Should I Split My Novella?

[KenNicottii]

I’m an infrequent and non-prolific author (8 stories in almost 10 years), and my muse has mostly inspired novella-length submissions. I know the consensus is longer stories will find their readership which I’ve found to be true. However, I had a disappointing result last time around when I tried an experiment with my story ‘The 8 by 10 of Darcy O’Dell’.

I initially wrote a 21K word Erotic Couplings story structured as a reminiscence with very short present day ‘bookends’. The male main character is digitizing all his old photos and finds one of a crush from his youth, and most of the story is his remembrances of their romance. The final scene [spoiler] is his decision not to scan that photo since it might cause his 40something wife unnecessary hurt if she saw it.

After I had finished, ideas for a new story involving his relationship with this present-day wife spilled forth. Soon I had a 13K word standalone tale with a few small callbacks to the first story.

Now, I’ve never had the skills or inspiration to write multi-chapter sagas with dozens of installments. My hat goes off to writers whose imagination and talents can pull this off. I knew I could merge both of my stories together as a 34K word submission and probably do well, but I wondered what might happen if I kept them as 2 separate stories.

Well, the scores were good enough for red Hs and staying in the top 50 of the 30-day EC Top List. But the views and votes were a small fraction of what I normally get – like around 10%. Sure there was the expected drop-off in Ch.02, but I was stunned at the relatively small readership. OK, maybe the dopey title (not my strong suit) or ho-hum descriptions, but still …

So now I’ve recently finished a 30K word novella that could easily be split 50:50 (and maybe should be due to the content), but now I’m wary of doing this based on my last submission. Yeah, common sense says stop worrying about stats and readership and just write for my own satisfaction (and my 200ish followers), but has anyone else experienced something similar?

 

[Djmac1031]

I don't write really long stories, so I'm probably not the best to advise.

That said, what it sounds like is offering readers a choice between one REALLY long story or two semi-long ones.

If that's the case, go with just one.

You'll either hook a reader or you won't. But splitting it in two just means a risk of losing audience to me.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Since one is already published and getting you traction, I'd keep them separate. That's what most of us do, I think - the more content you get on your story page, the more interest you get in the long run.

Don't overthink it - in six months it won't matter anyway, because hopefully you'll have more stories, and these will be one (or two) of many.

 

[RejectReality]

You just can't see the attrition when the parts are combined in a single submission. It's still happening, but there's no way to see that people are falling off halfway through a single submission.

It's sort of category dependent. In Sci-Fi & Fantasy, you'd probably be better off splitting it. In Incest, it has a higher likelihood of having legs as a single submission. In EC with the transient readership, there's a reduced chance those vagabond readers are going to come back for a part 2. There are different responses to the two presentations, and the only way to know is to give it a shot or spend the time researching it.

The nature of the story can also be a factor. You know sometimes that something isn't going to split well. It needs to be a continuous narrative. Listen to that instinct. Some stories beg to be episodic, and you should listen to that as well. As often as not, you've written it to be one way or the other. If you wrote it with the mindset it would be a single whole, go that way.

 

[Handley_Page]

I’m an infrequent and non-prolific author (8 stories in almost 10 years), and my muse has mostly inspired novella-length submissions. I know the consensus is longer stories will find their readership which I’ve found to be true. However, I had a disappointing result last time around when I tried an experiment with my story ‘The 8 by 10 of Darcy O’Dell’.

I initially wrote a 21K word Erotic Couplings story structured as a reminiscence with very short present day ‘bookends’. The male main character is digitizing all his old photos and finds one of a crush from his youth, and most of the story is his remembrances of their romance. The final scene [spoiler] is his decision not to scan that photo since it might cause his 40something wife unnecessary hurt if she saw it.

After I had finished, ideas for a new story involving his relationship with this present-day wife spilled forth. Soon I had a 13K word standalone tale with a few small callbacks to the first story.

Now, I’ve never had the skills or inspiration to write multi-chapter sagas with dozens of installments. My hat goes off to writers whose imagination and talents can pull this off. I knew I could merge both of my stories together as a 34K word submission and probably do well, but I wondered what might happen if I kept them as 2 separate stories.

I think that should be all in one part.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I write predominantly longer, novel-length stories (100K+). Most of these get posted in the Novels/Novellas category, and readers there seem to enjoy them.

However, I submitted four of these stories by chapters or parts and readers overwhelmingly commented on these that they preferred a single, longer submission over chapter submissions. (This had nothing to do with having to wait for subsequent chapters because they were all submitted at the same time)

Consequently, I have stopped breaking my stories up and I am considering re-posting the previous chapter stories as single submissions and then having the chapters removed from the site.

 

[SimonDoom]

I recommend publishing it as a single story.

Literotica readers (not all of them) are surprisingly fond of long stories. Long stories get more views and votes than you might think. There are some readers who won't even check out your story if it's marked as being just a first chapter, so right off the bat you may lose some readers you would otherwise have if it's a standalone story.