New author has a question on length.

[LissaSue]

Hello all,

I've decided to try my hand at some writing, and had just one question. (So far atleast!) Knowing that the minimum length of a story must be 750 words or higher, can anyone suggest a comfortable length, in word doc. pages? I'm trying to find a middle ground where I can get some good content in, while not having the readers feel overwhelmed.

Thanks for your time!

 

[sr71plt]

Just my observation, but I think if you can keep it under three Lit. pages (under 7,500 words), you'll maximize the reads.

 

[_Lynn_]

No more than three pages works for me as well.

A Lit page has about 3500 words.

 

[PennLady]

I aim to keep my postings around 10k words or less. That's about all I can read at one shot, and so I don't like to ask others to do more than that. And as the others say, that equates to three or so lit pages.

I have posted longer than that, but it's either because it's a contest or there's no logical breaking point in the story.

 

[Guest]

*deleted*

 

[mynameisben]

If I come by page 3, you get my vote.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

If I come by page 3, you get my vote.

If I come by page 3 I would call it pre-mature ejaculation.

 

[Guest]

*deleted*

 

[Zeb_Carter]

keyboard mess

 

[Weird Harold]

in word doc. pages?

Word processer pages is a poor standard for judging a story's length. Font, Font Size, Margins, Indents, et al make words/page nearly a random value.

3500 words is a goood estimation of a Lit page, but an average of 100 full Lit pages worked out to 3,767 words, +/- about 400 words. The average was closer to 14KB characters/page, but apparent 'orphan control' makes even that an uncertain measure.

The best length for a story is however many words you need to tell the story and not one word more or less. If you tell the story well, it won't matter to the reader whether it was 751 words or 751,000 words (about 210 Lit pages) -- although the latter might be better posted as a serial, it need not be.

If you end up writing for some other venue, you might have to be more concerned about fitting your story into a prescribed size range, but here at Lit you can let your muse be your guide on story length; there is a following for just about every possible length of story here.

 

[lovecraft68]

If it is good people will not look at length-you mean size really doesn't matter?- It also depends on the audience. If a stroker cannot find the word "cock" or pussy or sucking by midway down page one you are losing them no matter what.

There are however people who enjoy a good story and they will read through. Only problem is, especially for a new author, someone clicking and seeing 5 plus pages may bail. Once you become a bit established they will read.

My last one was twelve and it received 15 more votes than the previous chapter. Which means.... probably 1000 more reads

 

[PennLady]

If it is good people will not look at length-you mean size really doesn't matter?- It also depends on the audience. If a stroker cannot find the word "cock" or pussy or sucking by midway down page one you are losing them no matter what.

There are however people who enjoy a good story and they will read through. Only problem is, especially for a new author, someone clicking and seeing 5 plus pages may bail. Once you become a bit established they will read.

My last one was twelve and it received 15 more votes than the previous chapter. Which means.... probably 1000 more reads

Well this all depends. I will page down to see how long a story is, even if it's good, to decide whether I have the time to read it right then or not. For me it doesn't matter whether it's a new author, it's strictly a time issue.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just how it works for me. As with anything else with the readers here, there are too many from a huge spectrum to make many generalizations.

I agree that a story should be as long as it needs to be, but I do think posting in shorter, 3-4 screen page shots, makes it more likely people will read through. Maybe.

 

[TE999]

Ideally you should have the readers attention by the first two or three paragraphs. As far as length, initially 3,500 words or three Lit pages is a goal to shoot for.

Good luck with your writing and welcome to the Madhouse.

 

[TxRad]

Word processer pages is a poor standard for judging a story's length. Font, Font Size, Margins, Indents, et al make words/page nearly a random value.

3500 words is a goood estimation of a Lit page, but an average of 100 full Lit pages worked out to 3,767 words, +/- about 400 words. The average was closer to 14KB characters/page, but apparent 'orphan control' makes even that an uncertain measure.

The best length for a story is however many words you need to tell the story and not one word more or less. If you tell the story well, it won't matter to the reader whether it was 751 words or 751,000 words (about 210 Lit pages) -- although the latter might be better posted as a serial, it need not be.

If you end up writing for some other venue, you might have to be more concerned about fitting your story into a prescribed size range, but here at Lit you can let your muse be your guide on story length; there is a following for just about every possible length of story here.

Lit uses a 1.25 margin on all four sides, a courier font size 12 and single line spacing. or at least that is how it comes out if you copy a page and check their paragraph format in Word..

 

[jomar]

Lit uses a 1.25 margin on all four sides, a courier font size 12 and single line spacing. or at least that is how it comes out if you copy a page and check their paragraph format in Word..

Yes. Set your Word margins to mimic a Lit page and you get a feel for what it will look like. Keep your paragraphs to about eight lines to make it easy to read.

 

[estragon]

If More Than 3 Lit Pages

it had better be a stormer. Unless you are an established Lit author with a big following, who will read every comma you write.

That said, Grandmaster Sir_Nathan's classic Culture_Shock went 37 pages and I stayed up all night reading it. It scored something like 4.89, and was so good some pirate stole it and was selling it on Amazon.com.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

Use your own attention span as a guide, but keep in mind that you might not be typical of most readers. Personally, if I am reading to enjoy the writer's craft, I am comfortable with a 3-5 lit. page story, and even longer if it is really good. If I am reading for another purpose, then my attention span is much shorter--more like 1-2 pages. If your story exceeds the length you would thrust upon your audience at one time, you can always break it up into chapters. The trick in that is each chapter must be satisfying enough that you do not leave the readers frustrated.

I recently made an effort to finish a story in around 7000 words. The original draft was much longer, so my editor took a chainsaw and I used hedge trimmers to get it down to the targeted length. The end result was decidedly less readable than the original draft. So we went back to the original and carefully pared the fat away, resulting in a story around 9000 words that was far more enjoyable than the shorter or longer versions. The bottom line is, your story should be as long as it needs to be, and no longer.

Also, bear in mind what another poster mentioned: if you haven't hooked your readers by the first 2 or 3 paragraphs, it doesn't matter how long the story is. They won't see the end of it anway.

 

[sr71plt]

The best length for a story is however many words you need to tell the story and not one word more or less. If you tell the story well, it won't matter to the reader whether it was 751 words or 751,000 words (about 210 Lit pages) -- although the latter might be better

I think in the real world of Lit., a lot of readers look at the number of pages before reading any text and determine whether they want to get into a story longer than two or three pages. And I think that a lot of Lit. readers don't. So, I still am of the opinion that to maximize readers, shorter is better than longer. It doesn't do a bit of good how good the story or its first two or three paragraphs are if someone coming with the time to read a short story sees that what they opened is a novella.

 

[PennLady]

I think in the real world of Lit., a lot of readers look at the number of pages before reading any text and determine whether they want to get into a story longer than two or three pages. And I think that a lot of Lit. readers don't. So, I still am of the opinion that to maximize readers, shorter is better than longer. It doesn't do a bit of good how good the story or its first two or three paragraphs are if someone coming with the time to read a short story sees that what they opened is a novella.

I agree. There are just too many people out there with too many variables in their life, or their day, to assess how they read, what their limit is, etc.

I tend to think shorter is better than longer myself, and why I keep my posts to 10k or less in most cases. Unless I've got a specific reason to read a story (the author asked, or it's one I edited and am looking at the final draft, etc.), I'll find a story, read a little, then page down to see how long it is. More than four pages almost guarantees I won't read it. Not that I don't want to, but I'm at home with a 3yo -- that cuts into one's reading time. Not to mention writing time.

 

[Weird Harold]

Lit uses a 1.25 margin on all four sides, a courier font size 12 and single line spacing. or at least that is how it comes out if you copy a page and check their paragraph format in Word..

Last time I pasted a page into Word, it conformed to my NORMAL.dot template which specifies Times New Roman and 10 pt.

If you look at the HTML coding, Lit's primary font choice is Verdana and if you have Verdana TT on your computer, it should paste as Verdana TT 12pt and whatever margins you have set in your NORMAL.dot (because Lit's margins are resolution dependent on-screen)

 

[Weird Harold]

I agree. There are just too many people out there with too many variables in their life, or their day, to assess how they read, what their limit is, etc.

If one wants to write for the least common denominator, then short, simple and graphic, without refinements, then worry about the 'average' reader. If the goal is to write the best story possible, write and polish the story and the readership will find it.

One way to determine the "perfect length" for a story would be to take a random sample of stories with a Red H and find the average length of those stories. Then read a random sampling of stories with a Red H and see if you really want to write down to that standard.

With Lit's volume of traffic, there are a significant number of readers for just about any story of any length. A writer just a has to choose what their goal of writing stories for Lit is -- volume or quality?

 

[MatthewVett]

For what it's worth, the linear best fit graph of words vs score for my stories is:

Score = 4.1985582056 + 0.000039152594315(Word Count)

http://people.hofstra.edu/Stefan_Waner/RealWorld/multlinreg.html

If anyone else wants to do their stories, there's a link there. I should probably have the possibility of an x^2 term, but I figure linear regression is good enough.

 

[lovecraft68]

Well this all depends. I will page down to see how long a story is, even if it's good, to decide whether I have the time to read it right then or not. For me it doesn't matter whether it's a new author, it's strictly a time issue.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just how it works for me. As with anything else with the readers here, there are too many from a huge spectrum to make many generalizations.

I agree that a story should be as long as it needs to be, but I do think posting in shorter, 3-4 screen page shots, makes it more likely people will read through. Maybe.

One thing I do notice on stories that are say 5+ pages is they get favorited quite a bit and whereas most sotries get the majority of their votes within the first couple of days the long ones will still have votes trickling on a week later. So they are probably saving them for later and go on to a stroker for the moment.

 

[lovecraft68]

If one wants to write for the least common denominator, then short, simple and graphic, without refinements, then worry about the 'average' reader. If the goal is to write the best story possible, write and polish the story and the readership will find it.

One way to determine the "perfect length" for a story would be to take a random sample of stories with a Red H and find the average length of those stories. Then read a random sampling of stories with a Red H and see if you really want to write down to that standard.

With Lit's volume of traffic, there are a significant number of readers for just about any story of any length. A writer just a has to choose what their goal of writing stories for Lit is -- volume or quality?

I think this varies on the category. Romance, erotic couplings and non human fans seem to have some "attention span" non consent stories are best done in a "wham bam" format. Incest in general is usually about the quick dirty hit as well so target audience plays a part.

I do agree however that if you want to write youe best piece do not keep looking at word or page count and say "shit gotta hurry" just let it flow. End of the day it is easier to cut something than to add to.