Short/long stories?

[BobbyBrandt]

No, they're not. I've seen plenty of one-part stories which committed those sins, despite having been completed before posting. Under either method of writing, thorough reviewing can catch them and sloppy reviewing can miss them.

If anything, "post as you go" can perhaps reduce the risk of such continuity glitches. One of the biggest risks for that kind of problem is going back to change earlier sections and doing it imperfectly: I decide to rename "Bob" to "Jim", but I forget the bit where his mother calls him "Robert", yada yada. Under PAYG, I'm not going to be renaming him because I already posted chapters where he's called "Bob".

AFAICT, the most common cause of switching perspectives is that the writer isn't even aware that this is something they should be watching out for. When they don't know that, the details of how they approach their writing aren't going to help.

Yes, errors can occur under either method. I just discovered a couple of typos in a finished story that I just posted, but nothing that impacts the continuity or flow of the story, which are the most common issues I have seen with post-as-you-go writers.

Only one of the methods allows you to more easily address errors at the beginning which are not discovered until the end. Posting as you write takes that option away unless you submit an edited version. I get that it doesn't fit the style of everyone, but it doesn't work for me as a reader or a writer.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I open a new tab for each story that looks interesting enough to read. I'll read, and when I finish it, close out the tab. If I don't finish it, I leave the tab open. I just checked, and I have 90 tabs open with stories. It works for me, but I know most people don't operate like this.

I have a bookmark folder for "Reading". For a long story, I will bookmark it at the point where I am going to pause and then come back to it later.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Yes, errors can occur under either method. I just discovered a couple of typos in a finished story that I just posted, but nothing that impacts the continuity or flow of the story, which are the most common issues I have seen with post-as-you-go writers.

Only one of the methods allows you to more easily address errors at the beginning which are not discovered until the end.

Well yes, if you're doing one big review at the end, you probably will have errors at the beginning that are only discovered at the end, and then it's nice to be able to go back and change that without having to resubmit.

But under PAYW, one reviews every chapter before it goes out. Errors of the type you mention get caught a lot earlier, before that chapter goes out - and if you're catching them early, the inability to fix them later is irrelevant.

There will be times when I end up regretting choices I made earlier in the story: if only I hadn't specified that Jane was an only child, I could really use a sibling for this scene! But in practice I find that that one-chapter buffer leaves me enough flexibility for most purposes.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Well yes, if you're doing one big review at the end, you probably will have errors at the beginning that are only discovered at the end, and then it's nice to be able to go back and change that without having to resubmit.

But under PAYW, one reviews every chapter before it goes out. Errors of the type you mention get caught a lot earlier, before that chapter goes out - and if you're catching them early, the inability to fix them later is irrelevant.

There will be times when I end up regretting choices I made earlier in the story: if only I hadn't specified that Jane was an only child, I could really use a sibling for this scene! But in practice I find that that one-chapter buffer leaves me enough flexibility for most purposes.

I'm glad that PAYW works for you.

I haven't read any of your stories, but if you did in fact maintain continuity and concept over the fifteen months that it took for your series, "A Stringed Instrument" to completely post, or the three and a half years for "Anajali's Red Scarf" to post, that is impressive in its rarity.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I haven't read any of your stories, but if you did in fact maintain continuity and concept over the fifteen months that it took for your series, "A Stringed Instrument" to completely post, or the three and a half years for "Anajali's Red Scarf" to post, that is impressive in its rarity.

That approach is no different to writing an equivalent length piece over the same amount of time, editing as you go. I took eleven months to write my Arthurian myth thing (104k words) where I'd complete a chapter at a time, fully edited, then never looked back at it.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Nothing shows you have anything to back up your statement that it's a rarity. Why don't you stop making generalizations and unfounded statements, and accept that others do things their way?

Please use your grown-up manners.

I will not take the time to go back and retrieve examples from the hundreds of stories I have encountered on Literotica where the continuity from the first chapter to the last is lost by the author. I will make note of them going forward and provide links to prove the "generalization" as you put it.

In fairness, I will also provide examples of instances where the writer's work demonstrably improved from the first chapter to the latest. In AuroraIncident's example, comments by readers likely contributed to the improvements in later chapters, by encouraging the author to seek help before posting more chapters. In later chapters, he attributes the improvement to volunteers who proofed his work before posting. Could readers have not suffered through the earlier chapters and enjoyed a more polished product? I think they could have had the author been a bit more patient in their approach. Others will disagree, and that's fine.

I have stated that there are writers who do well with PAYW, and more power to them. There are also writers who submit only finished product and yet their stories are still not the best quality. My preference as a reader and a writer is for the story to be complete, and feedback on my stories indicates that readers appreciate that approach. You're free to believe as you will and do as you want.

Just try to be more polite in doing so.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm glad that PAYW works for you.

I haven't read any of your stories, but if you did in fact maintain continuity and concept over the fifteen months that it took for your series, "A Stringed Instrument" to completely post, or the three and a half years for "Anajali's Red Scarf" to post, that is impressive in its rarity.

I'm probably not the best person to ask, but between myself and my editors/beta readers, I think I did okay on those points. The only continuity error I'm aware of that got past the editors was in the very first chapter of Stringed Instrument. But I think I've mentioned before that that first chapter was originally written as a self-contained short story, so that error actually happened under "finish the story first" conditions. It was only after it posted that I was persuaded that it could be interesting to explore what happened next, and I shifted from a short story to a PAYW novel.

For various reasons, Red Scarf was a much more ambitious and difficult project despite ending up almost exactly the same word count as SI. I recall there were at least a couple of continuity-type glitches in that, but all the ones I'm aware of got caught by editors before they ever saw the light of day. That's what editors are for.

There are definitely readers who will tell you that I got the ending of Red Scarf wrong, but that ending is one I had planned from the very beginning and I always knew it wasn't going to please everybody. As far as I can tell from the view counts, almost everybody who makes it as far as chapter 3 of that series keeps on reading to the end, so I can't have jumped the shark too badly.

 

[Bramblethorn]

There's a thought - a Mary Poppins anthology; or a stand-off: Julie Andrews or Emily Blunt, Who Does it Better?

I would not recommend trying to publish a Mary Poppins story on Literotica.

 

[davion2308]

My highest-scoring stories are easily my longest ones. My most-viewed stories are my shorter ones.

Prefacing with "The story has to be good," I think people who enjoy getting wrapped into a story are much more likely to not actually vote but also score you well for your effort. Others who skim through 2k-5k and then say, "Yeah, decent," will scatter 4s and 5s across the board. The impatient people who don't want to be taken on an adventure can't get through 15k words or more and so won't get to the last page to score it.

That's my interpretation and I'm not often right so ... there you go?

 

[SimonDoom]

I would not recommend trying to publish a Mary Poppins story on Literotica.

Hmmm. Mary Poppins was always an adult, so there's no "aging up" problem, although there were always children around. What about a story where Mary Poppins shows up in her umbrella as a tutor at an all-male university?

 

[Bramblethorn]

Hmmm. Mary Poppins was always an adult, so there's no "aging up" problem, although there were always children around. What about a story where Mary Poppins shows up in her umbrella as a tutor at an all-male university?

The films are Disney, which puts them off limits here AFAIK. I guess one could write something based specifically on the books, but that original version of Mary Poppins was rather different to the Julie Andrews version and probably wouldn't be familiar to most readers here, so it might be a frustrating experience.

But... as of two days ago, the leeches at the Arthur Conan Doyle estate finally lost ownership of the last of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, so Holmes and Watson are available for a wide variety of action.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I'm probably not the best person to ask, but between myself and my editors/beta readers, I think I did okay on those points. The only continuity error I'm aware of that got past the editors was in the very first chapter of Stringed Instrument. But I think I've mentioned before that that first chapter was originally written as a self-contained short story, so that error actually happened under "finish the story first" conditions. It was only after it posted that I was persuaded that it could be interesting to explore what happened next, and I shifted from a short story to a PAYW novel.

For various reasons, Red Scarf was a much more ambitious and difficult project despite ending up almost exactly the same word count as SI. I recall there were at least a couple of continuity-type glitches in that, but all the ones I'm aware of got caught by editors before they ever saw the light of day. That's what editors are for.

There are definitely readers who will tell you that I got the ending of Red Scarf wrong, but that ending is one I had planned from the very beginning and I always knew it wasn't going to please everybody. As far as I can tell from the view counts, almost everybody who makes it as far as chapter 3 of that series keeps on reading to the end, so I can't have jumped the shark too badly.

You raise some other questions for me, and again, these are not critical of your approach, but of interest for how they might benefit others:

You mention editors, so I am curious, with the two stories mentioned, did you engage an editor from the first chapter of each story or bring someone in later?

Were you able to keep the same editor(s) for all subsequent chapters or did new ones get involved?

If you engaged an editor from the beginning and they stuck with you for months, and/or years, that in itself is a great accomplishment.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I would not recommend trying to publish a Mary Poppins story on Literotica.

There have been several porn parodies done of Mary Poppins, but those production companies didn't have Laurel at the helm.

 

[Bramblethorn]

You raise some other questions for me, and again, these are not critical of your approach, but of interest for how they might benefit others:

Happy to discuss!

You mention editors, so I am curious, with the two stories mentioned, did you engage an editor from the first chapter of each story or bring someone in later?

Bit of both.

My partner beta-reads just about everything I post here, including all chapters of those two stories. (The genesis of Red Scarf was a conversation that she overheard and related to me.)

Stringed Instrument was the first thing I posted here. It was a while ago and I apologise if I've forgotten anybody, but I think my partner was the only editor I had for that, though one of my readers was kind enough to help me out with some technical advice on the later chapters.

By the time I wrote Red Scarf I'd made some more contacts here, and more as the story went on. In addition to my partner who beta-ed all of it, there were several different Literotica folk. One who was very helpful for the first few chapters then ran away to sea for an extended period, and I acquired some other editors/beta-readers in her place. Although they hadn't edited the earlier chapters, they were already reading the series so they know the background. I also had a couple of Litizens giving me technical assistance with Indian culture/language stuff and with the legal aspects of the story.

Were you able to keep the same editor(s) for all subsequent chapters or did new ones get involved?

If you engaged an editor from the beginning and they stuck with you for months, and/or years, that in itself is a great accomplishment.

A compatible editor is well worth hanging onto, but it's also nice sometimes to get fresh perspectives on things. My partner is great but she is sometimes a little softer on my stories than a couple of my other readers, and because she knows me so well it can be useful to find out whether somebody who doesn't have decades of living with me will get what I'm saying in a story.

Those who do write an entire novel and edit the whole thing before posting: do you find the length causes any difficulty with getting editors? I'm extremely reluctant to volunteer for that sort of length until I've seen enough of the author's work to know what I'm letting myself in for.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Happy to discuss!



Bit of both.

My partner beta-reads just about everything I post here, including all chapters of those two stories. (The genesis of Red Scarf was a conversation that she overheard and related to me.)

Stringed Instrument was the first thing I posted here. It was a while ago and I apologise if I've forgotten anybody, but I think my partner was the only editor I had for that, though one of my readers was kind enough to help me out with some technical advice on the later chapters.

By the time I wrote Red Scarf I'd made some more contacts here, and more as the story went on. In addition to my partner who beta-ed all of it, there were several different Literotica folk. One who was very helpful for the first few chapters then ran away to sea for an extended period, and I acquired some other editors/beta-readers in her place. Although they hadn't edited the earlier chapters, they were already reading the series so they know the background. I also had a couple of Litizens giving me technical assistance with Indian culture/language stuff and with the legal aspects of the story.



A compatible editor is well worth hanging onto, but it's also nice sometimes to get fresh perspectives on things. My partner is great but she is sometimes a little softer on my stories than a couple of my other readers, and because she knows me so well it can be useful to find out whether somebody who doesn't have decades of living with me will get what I'm saying in a story.

Those who do write an entire novel and edit the whole thing before posting: do you find the length causes any difficulty with getting editors? I'm extremely reluctant to volunteer for that sort of length until I've seen enough of the author's work to know what I'm letting myself in for.

Excellent feedback. Thanks.

My wife edits my longer stories in multiple sittings. I'll usually begin with giving her a few of the first chapters so she starts to see the vision for the story and then add subsequent chapters a few at a time as I complete them. She is excellent at catching subtle differences in things and really has saved me a lot of angst by finding errors in timeline, character, locations, and so on.

Of course, she has the previous chapters to refer back to which places less of a burden upon her memory of what was written before. Relying upon Grammarly and other automated tools for grammar and spell-checking helps to allow her to focus on developmental and copy editing of the story rather than just proofreading it. Since she has been editing my stories from the beginning, she has the backstory on most of my frequent characters so she makes it tough for me to suddenly write something out of character for them in a subsequent story.

As an added bonus, my wife is drop-dead gorgeous and has posed as the model for a couple of my book covers.

 

[feather1892]

I believe there is a simple explanation for this;

More people read short, one off stories. They invest less time in the story and the characters and are therefore more critical. Also, readers are more likely to reach the end of shorter stories, even if they do not particularly enjoy them, and more therefore more likely to vote.

If you are read a longer story, or several chapters of a series, you are only going to keep with it if you are enjoying it, which is why I believe the scoring system favours longer stories and later sections of series.

 

[KeithD]

I'd recommend about 21,000 words (3 Lit pages).

Just for the record, 21,000 words would be 6 Lit. pages.

While holding that a story needs the number of words it takes for that story and pointing out that the mainstream tends have lower wordage limits than Lit., does, I'll agree with those who suggest that winning a contest at Lit. supports longer stories. I haven't checked it out, but all of the ones of mine that have placed in contests have been five Lit pages or longer, which is long for my average.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I believe there is a simple explanation for this;

More people read short, one off stories. They invest less time in the story and the characters and are therefore more critical. Also, readers are more likely to reach the end of shorter stories, even if they do not particularly enjoy them, and more therefore more likely to vote.

If you are read a longer story, or several chapters of a series, you are only going to keep with it if you are enjoying it, which is why I believe the scoring system favours longer stories and later sections of series.

I don't know if I agree with your premise.

Most of my stories are over 70K words. Four of those were submitted in multiple chapters/parts. The scoring for the parts only varied one or two-tenths of a point per chapter/part from first to last. The average for each of them is consistent with the scores for my longer stories submitted as a single post (currently at 10).

The consistency of chapter/part scores surprises me because I assumed that more readers were like me with multi-part stories and only voted once at the end, rating the entire story with their vote rather than individual chapters.

With my series stories, which are stand-alone stories with a common theme, the scoring variance is slightly higher between them, as much as four-tenths of a point.

 

[MillieDynamite]

My first stories were quite lengthy, and got good scores. Recently I tried a couple of short ones - only a single Lit page each , and the scores are abysmal, 4.42 and 3.75.
I have read comments here that most people don't like long stories, and skip to the juicy parts. But when the story is almost all juicy, they get bad scores.
I am confused.
Ophelia

You consider a 4.42 an abysmal score? I get it doesn't have a red H, but abysmal? Are all of your stories in the 4.99 range or something? The average, based on 1 to 5, is 2.5. Now, I'm not saying you should be satisfied with a score of 2.5, but none of us are Little Willy Shakespeare here... We have the advantage that readers are forgiving and vote on their fondness of the story they read, most give better than we deserve, but perfection, on Lit, I haven't read any perfect story here. Not in every aspect.

 

[theWollstonecraftWoman]

My first stories were quite lengthy, and got good scores. Recently I tried a couple of short ones - only a single Lit page each , and the scores are abysmal, 4.42 and 3.75.
I have read comments here that most people don't like long stories, and skip to the juicy parts. But when the story is almost all juicy, they get bad scores.
I am confused.
Ophelia

Wow, I feel so inferior now.

 

[Djmac1031]

I write short stories. I think my longest to date is 5 and a half Lit pages.

Most average between 2 and 3.

I've never had a complaint or any reader comment to suggest my stories are "too short."

That said, I can also assume those who prefer longer stories are simply skipping mine without comment.

I'm perfectly fine with what I do. I understand my limitations. I'm not a professional writer, and long, complex tales are simply beyond my skills.

There's just as much room here for the short, simple tale and the long, vast novel.

Readers will gravitate to which they prefer. And there are plenty of readers who enjoy both.

 

[EmilyMiller]

My first stories were quite lengthy, and got good scores. Recently I tried a couple of short ones - only a single Lit page each , and the scores are abysmal, 4.42 and 3.75.
I have read comments here that most people don't like long stories, and skip to the juicy parts. But when the story is almost all juicy, they get bad scores.
I am confused.
Ophelia

In my limited experience, there is little rhyme or reason to anything much here. I’m trying (and often failing) to go with the flow.

Em