Word doc pages related to published pages on Lit

[TaricJon]

Does anyone know how the number of Word doc pages would translate when the story is published? I want to break my story down into Parts, but I have a lot of story before the sex begins, so I’m afraid to publish one part of the story with no sex at all, because I don’t want folks to get disgusted and stop reading. At the same time, I worry that if I make sure there is sex in every Part. there will be a too many published pages

Any advice? Thank you.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I believe 1 lit page is roughly equivalent to 3500 words but there is some variability depending on spacing and exact number of characters.

 

[Rustyoznail]

3500 is the rough guide, but be careful working on the limit. You may get a page break with one or two lines on the next page. Having said that, work on a natural break in the story more than a word count.

If you complete the story and put a note at the top saying "This is a X part series, and I will post a new part daily/weekly", that should help control expectations. I believe if you put a note in the Admin field, you can ask Laurel nicely to stagger the posting of the parts.

 

[ElectricBlue]

My rule of thumb is 3750 words per Lit page.

Don't worry about length - I've seen a 240,000 word story as a single submission.

With chapters, it's often suggested to pitch them around 3 - 4 Lit pages (10k - 15k words), to give readers a decent read each time.

If you've not got much sex in the first chapter, don't worry about that either. Those readers who want quick satisfaction will be gone after a thousand words if nothing much is happening, but if the writing is good, some at least will stick around.

Expect a big drop in Views between Chaps 1 and 2 (50% is typical), and another slice off the count to Chap 3. Once you get readers to the third chapter, they should be in for the duration - my rule of thumb is maybe 20% of your first chapter View count will be there at Chapter 3, and a little more wastage by the time you get to the final chapter.

 

[ElectricBlue]

If you complete the story and put a note at the top saying "This is a X part series, and I will post a new part daily/weekly", that should help control expectations. I believe if you put a note in the Admin field, you can ask Laurel nicely to stagger the posting of the parts.

Don't promise what you can't deliver though. If you're publishing on the run, as you write each chapter, life can get in the way, and the best laid plans can easily go pear-shaped.

 

[alohadave]

Does anyone know how the number of Word doc pages would translate when the story is published?

The others have already talked about the length of Lit pages. For Word, depending on your formatting (lots of dialog and short lines, vs longer paragraphs of narrative or exposition), about 300-600 words per page is normal.

So, roughly 6-13 pages in your Word document will be one Lit page.

It'll be more useful to start thinking in word count though for posting here.

 

[KeithD]

Don't use pages. A Word page can vary greatly depending on how the template is set up. Use words. 3,750 Word calculated words is as close as you're going to get to a Lit. page.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Finish the story completely before posting any parts of it. This will give you better control of all aspects of the story, from where the natural breaks appear to how often you submit a chapter for posting.

As EB mentioned, don't worry too much about the story being too long for a single submission. I stopped breaking mine up years ago and haven't had any negative feedback to stories more than 20 Lit pages long.

 

[Seadog777]

According to what I've read and been told, it's between 3,500 and 3,750 words for 1 Literotica page.
That comes out to roughly 10 Word Doc Pages per 1 Literotica page.
I use Word Doc as well.

BY THE WAY.....DO NOT worry about "word count" when you write your story.
Write your story, the way it appears in your head and imagination.
It's your story and only your story.

 

[Handley_Page]

A lot may depend upon haw you have Word set up.
For example fount size (10-12 point), typeface (Times Roman is smaller than Bookman, for example), & paper sizes will significantly affect the number of words you can get on a page. I have set mine up for the paper I use most - A4. This gives about 1400 words on one sheet.

 

[ElectricBlue]

A lot may depend upon haw you have Word set up.
For example fount size (10-12 point), typeface (Times Roman is smaller than Bookman, for example), & paper sizes will significantly affect the number of words you can get on a page. I have set mine up for the paper I use most - A4. This gives about 1400 words on one sheet.

1400 words to an A4 page? 400 maybe, with a 12 font and narrow margins - I reckon you've added an accidental thousand, HP.

 

[SimonDoom]

If you use Word to draft, as I do, ignore page numbers and go by word counts, which are easy to follow. Divide the number by 3750 and you will get an approximation of the number of Literotica pages.

 

[HeyAll]

The best way to measure it is to copy/paste a multi-page story on your Doc and do a word count for each page.

If I recall, the first page isn't exact each time. I think there are other factors like how many lines there are. But it's roughtly 3,650 words or so.

 

[KeithD]

Is there an echo in here (and some folks who don't read)?

 

[JaxRhapsody]

The others have already talked about the length of Lit pages. For Word, depending on your formatting (lots of dialog and short lines, vs longer paragraphs of narrative or exposition), about 300-600 words per page is normal.

So, roughly 6-13 pages in your Word document will be one Lit page.

It'll be more useful to start thinking in word count though for posting here.

No, it's more like three or four. I write in 11pt Calibri, since that's default, single spaced unless there's a need for a double space/return, and my chapters are roughly four pages long, each page is about 1200 to almost 2000 words... probably. Most of my recent submissions, excluding my 750 word, are about two to four, maybe six of my chapters long, submitted as one file, and they're usually two, maybe three lit pages.

My story Amorous Goods: The Mask is seven chapters(I should add that often I make my last chapter the longest), 30 word pages, 12,386 words. It's only four Lit pages long, submitted as a whole file. Word count is kinda meh for talking about individual chapters, and is better for the overall story. Two 50k word stories could have a noticable different chapter count depending on what the story consist of, and how long they think the chapter should be.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The best way to measure it is to copy/paste a multi-page story on your Doc and do a word count for each page.

If I recall, the first page isn't exact each time. I think there are other factors like how many lines there are. But it's roughtly 3,650 words or so.

I think it's fully defined by the character count of the data slice, so the paragraph lengths and number of para breaks etc, and obviously the word lengths, have an effect on the final count.

On another site, there was a 10,000 character upper limit per page, which equated to 1800 - 2000 words (annoyingly small when loading a story, page by page). So my guess is the Lit data slice (there's a name for it, but I don't remember what it is) is 20k max characters per page, with discretion as to page breaks (which are always paragraph end).

 

[JaxRhapsody]

The best way to measure it is to copy/paste a multi-page story on your Doc and do a word count for each page.

If I recall, the first page isn't exact each time. I think there are other factors like how many lines there are. But it's roughtly 3,650 words or so.

Word measures word count, characters with spaces, and without. I'm not aware of a program that doesn't do all three. Even Lit rounded my story to 12.3k words.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

I think it's fully defined by the character count of the data slice, so the paragraph lengths and number of para breaks etc, and obviously the word lengths, have an effect on the final count.

On another site, there was a 10,000 character upper limit per page, which equated to 1800 - 2000 words (annoyingly small when loading a story, page by page). So my guess is the Lit data slice (there's a name for it, but I don't remember what it is) is 20k max characters per page, with discretion as to page breaks (which are always paragraph end).

lit might not count spaces. Some places, like Twitter does count them.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

3500 is the rough guide, but be careful working on the limit. You may get a page break with one or two lines on the next page. Having said that, work on a natural break in the story more than a word count.

If you complete the story and put a note at the top saying "This is a X part series, and I will post a new part daily/weekly", that should help control expectations. I believe if you put a note in the Admin field, you can ask Laurel nicely to stagger the posting of the parts.

I'm not sure if she would do that. I certainly wouldn't want to make her job harder by submitting several chapters with note to ask her to publish each chapter every other day, or even once a week, with her workload, even if she would. For her to go through hundreds of submissions a day, and still remember to post one or three users stories at a timely manner of their choosing?

If nothing is wrong with each chapter, and each meets lits standards, you can submit them at your own leisure, and after the first one clears after a day or seven, the rest will go up pretty quick, granted they're submitted close enough. That's my experience.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm not sure if she would do that. I certainly wouldn't want to make her job harder by submitting several chapters with note to ask her to publish each chapter every other day, or even once a week, with her workload, even if she would.

Yes, she does, often. She vetts the whole work, then sets a 24 or 48 hour release clock running for each chapter and the computer does the rest, regular as clockwork, each midnight server run. There's no extra effort involved, that I can see.

 

[alohadave]

No, it's more like three or four. I write in 11pt Calibri, since that's default, single spaced unless there's a need for a double space/return, and my chapters are roughly four pages long, each page is about 1200 to almost 2000 words... probably. Most of my recent submissions, excluding my 750 word, are about two to four, maybe six of my chapters long, submitted as one file, and they're usually two, maybe three lit pages.

YMMV.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

YMMV.

I don't know what that means.

 

[alohadave]

I don't know what that means.

Your Mileage May Vary

 

[TaricJon]

Thank you all so much. I appreciate you.

 

[lc69hunter]

I have a related question. When I am deciding whether to read a story now, or save it for later, I try and figure out the size. Why is there such a disparity in the size of the document and the number of pages?

I see stories with a very large size doc that only come in a 5 pages, and other much smaller doc size that come in at 11-12 pages.

Is it Word versus rtf versus WordPerfect versus pdf, or what?

This also makes a difference in a couple of stories I am writing. I write in WordPerfect.