Story Length Question

[BigMadStork]

I write long stories that take time to develop and tell the full story. Some have been over 200 Word pages long. I have noticed that the average length of a story lately is about 2 pages. Even long stories are being split up into 2 Literotica page per section. Was there a memo that I missed that all stories should be short?

Two pages seems too short. There is no fluidity to the story when it is broken up so much. Are authors doing this to get your stories seen? My stories with 8 and 9 section follows the law of diminishing returns: The longer a story, the fewer people will read all sections. I have stories that started with 140,000 and the 8th section still doesn't have 10,000 readers. The entire series is rated about 4.7.

I am fascinated to see how others feel.

 

[SamScribble]

From my observation, Lit has a readership for short stories (two or three pages) and a readership for longer stories - although many of my shorter stories seem to attract comments along the lines of 'Excellent. Now I can't wait for the next chapter.' Oh well.

 

[KeithD]

Story vs. novel. In the mainstream, most contests have a maximum limit of 3,500 words (one Lit. page). A few go to 5,000 words (barely on to the second Lit. page). Story vs. novel. They aren't the same thing. Novellas and novels are accepted here, of course. Lots of words does not ipso facto equate with "well written," though.

 

[GroverLang]

I can’t imagine reading a 200 page story. No matter how good I would get bored. I’ve read some stories around 10-12 pages but they’ve been very good and not wanting to stop reading until the end.

I’d be more inclined to read 200 pages as 60 instalments submitted 2/3 days apart. You’d get the fluidity and the reader is more likely to stay with with the story, if it’s good enough. But there are readers who are into long stories and there are those for whom 3/4 pages is as much as they want and/or can maintain concentration for.

Horses for courses. As an example I read Melissa’s “Fall and Rise” and really enjoyed it. I began reading “Mary and Alvin” which I was enjoying but when it got to chapter 20 I couldn’t take any more. Nothing wrong with the story itself and certainly nothing wrong with the writing. She’s now up to 33 and if it was a 100 plus page single story I doubt if I would have got anywhere near the equivelant of chapter 20. But, as I’ve said it’s horses for courses. I also pulled out as one of her followers which is a shame because I’ll miss any future stories that I might have liked to read.

 

[gordo12]

I can’t imagine reading a 200 page story. No matter how good I would get bored. I’ve read some stories around 10-12 pages but they’ve been very good and not wanting to stop reading until the end.

I’d be more inclined to read 200 pages as 60 instalments submitted 2/3 days apart. You’d get the fluidity and the reader is more likely to stay with with the story, if it’s good enough. But there are readers who are into long stories and there are those for whom 3/4 pages is as much as they want and/or can maintain concentration for.

Horses for courses. As an example I read Melissa’s “Fall and Rise” and really enjoyed it. I began reading “Mary and Alvin” which I was enjoying but when it got to chapter 20 I couldn’t take any more. Nothing wrong with the story itself and certainly nothing wrong with the writing. She’s now up to 33 and if it was a 100 plus page single story I doubt if I would have got anywhere near the equivelant of chapter 20. But, as I’ve said it’s horses for courses. I also pulled out as one of her followers which is a shame because I’ll miss any future stories that I might have liked to read.

I believe it takes around 10-12 word pages to equal one Lit page so we're really talking about 20 pages here.

But I too have noticed a real trend since Covid for smaller stories. There were several that didn't even make one page today and I think the longest was 1 1/2. Mind you I just checked the LW hub so others may differ.

 

[SimonDoom]

Word count is a more helpful way to compare stories than "Word pages", because the number of words on a Word page depends on the font style and size and whether it's double or single spaced. But if it's single spaced a single Word page probably means about 350-500 pages.

That means a 200 Word page story is from 70,000 to 100,000 words. Somewhere between 18 and 27 Literotica pages.

That's long by Literotica standards. Not unheard of, but long.

I'd probably divide a story of that length into 4-6 chapters, provided that each chapter provided some of what the readers of that category of story are looking for so readers wouldn't quite the story unnecessarily. Ideally, I'd finish the whole thing first and publish the separate chapters not more than a week apart.

 

[member9458]

From my long-time experience as a reader and my shorter time as a writer, longer stories do seem to get better scores. Take The Missing Dragon; the 5th chapter of Lien Geller's epic is a book in its own right at a staggering 60 LitE pages—that's over 200,000 words for those of you playing at home—and currently holds an equally staggering score of 4.92. But the more you think about it, the more sense it seems to make: the only people who are going to stick around for 60 pages are the people who are really feeling your narrative—and it's chapter 5, so they're already fans to begin with—so of course they're more likely to throw the author a 4 or a 5 when they get to the end.

That's not to take anything away from Geller; I really liked The Missing Dragon (though looking back I wish he split that 5th chapter up for efficacy). But it demonstrates...well, half my point. See, Geller's got about a few thousand followers, so he could probably write 20 pages about a guy repeatedly slamming a Barbie and Ken doll together at the waist and people would still read it. Anybody who's just starting out, however, should probably assume that the longer their story goes, the less attention it'll get. You're seeing this with your own work, but you gotta figure that with only so many hours in a day, the longer the story goes, the higher your burnout rate will be.

Now, if you have a strong story hook and engaging prose, the math changes a little; people make time for a good story. But putting aside the fact that you don't really know these things until the feedback rolls in, let's not start thinking a long story is automatically better than a short one. The ability to get to the fucking point (so to speak) without being distracted by bullshit is something I appreciate in writers, between my own struggles to keep my wordiness in check and the staggering amount of bullshit I've read from other erotica authors in here. I could do a whole thing about the padding I hate in the erotica I've read, but I'd like to follow my own advice and keep this short. Suffice to say, some authors use the extra padding they give themselves to add details and quirks that add to the experience they're building, and others just crawl up their own asses.

 

[GroverLang]

I believe it takes around 10-12 word pages to equal one Lit page so we're really talking about 20 pages here.

But I too have noticed a real trend since Covid for smaller stories. There were several that didn't even make one page today and I think the longest was 1 1/2. Mind you I just checked the LW hub so others may differ.

My mind blanked out the mention of Word when I was reading the post. Either a new mind or new eyes needed. Thank for spotting it Gordo. It’ll make me more careful in future. Although 20 Lit pages is twice as long as I’ve ever managed.

I’d never thought about Covid-19 affecting the length of stories. I wouldn’t naturally think it would make them longer but I would have expected, if anything, more stories. But as it happens my last two stories, in bdsm and fetish, did stay on the first page for several days, which is definitely unusual in those categories.

 

[Handley_Page]

It's best tot work on "Word Count", not word pages.
A lot will depend upon how big the page is (Foolscap or A4 ?) and the size of the fount used (12 point is bigger that 10 !).
At about 3600 words (or so) per lit page, you can easily work out how many Lit pages is will come out at.
Good Luck

 

[SimonDoom]

From my long-time experience as a reader and my shorter time as a writer, longer stories do seem to get better scores. Take The Missing Dragon; the 5th chapter of Lien Geller's epic is a book in its own right at a staggering 60 LitE pages—that's over 200,000 words for those of you playing at home—and currently holds an equally staggering score of 4.92. But the more you think about it, the more sense it seems to make: the only people who are going to stick around for 60 pages are the people who are really feeling your narrative—and it's chapter 5, so they're already fans to begin with—so of course they're more likely to throw the author a 4 or a 5 when they get to the end.

That's not to take anything away from Geller; I really liked The Missing Dragon (though looking back I wish he split that 5th chapter up for efficacy). But it demonstrates...well, half my point. See, Geller's got about a few thousand followers, so he could probably write 20 pages about a guy repeatedly slamming a Barbie and Ken doll together at the waist and people would still read it. Anybody who's just starting out, however, should probably assume that the longer their story goes, the less attention it'll get. You're seeing this with your own work, but you gotta figure that with only so many hours in a day, the longer the story goes, the higher your burnout rate will be.

Now, if you have a strong story hook and engaging prose, the math changes a little; people make time for a good story. But putting aside the fact that you don't really know these things until the feedback rolls in, let's not start thinking a long story is automatically better than a short one. The ability to get to the fucking point (so to speak) without being distracted by bullshit is something I appreciate in writers, between my own struggles to keep my wordiness in check and the staggering amount of bullshit I've read from other erotica authors in here. I could do a whole thing about the padding I hate in the erotica I've read, but I'd like to follow my own advice and keep this short. Suffice to say, some authors use the extra padding they give themselves to add details and quirks that add to the experience they're building, and others just crawl up their own asses.

What's interesting about the Missing Dragon is that chapter 5 has over 3000 votes, which is a lot, especially for a story that has a score of 4.92. Its view:vote ratio is very high when you consider the story is so long. That means either that not that many people are dropping out of it part way through OR that an extremely high percentage of those who finish it vote on it.

Sci Fi/Fantasy is a category apart, and its readers seem to be much more patient with long stories with relatively less sex in them.

 

[yowser]

Sci Fi/Fantasy is a category apart, and its readers seem to be much more patient with long stories with relatively less sex in them.

This is definitely true, I am astonished at how long some of these are. There is the 'novels and novellas' and presumably the readers there are prepared for extended reading.

The only other, obvious, writerly point is that it is rare to find a narrative that cannot be improved by excising. A 10k word story, if carefully edited down to 7k, will almost always be better.

 

[AlinaX]

It is rare to find a narrative that cannot be improved by excising. A 10k word story, if carefully edited down to 7k, will almost always be better.

I compress mine down to 3.5k for that extra virgin taste...

 

[PennameWombat]

Word count is a more helpful way to compare stories than "Word pages", because the number of words on a Word page depends on the font style and size and whether it's double or single spaced. But if it's single spaced a single Word page probably means about 350-500 pages.

That means a 200 Word page story is from 70,000 to 100,000 words. Somewhere between 18 and 27 Literotica pages.

That's long by Literotica standards. Not unheard of, but long.

I'd probably divide a story of that length into 4-6 chapters, provided that each chapter provided some of what the readers of that category of story are looking for so readers wouldn't quite the story unnecessarily. Ideally, I'd finish the whole thing first and publish the separate chapters not more than a week apart.

Well, we'll see. Last night I pushed 'submit' on my longest ever single submission, 70,000 words, into Sci Fi/Fantasy since it involves aliens, space travel and the like. I thought about breaking it up as you describe, but it doesn't have clean breaks for that. Now, it does have 'chapters,' in that there are internal breaks and each is titled. But they're traditional narrative breaks. Anyway, it's not quite double the longest I've ever submitted so we'll see once it goes live.

I have wrestled with this whole issue. I've tended to aim for 15,000-20,000 words per 'chapter' in my existing releases, but I've been lazy in leaving long gaps at times. Actually I've tended to get distracted and write other stories, many of them part of the same universe, but with different focus and characters who all interleave to some degree with each other. Each individual submission usually has some breaks, call them chapters or sections or whatever. But my goal is to always ensure the story/chapter I submit has a complete arc that contributes to the broader arc, while the internal breaks are changes in focus, PoV and the like, within the single submission. I tend to use section names instead of the '****' breaks but I've used those in a few cases.

I've also done more serialized stories, with the same main characters who simply appear in multiple stories. These aren't meant to be a true single arc, beyond following these characters through new adventures. But they do reference back although they're mostly meant to be enjoyable on their own. These again I aim for 20,000 or so words.

Purely standalone stories I've done range from 750 words through close to 40,000, all as single submissions, but 10,000-20,000 are the most common.

And, while I'm here, as you say I just use word count. When I'm writing I use spacing and formatting that helps me write, review and edit that have no relation to 'published' length, so Word pages are useless (I use Google Docs and LibreOffice anyway ). Fortunately these easily tell me my word counts.

 

[SimonDoom]

Well, we'll see. Last night I pushed 'submit' on my longest ever single submission, 70,000 words, into Sci Fi/Fantasy since it involves aliens, space travel and the like. I thought about breaking it up as you describe, but it doesn't have clean breaks for that. Now, it does have 'chapters,' in that there are internal breaks and each is titled. But they're traditional narrative breaks. Anyway, it's not quite double the longest I've ever submitted so we'll see once it goes live.

I have wrestled with this whole issue. I've tended to aim for 15,000-20,000 words per 'chapter' in my existing releases, but I've been lazy in leaving long gaps at times. Actually I've tended to get distracted and write other stories, many of them part of the same universe, but with different focus and characters who all interleave to some degree with each other. Each individual submission usually has some breaks, call them chapters or sections or whatever. But my goal is to always ensure the story/chapter I submit has a complete arc that contributes to the broader arc, while the internal breaks are changes in focus, PoV and the like, within the single submission. I tend to use section names instead of the '****' breaks but I've used those in a few cases.

I've also done more serialized stories, with the same main characters who simply appear in multiple stories. These aren't meant to be a true single arc, beyond following these characters through new adventures. But they do reference back although they're mostly meant to be enjoyable on their own. These again I aim for 20,000 or so words.

Purely standalone stories I've done range from 750 words through close to 40,000, all as single submissions, but 10,000-20,000 are the most common.

And, while I'm here, as you say I just use word count. When I'm writing I use spacing and formatting that helps me write, review and edit that have no relation to 'published' length, so Word pages are useless (I use Google Docs and LibreOffice anyway ). Fortunately these easily tell me my word counts.

Sounds to me like you did the right thing. You gave this a lot of thought and decided it made more sense to submit it as a single standalone story.

The mistake too many authors make, IMO, is to submit stories in too many short chapters. They lose readers that way through attrition. Experience shows that long stories can work at Literotica.

Best of luck with your story!

 

[Bramblethorn]

Sounds to me like you did the right thing. You gave this a lot of thought and decided it made more sense to submit it as a single standalone story.

The mistake too many authors make, IMO, is to submit stories in too many short chapters. They lose readers that way through attrition.

Do we have any evidence that chaptering loses more readers than a single big submission?

 

[KeithD]

Do we have any evidence that chaptering loses more readers than a single big submission?

You could maybe get some sort of half-useful stat on how many opened a standalone story as opposed to the last chapter of a serialized story, but you couldn't account for those who opened the standalone story, did an "oh my god, I don't have time to read twenty Lit. pages today" and closed it without reading much, if any, of it. The views would record on a mere opening, wouldn't they.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Do we have any evidence that chaptering loses more readers than a single big submission?

There is no way of knowing how many readers finish a stand-alone story. That's one bonus with chaptered stories - you know how many do read through to the end - and you can see which chapters might have been read twice by some folk, from the view count ups and downs.

 

[SimonDoom]

Do we have any evidence that chaptering loses more readers than a single big submission?

I think we do, although it's not a certain thing. The data is open to different interpretations. Others with more mathematical aptitude than I have may have better interpretations than I do.

I've noticed that for my 31 stories, and for stories of other authors, the view:vote ratio gravitates around 90:1. There is a correlation between the length of the story and the ratio, so it's fair to say that the longer the story the more likely readers are to drop off before finishing. But the correlation is weak. It's not as strong as you'd think. Meanwhile, there's a very clear dropoff in views/votes for multi-chaptered stories.

My take from observing the data is that if you have to choose between submitting a 50K word story as a single story or submitting it in chapters, you'll get more readers reading through to the end if it's submitted as a single standalone story. But I admit others may observe something different.

 

[gordo12]

I have to say when I open a story and see a massive number of pages I either close it and forget it or set up a link to a file I keep for long stories. When I have time.

So you'd see that as a view but it isn't a read.

I think chaptering is the better measure although it's pretty much the same people on the last chapter as the first chapter.

Overall the only measure I consider accurate is the voting. If they voted most of them read it through.

 

[Bramblethorn]

You could maybe get some sort of half-useful stat on how many opened a standalone story as opposed to the last chapter of a serialized story, but you couldn't account for those who opened the standalone story, did an "oh my god, I don't have time to read twenty Lit. pages today" and closed it without reading much, if any, of it. The views would record on a mere opening, wouldn't they.

That's my understanding, yes.

I think we do, although it's not a certain thing. The data is open to different interpretations. Others with more mathematical aptitude than I have may have better interpretations than I do.

I've noticed that for my 31 stories, and for stories of other authors, the view:vote ratio gravitates around 90:1. There is a correlation between the length of the story and the ratio, so it's fair to say that the longer the story the more likely readers are to drop off before finishing. But the correlation is weak. It's not as strong as you'd think. Meanwhile, there's a very clear dropoff in views/votes for multi-chaptered stories.

My take from observing the data is that if you have to choose between submitting a 50K word story as a single story or submitting it in chapters, you'll get more readers reading through to the end if it's submitted as a single standalone story. But I admit others may observe something different.

The ratio of views/votes probably tells us *something*, but it's not easy to interpret just what. For instance - I've only completed one serial so far, but for what it's worth, here are the views/votes ratios by chapter. It's hard to see a consistent pattern over time here:

 

[ElectricBlue]

The ratio of views/votes probably tells us *something*, but it's not easy to interpret just what. For instance - I've only completed one serial so far, but for what it's worth, here are the views/votes ratios by chapter. It's hard to see a consistent pattern over time here:

Based on those view/vote ratios I'd be inclined to think chaps 6, 9, 10 and 13 might have been read twice by some folk - do the view counts follow the same curve, that is, a little higher for those chapters?

I've seen that pattern on my longer chaptered stories - those chapters with the higher view count also have slightly higher scores - even if the view/score ratio is roughly the same. Which makes sense - a chapter is more likely to be read again if someone likes it more.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Based on those view/vote ratios I'd be inclined to think chaps 6, 9, 10 and 13 might have been read twice by some folk - do the view counts follow the same curve, that is, a little higher for those chapters?

I've seen that pattern on my longer chaptered stories - those chapters with the higher view count also have slightly higher scores - even if the view/score ratio is roughly the same. Which makes sense - a chapter is more likely to be read again if someone likes it more.

View counts attached. The first few chapters show the usual expected fall-off, but after that it gets a bit bathtub-ish.

6, 9, 10, 13, and 14 do have slightly more views than surrounding chapters. Some of that may be people re-reading their favourite chapters, but I suspect some of them are people who jumped in without having read the previous chapters at all.

Second attachment shows total views vs. time, with chapters 1, 13, and 14 highlighted. You can see that most of the chapters follow pretty much parallel curves, slow increases with occasional small bumps when I posted other stories that brought a few readers in for that series. But with #13 and #14 you can see stretches where the gradient increased suddenly. Those correspond to times when those specific chapters were high in the section toplist, so I'm pretty confident in thinking that a lot of readers found them through that list and dived straight into chapters 13 and 14.

For me, the main thing that makes me suspect viewer attrition works roughly the same regardless of chaptering is that ultra-long single-chapter pieces seem to do very well in the scoring. I think we're all agreed that long serials tend to inflate the scores of later chapters, because only the diehard fans are still reading. It's harder to find super-long single-chapter stories, but the ones I can find seem to do about as well as the "chapter #85"s, which suggests that they might be benefiting from similar levels of attrition. Admittedly that's somewhat indirect evidence, but without being able to check view counts by page, I don't have a better approach.

 

[ElectricBlue]

For me, the main thing that makes me suspect viewer attrition works roughly the same regardless of chaptering is that ultra-long single-chapter pieces seem to do very well in the scoring. I think we're all agreed that long serials tend to inflate the scores of later chapters, because only the diehard fans are still reading. It's harder to find super-long single-chapter stories, but the ones I can find seem to do about as well as the "chapter #85"s, which suggests that they might be benefiting from similar levels of attrition. Admittedly that's somewhat indirect evidence, but without being able to check view counts by page, I don't have a better approach.

I'm inclined to agree. Based on my own body of work, which is a mix of chaptered and stand-alone - but the longer pieces, generally, being chaptered - I work on a rule of thumb that maybe 20 - 25% of stand-alone story Views are full Reads. That's extrapolated from my chaptered stuff, where the Views at Chapter 3 will be pretty much the same as the last part (plus or minus the "read twice element."). I certainly don't delude myself that a high view count equates to readers actually finishing a story.

 

[yowser]

Another wrinkle in the multi-chapter works conundrum is when different sections of a work get posted under varied categories. I have noticed that when I post a multi-chapter story in LW, if a following chapter is in a different category, the score almost inevitably skyrockets (basically same story, same characters, maybe different sexual settings but the writing hasn't changed... evidence for how bizarre LW voting is, altho viewership numbers tend to be higher there.) Readership numbers also can vary widely then as well.

And of course if your only interest is the volumne of comments, LW is your baby, handsdown... Plus you make a lot of enemies.

 

[PennameWombat]

Do we have any evidence that chaptering loses more readers than a single big submission?

I can see clearly that my chaptered stories drop number of views for each as they go along. Now, I'm horrible about not providing The Next Chapter weekly or monthly but even accounting for that, the numbers drop.

But no, I cannot say what would've happened had I released those as a single entity. Would more readers stay for a 60,000 rather than 3x20,000? I did just submit a single 70,000 word entry rather than break it up, so that will be useful to see once it goes live.

The main reason I release as chapters (or parts, or whatever) is that my main arc is a long story and it'll be quite a while before it's 'done'. I release chapters but I also release other works that intersect through that universe. These others tend to be more serials or stand-alone tie-ins. That also allows me to bounce around Categories with them.

I can also submit these 'others' into Contests or Events which want stand-alone or complete stories. No one's told me they can't be in a shared universe