does not require
permission from, or registration with, the Copyright Office.

Derro-

 

[sr71plt]

Oh, god, we're not going to go through copyright again, are we? This (as I posted) is for those who formally registered for copyright. And that's all I'm going to post. So few are able to understand how U.S. copyright law works (and the law was constructed that way--I know, I was on the commission that worked out how the U.S. was going to respond to signing the Berne Convention when it didn't want to adher to the Berne Convention. It says nice things about ownership--to meld with Berne--and then won't back it up with any teeth unless you hold a formal copyright).

 

[Derroreaper]

Oh, god, we're not going to go through copyright again, are we?

I'm not hashing out the law, I'm just pointing out your mistake. You as an author have the right to use the copyright symbol legally. You 100% stated it was illegal if it wasn't registered and that's not true.

 

[PennLady]

I'm not hashing out the law, I'm just pointing out your mistake. You as an author have the right to use the copyright symbol legally. You 100% stated it was illegal if it wasn't registered and that's not true.

No, that's not what he said. He said:

A copyright sign has been obsolete since the United States signed the Berne Convention in 1988. It's also meaningless in the United States unless you actually registered the copyright. You can't get any legal action without holding a formal copyright. Anyone in the know who sees such a copyright sign on erotica posted to a free site just gives it the horse laugh. For everyone else it's just garbage to wade through on their way to the story.

That does not say it's illegal. It says that the copyright symbol that many of us (including myself) put on a story carries no legal weight without a formal copyright, which most of us, I bet, do not have. Nowhere in there did sr71 say using the copyright symbol "was illegal if it wasn't registered."

 

[sr71plt]

Well, I did mean that--because thats what was specified in the regulation that was sent to publishers after 1988. You weren't legally permitted to use the symbol if you didn't formally hold copyright. (I also said I don't know of any instances where the law has been prosecuted.)

I can tell you that when a manuscript comes into a publishing house with the symbol on it, it gets a horse laugh for either having already copyrighted something that the publishing house would have done at its own expense or in not knowing that the symbol means nothing without formal registration backup.

 

[PennLady]

Well, I did mean that--because thats what was specified in the regulation that was sent to publishers after 1988. You weren't legally permitted to use the symbol if you didn't formally hold copyright. (I also said I don't know of any instances where the law has been prosecuted.)

I can tell you that when a manuscript comes into a publishing house with the symbol on it, it gets a horse laugh for either having already copyrighted something that the publishing house would have done at its own expense or in not knowing that the symbol means nothing without formal registration backup.

My mistake, then. I was unaware and that was not what I got from that particular answer. Seems like a mess, really.

 

[Darkniciad]

On the other hand, if you don't care whether you look amateurish, giving your author name and stating that the story is from Literotica will often give people who stumble across stolen stories or bits of stories and enjoy them the ability to find the rest of your work.

While it would be easy enough to remove, most of the sites that have been stealing stories from Lit don't do so, because most of them lift the stories with bots that just scrape the page and automatically post.

I've added quite a few favorites and picked up a lot of feedback from people finding my stolen stuff and using that information to track me down. I consider it making the thieves work for me