Need help: How do you submit a very long story?

[Global Carol]

I began writing a story a few weeks ago. I had originally expected it to be just one or two web pages at Literotica. But then I decided I needed to have some kind of a plot, character development, etc.

The plot grew and the story grew. Now it’s well over 20,000 words and I’m on Chapter 8 with at least a few more to go.

I’m questioning what to do with it. Can I submit it a chapter at a time? Should I wait until it’s complete and then submit it as a whole?

If it’s correct to submit it a chapter at a time, how do I do that and assure that the entire mini-novel is maintained as a whole?

Thanks so much for any assistance.

Global Carol

 

[Colleen Thomas]

I began writing a story a few weeks ago. I had originally expected it to be just one or two web pages at Literotica. But then I decided I needed to have some kind of a plot, character development, etc.

The plot grew and the story grew. Now it’s well over 20,000 words and I’m on Chapter 8 with at least a few more to go.

I’m questioning what to do with it. Can I submit it a chapter at a time? Should I wait until it’s complete and then submit it as a whole?

If it’s correct to submit it a chapter at a time, how do I do that and assure that the entire mini-novel is maintained as a whole?

Thanks so much for any assistance.

Global Carol

Submitting a chapter at a time is dicey, unless each chapter is a stand alone story.

One option is submit it to novels and novellas. Another is to submit it sequenitally to the category you feel it belongs in.

In either case you risk loosing interest and lower votes/scores. i submitted one that was over 19K words as one story and it did well. In the end, however you submit it, if it's a good story and well done it will do well.

best of luck

 

[cloudy]

You can submit it a chapter at a time, just use Title, Ch. 01, and so on when you submit it.

A lot of times people submit the longer stories under Novels & Novellas, but that's up to you which category it goes in.

 

[Weird Harold]

The plot grew and the story grew. Now it’s well over 20,000 words and I’m on Chapter 8 with at least a few more to go.

I’m questioning what to do with it. Can I submit it a chapter at a time? Should I wait until it’s complete and then submit it as a whole?

If it’s correct to submit it a chapter at a time, how do I do that and assure that the entire mini-novel is maintained as a whole?

I think you'll find that when you finish editing your story it will shrink a bit -- probably around 30K-40K words or about ten Lit pages. (I'm guessing that you're going to wind up with about 50K words by the time you finish your first draft and wind up editing it down from there.)

You definitely should finish the story -- including editing it -- before posting it. If you post it before it's finished, you're stuck with any continuity problems originating in the parts that have been posted and that's going to severely limit how you can fix them.

Submitting the story in pieces or chapters leaves you open to the possibility of a single chapter being rejected if your story pushes any limits on the age or violence restrictions or because of a formatting problem -- so, for that reason alone it's better to put it in Novels and Novellas and submit it as a single submission.

Laurel is pretty good about scheduling a chapter a day and keeping them in sequence or posting them on a requested schedule if you want them posted one chapter a week. If you choose to post your story as chapters, be sure you put a request to approve all chapters before posting any of them in the comments field of the submission form and submit all of the chapters at the same time so they can be approved or rejected en masse.

If you submit it in pieces, pay attention to the size of your chapters so they're all fairly close in length and essentially self-contianed episodes when you edit the story.

If your chapters vary a great deal in length and/or aren't essentially self-contained episodes, posting as a single story is probably better from the standpoint of readability and maintaining interest in the story. Some stories just don't serialize well -- look at your story critically and see if there are natural break points that make serialization feasible. If the natural break points aren't there, then posting the story in pieces is not going to be well received by the readers.

Once you decide whether to serialize or not, edit with your choice in mind -- editing a serial (vs editing a single story) requires a different mind-set and different choices if you want to do it well.

 

[thebullet]

Literotica is a difficult place to post a really long piece. On many other websites one can post a chapter at a time and the story remains a coherent whole. But on Lit, each chapter posted seperately is looked at as a stand alone story.

That being said, if you look at the "Top Lists" under the Romance section, you see that 25 of the top 27 stories are actually chapters of longer stories. The first stand alone story is #17.

This is a long standing discussion on the Author's Hangout. How does one post a really really long story? Putting it under one posting with 10 or more web pages, say, can be very daunting for the reader. Not that it isn't done, but I've seen many readers who write that they don't read postings longer than 2 webpages.

Remember, this is Literotica. Maybe these guys are saying that two web pages is all it takes to get them off. After that they're going to have a cigarette and go watch the ball game.

 

[oggbashan]

Heads you lose; tails I win.

If you have written a very long story then there are only two alternatives. Either you post it as a whole or as separate parts.

If you post it as separate parts then each part must stand alone. There must be a beginning, development and a conclusion in each part. You might want to start chapter 02 and onwards with a short synopsis of what has happened before.

A cliffhanger at the end of each chapter is a good ploy to get the reader to move to the next chapter. Even a cliche 'Will he see her again?' would do.

However in my experience it is better to submit the whole story as one. 20,000 words isn't long by short story standards. Even 50,000 words isn't a novel.

If the story is a particular category such as Incest, BDSM, Loving Wives etc. I would recommend posting it in that category instead of Novels and Novellas. Novels etc. doesn't give the reader a clue of the content unless you spell it out in the title and sub-title. Stories there are likely to be ignored compared to ones put in other categories.

It is easier to write the story as a whole and have chapter breaks where they fit instead of writing each chapter as a mini-story.

Whatever you decide, follow Weird Harold's advice and write and edit the whole thing before posting it. A frequent complaint from readers is that they start reading a long story in chapters and find that the author hasn't written the ending. I'm guilty of that and must get round to finishing off some of my sagas.

You may find once you start editing that large chunks of text are not required to tell the story. Your 20,000 might be a better story as 15,000. Or, less likely, that you can usefully expand part of the plot so that 20,000 becomes 25,000. Until you have the whole story written it is difficult to tell.

If you want advice on whether short chapters or one long story is better rated - the answer is 'It depends'. There are so many variables. Only you can work out that answer for yourself with experience of your own submissions.

Og

 

[Global Carol]

You are wonderful, thanks!

Wow! I had no idea there were so many helpful folks out there. Thank you so much for the great advice.

Since you all pretty much agree on my finishing the story before doing anything else, that will be my focus. I know when I let some time pass after I write, reviewing and editing are easier. Not only are I more objective, but ideas that were wonderful when I first wrote them in retrospect appear, well, puerile is the first word that pops into my head -- barring any scatological references, of course.

For now it’s back to work. Once again, thank you all for the help.

Global