The Official Authors' Hangout Summer Lovin' Contest 2017 Support Thread

[sr71plt]

I looked up the Contest rules and Literotica's submission guidelines and nowhere does it say to only submit 'Short Stories.' The only rules about story length are no stories under 750 words. If someone wrote a short story, they wrote a short one and if someone wrote a long one, they wrote a long one, what's the big deal?

That has nothing to do with what I posted to this thread.

 

[HuckPilgrim]

I looked up the Contest rules and Literotica's submission guidelines and nowhere does it say to only submit 'Short Stories.' The only rules about story length are no stories under 750 words. If someone wrote a short story, they wrote a short one and if someone wrote a long one, they wrote a long one, what's the big deal?

Longer stories tend to do better score wise.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Longer stories tend to do better score wise.

And even if they're long, when your score is up there you attract the one star bombs. LOL. I had a great run on Sammi Woo yesterday and then around now, a couple of one stars that bombed the score all the way down. Not enough votes yet to be impervious to that kind of silliness. We'll see what today brings

Partly as Pilot said, some readers don't know writing quality, and I'm not saying mine is good, just that I'm getting a good idea of what reader buttons to push and I can definitely improve my grammar, punctuation and cut down on things like repetitiveness. Partly, in the contests, there's some very political voting, and you can see it in this one with some stories targeted for down voting and some left alone. It's quite fascinating to watch. The sweeps on this one at the end will be really interesting.

I'm not so sure that readers are mesmerized by high wordage so much as that when they read a good story, they want more - and a good long story as an edge coz there's more enjoyment out of it. One of the comments I get is that there just aren't that many really good stories on LIT and when readers find them, they really like them. So I think that's part of it too - and if you can do a good series, that's even better for the readers.

 

[oggbashan]

I looked up the Contest rules and Literotica's submission guidelines and nowhere does it say to only submit 'Short Stories.' The only rules about story length are no stories under 750 words. If someone wrote a short story, they wrote a short one and if someone wrote a long one, they wrote a long one, what's the big deal?

Stories can be shorter than 750 words if they are submitted as a group. I have posted 15 x 50 word stories to reach the 750 word minimum. With my copyright notice and the short titles to each 50-word story the total is over 800 words.

BUT - what we were discussing was what is an appropriate length story for a themed contest. It seems that there is a readers' preference for contest stories that are about 9,000 to 10,000 words. It may only be a gut-feeling among those of us that enter many contests but it feels right.

It doesn't explain why some much longer stories, or much shorter stories, have won contests. Contests are won with stories that are popular and survive with a high rating after the sweeps.

Trying to produce the ideal contest story is probably a waste of time. Writing what you think is a good story, and just watching what happens to it is a better ambition.

 

[PuckIt]

Writing what you think is a good story, and just watching what happens to it is a better ambition.

Quoted for truth.

In all seriousness (I know, I know. I shouldn't break character.), the length of the story can be both a good and bad thing.

On the up side, as many have said, anyone who sticks through twenty or more lit screens is pretty much going to be having a good time or they would leave as soon as they saw it was still going. So, the votes are typically higher as long as the author doesn't do something like trickle off into a drawn out denouement that goes on for several screens and doesn't actually resolve anything. (*Or go with a non-HEA in certain categories.)

On the down side, I think it's easier to bail on the story before the end and this results in higher views with fewer votes. And a good three hundred votes on a story is going to make the resulting score a lot more solid than eighty or so. To wit, ten or so 2s and 3s are going to effect the final a lot more with only seventy fours and fives than thirty with two hundred and seventy to counter balance. (And more than a few have figured out how to use the drop down arrow to skip to the vote if they don't like how the first three or four screens are going.)

I will say this, though. My personal taste, as a reader, tends to run long with a lot of character and scene development. I never was a fan of short and struggled to learn to write that way. And figured out the hard way, it's amazingly hard to write short and be complete and good. Frankly, I don't think I ever managed. And my hat is off to those who can tell a good abbreviated tale.

On the other hand, I've read no few authors who try to stretch things long past their ability to keep it interesting. (Well, to me. Maybe she was really into Wal-Mart and got off on describing an unnecessary trip just so she could toss in a description of virtually every item on each aisle. And if that was her kink, so be it. I exited somewhere in the soap aisle.)

I also admit, I've struggled with the whole "show, don't tell" thing since I first heard it and I may still not have figured out what that really means. I've pretty much just gone with not calling the father an antidisestablishmentarianistic misogynist with homoerotic leanings but spending a few paragraphs to show how he acts and how his family reacts.

At any rate, I pretty much let the story drive the length and don't stretch it or shrink it to make it fit a preconceived notion of what the final product should be. Although I did cut somewhere between eight and ten scenes out of my entry. But, because they bent the story in an unnecessary direction rather than because I was trying to keep the length down. (Obviously.)

Tell the story you want to tell, the way you want to tell it, and give it the best effort you can. And have a little fun with it, because if sex (and getting to the point sex is a possibility) ain't fun, you need to revisit your paradigm.

 

[49greg]

How about repurposing it for the next competition? A Halloween theme tweak. And a few extra weeks. That's what I did with Sammi Woo. It missed being finished for the Nude Day competition so I edited it for Summer instead. Then finished it in one mammoth burst.

I don't think it could be changed for a Halloween story, but maybe a nude day or for that matter, a summer one next year LOL. I still have a few unfinished Halloween stories from last year I can work on.

My "Valentine's Day Mess" started as what was supposed to be a stand-alone contest story, but I ended it so poorly that most of the comments were "More!" So I added parts, numbering them Pt 2 and Pt 3. Five total are planned. For me the title has now become a triple entendre. The characters used it to describe how messy it can be to eat a chocolate cherry cordial. It also referred to the mess they made out of their lives. The third reference is to the total mess I made out of the ending.

The last time I submitted edits, Laurel chose to rename the first story "Pt 1," which probably wouldn't have floated if I named it that way to start with. So maybe the idea is just to leave out the Chapter reference, suffer the slings and arrows, and go on with the story afterwards.

Looking back at it, I should have left it without the Ch 1, that was my original idea. I thought I would then complete the story and add an additional chapter or two later on. But an early story that I posted here got lambasted by a reader for not putting the chapter 1 notice on it. At the end I had "to be continued" and the reader was upset that he got into a multi part story without knowing it. That's what got me to put the Ch. 1 on my Summer Lovin' story.

It's amazing how a single comment can stick with me, especially bad ones from my early days on Lit. I need a selective mind wipe.

 

[ChloeTzang]

...... In all seriousness (I know, I know. I shouldn't break character.), the length of the story can be both a good and bad thing.

On the up side, as many have said, anyone who sticks through twenty or more lit screens is pretty much going to be having a good time or they would leave as soon as they saw it was still going. So, the votes are typically higher ....

On the down side, I think it's easier to bail on the story before the end and this results in higher views with fewer votes. And a good three hundred votes on a story is going to make the resulting score a lot more solid than eighty or so. To wit, ten or so 2s and 3s are going to effect the final a lot more with only seventy fours and fives than thirty with two hundred and seventy to counter balance. (And more than a few have figured out how to use the drop down arrow to skip to the vote if they don't like how the first three or four screens are going.)

I've been watching my stats on Sammi Woo, which at 20 Lit pages is one of my longer ones, and it's still averaging that 1 vote per 100 views. Summertime Sadness on the other hand, which is only 3 Lit pages, is getting one vote per 50 views and a whole raft more comments. I find the whole reader engagement thing quite fascinating. What I am finding too is that Group Sex, like Mature, is a whole lot less views than First Time. On the other hand it's exposed me to a new group of readers

 

[NotWise]

I've been watching my stats on Sammi Woo, which at 20 Lit pages is one of my longer ones, and it's still averaging that 1 vote per 100 views. Summertime Sadness on the other hand, which is only 3 Lit pages, is getting one vote per 50 views and a whole raft more comments.

My longest story is "Valentine's Day Mess Pt. 3" which suffers a double whammy. It's 8 lit pages and part 3 of a story. I think that's why it's getting a vote per 400 views.

The story is broken up internally into five chapters. I had the option of posting the chapters separately, but my concept has been to post one part for each time the MC's get together. I stuck with the original plan and I think I would have been better if I posted chapters.

 

[ChloeTzang]

My longest story is "Valentine's Day Mess Pt. 3" which suffers a double whammy. It's 8 lit pages and part 3 of a story. I think that's why it's getting a vote per 400 views.

The story is broken up internally into five chapters. I had the option of posting the chapters separately, but my concept has been to post one part for each time the MC's get together. I stuck with the original plan and I think I would have been better if I posted chapters.

I'm trying to write in a little more structured format, targeting 3500 word chapters. Been going thru a few novels and that seems to be some sort of approximation. So I'm going to try and work my lit stories to that as well, but with internal breaks coz I always post far longer than that. I don't think that part matters to lit readers as long as there's more coming.

 

[NotWise]

I'm trying to write in a little more structured format, targeting 3500 word chapters. Been going thru a few novels and that seems to be some sort of approximation. So I'm going to try and work my lit stories to that as well, but with internal breaks coz I always post far longer than that. I don't think that part matters to lit readers as long as there's more coming.

"How long should a chapter be?" was a question on another writer's forum I once read. The best answer I saw was, "As long as it takes to tell the story."

I followed that advice in Unlikely Angels and some of the chapters are short. Readers here asked that I post in longer chunks so they had more to sink their teeth into.

 

[sr71plt]

The publishing house formula for print books before the e-book came along was 5,000-word chapters. The lower target came in with works to be read on electronic devices.

 

[oggbashan]

"How long should a chapter be?" was a question on another writer's forum I once read. The best answer I saw was, "As long as it takes to tell the story."

I followed that advice in Unlikely Angels and some of the chapters are short. Readers here asked that I post in longer chunks so they had more to sink their teeth into.

If your chapters are short you could post 'parts' of your story with several chapters in each part.

A chapter is just a convenient break, perhaps for a change of scene, time frame, or point of view.

You can post chapters singly; in groups of several chapters as parts; or as chapters of a complete story posted as an entity.

 

[ChloeTzang]

The publishing house formula for print books before the e-book came along was 5,000-word chapters. The lower target came in with works to be read on electronic devices.

Oh so that's what it was. I got the 3500 words from Wattpad initially and that's for mobile devices and teenage readers. Then when I checked back with some actual books it seemed to be common. So 5k to 3.5k - got a target anyhow.

 

[Halin24]

If I was intelligent I guess I shouldn't say this but I'm kind of shocked really, so I will anyway, especially since I don't really care about the contest.

I just found out there has been another sweep, the third as far as I know. The first one removed three votes and added 0.01 to the score. The second added 0.1 and got me up to exactly 4.50 (I have no numbers of votes removed) and that was pleasant enough.

The third one, however, removed ten votes as far as I can tell and got me up to 4.66! I haven't seen anything close to that before. I'm sure I will get back down again (especially after this comment) but what the hell?

 

[ChloeTzang]

The third one, however, removed ten votes as far as I can tell and got me up to 4.66! I haven't seen anything close to that before. I'm sure I will get back down again (especially after this comment) but what the hell?

Welcome to the world of competition sweeps. They're fun. Havent seen any on mine yet

 

[NotWise]

The third one, however, removed ten votes as far as I can tell and got me up to 4.66! I haven't seen anything close to that before. I'm sure I will get back down again (especially after this comment) but what the hell?

There are likely to be more sweeps before it's done, with the last sweep coming tomorrow night right before the winners are determined.

 

[KindofHere]

The publishing house formula for print books before the e-book came along was 5,000-word chapters. The lower target came in with works to be read on electronic devices.

This 5,000 word count presented as fact would be better proven with a reference. If you have that reference and are kind enough to provide it, I'd appreciate reading it, if you don't, then I'll never read it.

The following Stories and their word numbers are what I chose at random from my collection on the computer. Don't know what it proves, don't care, but I had to give this 5,000 words per chapter a look. I would have done more, but then I said, 'fuck it.'

Stephen King - 'Salem's Lot 1975
Chapter 1 (2 parts) - 1,653 -- Chatper 2 (8 parts) - 9,568 -- Chapter 3 (20 parts) 15,513

Stephen King - It - 1986
Chapter 1 (4 parts) 5,458 -- Chapter 2 (18 parts) 8,364 -- Chapter 3 (6 parts) 43,581

Stephen King - From a Buick 8 - 2002
Chapters labeled 'Now' & 'Then' -- Now - 9,715 -- Then - 3,101 -- Now - 701 --Then - 4,430

Cormac Mcarthy - Blood Meridian 1985
Chapter 1 - 4,185 -- Chapter 2 - 4,678 -- Chatper 3 - 4,185

Harry Potter Book 1 - JK Rowling
Chapter 1 - 4,610

Harry Potter Book 5 - JK Rowling
Chapter 1 - 5,815

Lee Childs - Jack Reacher: The Killing Floor 1997
Chapter 1 - 7,444 -- Chapter 2 - 6,381 -- Chapter 3 - 3,665 -- Chatper 4 - 4,211 -- Chapter 5 - 3,810

Patrick O'Brian - The Far Side of the World - 1984
Chapter 1 - 11,029 -- Chapter 2 - 12,360

 

[sr71plt]

I've worked in mainstream publishing houses for a couple of decades. I don't feel the need to prove anything to you. On the other hand, I'm happy you spent all that time researching so that you could think I'd argue with you over it. I won't; I don't care what you think. Folks can take what I post on the publishing industry--or not. It doesn't affect me a bit.

 

[KindofHere]

I've worked in mainstream publishing houses for a couple of decades. I don't feel the need to prove anything to you. On the other hand, I'm happy you spent all that time researching so that you could think I'd argue with you over it. I won't; I don't care what you think. Folks can take what I post on the publishing industry--or not. It doesn't affect me a bit.

I don't like talking to you, so I won't argue. Fact checking is important if you want to believe someone. That's it.

 

[TxRad]

I don't like talking to you, so I won't argue. Fact checking is important if you want to believe someone. That's it.

Then I'll give you a fact. He is right. I got that same number from my publisher and editor. It is not clear cut but it is the rule of thumb they use to make copy come out as even as possible.

 

[KindofHere]

Then I'll give you a fact. He is right. I got that same number from my publisher and editor. It is not clear cut but it is the rule of thumb they use to make copy come out as even as possible.

You gave a reason at least, but no offense, I have nothing to reference your claim against. It doesn't matter. I have google, which I used and from writers to editors to publishing house rules, I found various answers and chapter length was not high on the list of concerns. One author stated he wrote 1,500 words a chapter and some like 15,000. They seem to agree on word count more or less.

I recall my mother's collection of Harlequin Romance novels all being about the same length and the steamy scenes all being in about the same place, so I can conclude certain publishers have rules/guidelines they would like people to follow.

Thanks for your answer and explanation.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I recall my mother's collection of Harlequin Romance novels all being about the same length and the steamy scenes all being in about the same place, so I can conclude certain publishers have rules/guidelines they would like people to follow.

Thanks for your answer and explanation.

Oh, Harlequin and most other romance publishers have very specific guidelines to follow if you want to go that route.

 

[KindofHere]

Oh, Harlequin and most other romance publishers have very specific guidelines to follow if you want to go that route.

I wished I would have read them instead of only reading parts of them - yep - would have been a learning experience.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Well I saw some sort of sweep seems to have hit a few stories. One of my voting #s dropped and the score went up and the other one got bombed in the early hours. Didn't know my stories were that scary that they needed bombing lol. Down to the final hours woooo wooooo. May the best bomber .... I mean story .... I mean whatever .... this ones been fun to watch.

 

[IranianPrince]

Looking for an author

Are you guys interested in chatting with a young couple and write about them ?