Using Literotica to gauge interest in longer stories

[MorraRose]

Hello, I write short stories, but also novella/novel length works, with several books and ideas in various states of development. I was wondering if anyone ever takes a chapter or some other excerpt of their book and develops it as a short story to get a feel for reader's reactions? Basically testing the waters on a theme before plunging headfirst into it.
Thanks!

 

[Bazzle]

If the story is good enough, the readers here will go with you.
If it's waffle rubbish then they won't.
I

 

[SimonDoom]

I haven't done this, but I think it's a great idea. Literotica is an ideal environment to try things like this.

 

[Ada Stuart]

Yes, I have (sort of) tried that. But for me it's usually the other way around. First, I write a short story and publish it to Lit, and if it becomes extremely popular, I sometimes add scenes to it and turn it into a longer story.

If you already have written the longer story, I find it very difficult to make a short version of something that has a complicated plotline, so it will probably work better if you just pick a few chapters and post those.

And I have to agree with Simon that Literotica is a great place to test new ideas and storylines. But I prefer to do the testing before writing the entire 250 pages

 

[KeithD]

I don't purposefully do this, but sometimes my stories do get expanded into larger works for the marketplace. The "Fangs at Fasching" entry to the 2022 Halloween contest in the sr71plt account is buried in the soon (I hope) to be published to the marketplace habu novella "The Viscount."

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I write predominantly longer stories but I don't "tease" anyone with them. If I am happy with the completed story, that is what gets posted. I can see no benefit for me or the readers for only an excerpt of a story to be posted. Longer stories of novel length do well here if positioned properly in the right categories, so don't hesitate to put it all out there.

Now if you want to develop a series out of a completed work and start with creating a stand-alone derivative and post that to see what people think, that might be different. My two series, "Before They Were Stars" and "Uncle Sugar Daddy" both had their origins as a planned longer story that I decided to turn into series.

 

[KassiopeiaX]

It's a good idea. I'm planning to do kind of the opposite and submit a short story and see if I want to expand it further before investing more time and brain cells!!

 

[Bramblethorn]

I haven't done this, but I think it's a great idea. Literotica is an ideal environment to try things like this.

Agreed, with a caveat.

Literotica guidelines are that authors shouldn't use this site to post teasers for longer works that are only available elsewhere. Some authors have tried stuff like posting 19 parts of a 20-part story, then telling readers where they can go to pay money to read the last chapter, which is obviously a sleazy kind of thing to do. OTOH, some authors have had stories rejected for stuff that might not be intended as promotion. IIRC a while back we had an author who'd written a series of stories, some of which weren't appropriate for Literotica either due to lack of sex or due to contravening Lit's other content rules. They submitted the Lit-suitable stories here but got rejected because they'd mentioned the context as part of a longer series.

So if you're doing this here, I'd recommend avoiding anything in the story content that could be taken as plugging a non-Literotica version, and make sure that what you post here is a self-contained story that readers will find satisfying.

(Acknowledging that some readers consider EVERY story incomplete.)

 

[MorraRose]

Thank you to everyone who has responded, I appreciate it!

 

[thomas1965]

I can see no benefit for me or the readers for only an excerpt of a story to be posted.

Maybe if you have a long, hot sex-scene in your novel, that could be transformed into flash-fiction.

 

[other2other1]

I've got two items in the works like this.

The first one is a novel that I hope to publish this year (perhaps my first) that has nothing to do with the related story I would post here. The story I will post here will be written from the point of view of the Author writing the book.

The second story is a romance novel that I am writing, and the initial draft I have written feels like a book to publish formally (if I can find a publisher). In the story, there is a sub-story of real pain and the MC losing himself and this I plan to publish here. I am trying to write this sub-story so that it works with the main story without having to buy the full novel. My aim is that it will give my Lit readers something to enjoy.

They are two different approaches, but I hope it works for everyone when I can release them