Continuing A Story, Yes or No

[MelissaBaby]

This.



That sounds like a challenge Might I suggest MelissaBaby’s Mary & Alvin, or my own Counting Pennies or the juggernaut: Tefler’s Three Square Meals as rebuttal.

Thank you!

 

[MelissaBaby]

Oy. Good suggestions both ways. I'm going to contact those long-running-tale authors for ideas. But the end-it-already thought is valid.

Which is why I wanted to solicit opinion.

Also, Vix, my saga begins with the first year of law school, my first MCs meeting on the third day. And while one of them, Kerry, didn't go to Fairfield, she went to Fordham undergrad.

There are always going to be scenes you'd like to include or issues you think you could address at more length, but at some point you have to draw the line.

I have told readers that once the main story of Mary and Alvin concludes, I might do an occasional stand alone story with the same characters. Chances are though, once I am immersed in a new project, that will get my full attention.

I have also been asked by a few readers to add a sequel chapter to My Fall and Rise, but the problem with happily ever after is, well, it's not that interesting.

 

[MelissaBaby]

That's an interesting background reasoning. My family's very Catholic, and my sister (MTF) and I (both of us are pansexual) have had a lot of experience with the Catholic family dynamic, but thankfully nothing so far as being disowned etc as in The Neallys. I made up everything that's related to Fairfield and Cardozo in the Counting Pennies series. I don't even know if Fairfield has a vocal studies department. An oddity for me, because everything else I write has some modicum of my personal experiences in it.

I think that story length varies by the needs of the story, as corny as that sounds. Write enough; no more or less. Counting Pennies/Investing Time/Spending Dollars was initially just a side story about two people working at the same firm as my real protagonist. All in, it and the "real" story, As an Apple Tree, are around 485k, half published and half still in draft.

Counting Pennies started with a legal question ("When is incest not incest?")and plot question ("What separated the MCs for 17 yrs?") After a general outline, I wrote the case law and then worked backwards to develop the plot and characters and wrote the first draft. Eventually, I split the draft into separate books because I'd started in first person, and it seemed easier to do that then start over again in third person (I have two separate POVs for the FMC and MMC).

I think the main reason the draft got longer was that I'd assumed certain plot points wouldn't need as much plot development as they did. For example, the story has "Hidden Princess" and "Doppelganger" tropes; FMC's relatives don't recognize her and MMC has a FWB that looks like the FMC as a little girl. But developing those tropes into something substantial took lots of plot and words.

I think that a "long" story (tbh, I think of a "long story" as something like Gone with the Wind or War & Peace, and but for Tefler, none of us have crossed that threshold yet) opens the door to writing meatier, more dimensional and psychoanalytical prose. The third book of this series, Spending Dollars, was heftier from the start because it reveals the answers to the two conceptual questions. But because the other stories laid the foundation, now it's longer because I can play around with highly nuanced characters and relationships!

485k is longer than The Lord of the Rings.

Mary and Alvin is at about 250k. I'll estimate it will finish at about 340k.

Anna Karenina is 349,736.

 

[MelissaBaby]

OP here. Thanks for all the replies. My most recent part has not gotten much readership, but is well-rated. (It also is a change of category.) That's fine. I think I'm going to keep doing it, hoping the parts are interesting enough to please some readers, which is, with my enjoying the writing, the point. At least until Henry Winkler makes an appearance.

I did write a stand-alone story for one MC of events in her life that preceded the longer one. Her backstory was too long to include.

It's just a fact of life on Lit that as your series gets longer, your readership will drop.

But there is a show business adage that you don't play for the audience that didn't come, you play for the one that is there. I have a couple thousand loyal readers. By Lit standards, that's not much. By my standards, as someone who grew up in a town with a population of 800, it seems amazing. They deserve the best work I can give them.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

485k is longer than The Lord of the Rings.

Mary and Alvin is at about 250k. I'll estimate it will finish at about 340k.

Anna Karenina is 349,736.

It's just a fact of life on Lit that as your series gets longer, your readership will drop.

But there is a show business adage that you don't play for the audience that didn't come, you play for the one that is there. I have a couple thousand loyal readers. By Lit standards, that's not much. By my standards, as someone who grew up in a town with a population of 800, it seems amazing. They deserve the best work I can give them.

Your insights are really on point (sorry to quote only part); a lot of good things to think about.

Yes, sprawl is my main writing concern; my suggestion of “write enough; no more, no less” was advice for myself as much as anyone else. I edit more than I write, and ideally, the final serial will be well under 400k.... Or, not.

 

[SimonDoom]

To me, it’s unsettling when I see writers discourage a new writer from writing whatever s/he wants on the advice that “readers will not” or “readers tend towards” because reader interests are not normalized data. Such advice comes across to me like telling someone who wants to win Powerball that they should not play unless they play a seven or thirty-five, or some other specific number that’s been on a former winning ticket. That advice is illogical because each draw is entirely random; the only, singular way to win Powerball is to play it. Since odds are mathematically against a new author that s/he will have a substantial readership, the singular way to gain readers is to just write.

I wanted to respond and offer my thought on this.

I agree fully with the essential point that it is perfectly legitimate for an author to write and publish for his/her pleasure and/or artistic purposes. There is nothing "wrong" with writing a story in chapters that seemingly never end. That, as far as I know, is what Tefler's story is, and he evidently enjoys what he's doing (unless he's the world's greatest masochist author), and many of his readers obviously do too. If he's getting a kick out of it, why stop?

However . . .

It's obvious from the tone of those who post questions like these (and there are many of them) that they are not quite sure what they want to do, or that they are not quite sure how to balance their own tentative aesthetic purposes with the reception their stories might get. So I feel it's perfectly OK to jump in with a "Do what you like, but here are some thing to keep in mind" response.

As for the OP's story in question:

Chapter 1 of that story, published in May, had over 8,000 readers. Chapter 6, published over a month ago, had over 2,000. The latest, published a week ago, has only 400. So if the size of the audience is a factor, that's something to keep in mind. As far as I can tell, the cause for the massive drop is that the OP switched from Lesbian Sex to Romance for the last chapter. That's a huge audience killer.

My general advice on this question is: don't do it, unless you have a good reason to. That reason can be anything, as long as it's going to make you, the author, happy But if you are unsure, which you probably are if you are asking the question here, then you're probably better off ending the story and moving on to a new one.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I wanted to respond and offer my thought on this.

I agree fully with the essential point that it is perfectly legitimate for an author to write and publish for his/her pleasure and/or artistic purposes. There is nothing "wrong" with writing a story in chapters that seemingly never end. That, as far as I know, is what Tefler's story is, and he evidently enjoys what he's doing (unless he's the world's greatest masochist author), and many of his readers obviously do too. If he's getting a kick out of it, why stop?

However . . .

It's obvious from the tone of those who post questions like these (and there are many of them) that they are not quite sure what they want to do, or that they are not quite sure how to balance their own tentative aesthetic purposes with the reception their stories might get. So I feel it's perfectly OK to jump in with a "Do what you like, but here are some thing to keep in mind" response.

As for the OP's story in question:

Chapter 1 of that story, published in May, had over 8,000 readers. Chapter 6, published over a month ago, had over 2,000. The latest, published a week ago, has only 400. So if the size of the audience is a factor, that's something to keep in mind. As far as I can tell, the cause for the massive drop is that the OP switched from Lesbian Sex to Romance for the last chapter. That's a huge audience killer.

My general advice on this question is: don't do it, unless you have a good reason to. That reason can be anything, as long as it's going to make you, the author, happy But if you are unsure, which you probably are if you are asking the question here, then you're probably better off ending the story and moving on to a new one.

You're absolutely right. Every time I've seen this issue brought up, I have advised new authors that publishing series chapter by chapter means they will sacrifice readership. For me, it's worth it. The benefits of writing just what I want to write far exceeds any concern for popularity. But even so, I do sometimes feel envious when I see the number of readers other authors attract. So, it is a decision not to be made without careful consideration.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I wanted to respond and offer my thought on this.

I agree fully with the essential point that it is perfectly legitimate for an author to write and publish for his/her pleasure and/or artistic purposes. There is nothing "wrong" with writing a story in chapters that seemingly never end. That, as far as I know, is what Tefler's story is, and he evidently enjoys what he's doing (unless he's the world's greatest masochist author), and many of his readers obviously do too. If he's getting a kick out of it, why stop?

However . . .

It's obvious from the tone of those who post questions like these (and there are many of them) that they are not quite sure what they want to do, or that they are not quite sure how to balance their own tentative aesthetic purposes with the reception their stories might get. So I feel it's perfectly OK to jump in with a "Do what you like, but here are some thing to keep in mind" response.

As for the OP's story in question:

Chapter 1 of that story, published in May, had over 8,000 readers. Chapter 6, published over a month ago, had over 2,000. The latest, published a week ago, has only 400. So if the size of the audience is a factor, that's something to keep in mind. As far as I can tell, the cause for the massive drop is that the OP switched from Lesbian Sex to Romance for the last chapter. That's a huge audience killer.

My general advice on this question is: don't do it, unless you have a good reason to. That reason can be anything, as long as it's going to make you, the author, happy But if you are unsure, which you probably are if you are asking the question here, then you're probably better off ending the story and moving on to a new one.

This comment is faulted logic. Simon, I’ve seen you comment on many other threads about the story views, and in those threads, you yourself have pointed out that there’s no way to know how many people will finish reading either a stand alone story or a serial chapter because site data only captures how many people opened the link and gives no information as to what’s actually read!

There could be many reasons for a “fall-off”. Changing categories is certainly one valid reason. Readers simply losing interest along the way, as ruddygore pointed out above, is another valid reason. But, the possibility that 400 people read chapters 1-7 is likely another reason, which would indiciate the exact opposite of a fall-off—it would mean there was not a fall-off but instead that the core audience was retained.

Mathematically, this seems more correct, that the core audience is retained. You describe the change from 8k to 2200 and then 400 as “huge”. In a vacuum, the difference between 8k to 400 may seem large, but in correct perspective—that there are more than 2.39 MILLION registered Literotica site users and an unknowable number of anonymous readers—it’s around the accurate figure for an error function for the unknown volatility of reader interest, i.e., the change of numbers is functionally zero considering the reader pool and how much is unknown about reader interest!

There’s no baseline available of the average “expected” readership for a stand alone story, nor is there data on such for a multi-chapter story. Theres no guarantee that the OP story, or any other, would do better in overall readership as a stand alone story. We don’t even know how many unique site visits there are daily. There’s essentially no mechanism on this site to figure out the data, make comparisons and then answer any question of what happened to change readership interest over a multi-chapter/serial.

And mathematically (and, which you left off from my prior post) the biggest stumbling block is that there’s nothing on this site to measure the heteroscedasticity of the stochastic data of readership. Without that, all of this is presumptive. Available site data only trends towards a handful of mild observations, such as the first post of anything tends to get more reads and is the most likely to get comments, as 8letters pointed out above, and that “high” chapters tend to have less unique views. And to a large degree, it seems that these observations are even given too much survivorship bias too (such as “I would have more readers/followers/popularity if I wrote [something else besides what I write]”).

Which is why I’m still left wondering why some author’s here feel that every opinion needs some padded “justification”. We all have an opinion on something; the OP asked for opinions. Each opinion may be valid enough in and of itself, but it’s still just an uninformed opinion; why make it seem like it’s weighted over other opinions by throwing around indecipherable numbers?

Writers ask questions similar to the OP’s because they are unsure. So I find it unsettling when other writers make it sound like they have “things to keep in mind” from a greater, tested data pool than just general and anecdotal personal experience faultily weighted by selection bias. And I don’t understand why there’s such resistance in these instances to just saying something along the lines of, “I personally wouldn’t do [whatever an OP has suggested that’s outside of the norm] because it just doesn’t interest me and I just can’t envision you getting results that I’d personally find worthwhile” if that’s the case. Becasuse this site is a literal behemoth without any decipherable data, and any writer is fighting for an infinitesimally small segment of the multimillions of daily site visitors’ interest in a numerically blind void.

 

[Hypoxia]

The moral to this tale: Don't get thy knickers in a twist over numbers unless thou LIKES twisted knockers.

Some small subset of the near-infinitude of LIT readers find some of our stories. Some smaller subset finishes each tale or chapter. Fewer yet vote, and even fewer are driven by some feature of a text to comment on it. And those numbers will fluctuate. Nothing to get hung about.

My rough observations on novella-plus narratives (70k words and more):

• A near-endless chain of chapters can retain many readers if a definite conclusion is promised. I note a series told 1st POV by a guy driving into many sexual adventures while daily cell-phoning a woman he's never met - we await their eventual joining.
  .
• A shorter series (fewer chapters, any size) can also retain readers by indicating that an end is forthcoming. IMHO it's best to write all chapters before submitting any. But if readers demand more after an arc concludes, go for it!
  .
• One quite long piece, especially a contest entry, can retain readers to its definite finale, and gain many good votes from those who stuck to the end.
  .
• No matter the story length, or the category or theme, some will love it, some hate it, and most won't notice. We can try to pander with clickbait titles and blurbs, and hot juicy action tuned to that category. We can grab eyeballs with contest entries which also draw attention to our back catalog. But obsessing over numbers leads to madness. Yow.

My longest series seemed to keep core groups of readers. I'm satisfied.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Which is why I’m still left wondering why some author’s here feel that every opinion needs some padded “justification”. We all have an opinion on something; the OP asked for opinions. Each opinion may be valid enough in and of itself, but it’s still just an uninformed opinion; why make it seem like it’s weighted over other opinions by throwing around indecipherable numbers?

Because usually the next question is, "That's interesting, why do you say that?" So folk like Simon and myself, who have both idle curiosity and an interest in what the (lack of) data is telling us (which isn't much but it's something) save time by saying, "I think this because..."

The "because" might not stack up against your mathematical tests, but equally, why do you feel that I shouldn't explain my "because"? I have an opinion on this and that, based on the aforesaid idle curiosity and vague evidence as it's presented itself over the years, but it's not dogma, you can take it or leave it. It's an opinion based on quicksand and nothing (thus illinformed, not uninformed), but over the years I've seen patterns of behaviour repeated here, and in my experience, repeated patterns of behaviour usually mean something.

None of the questions folk ask are new - I asked them, others asked them when they came on-board, and newcomers to the AH are asking in turn. And folk respond with what they know and what they've observed. I don't see what the problem is, doing that. It's not as if we're electing governments, all we're doing is exchanging views.

 

[JPGmvny]

OP here. Again, thanks for the comments/observations. For the Neallys, I want to find out what becomes of my characters, for this story at least, so I'll probably keep on. I've submitted an edited version of part 1 with a statement at the start explaining my plan, including that parts 1-5 are one story. Also that it jumps to "Romance" with part 7. While I have 423 readers of part 7, 12 have voted.

I am hoping to develop my brand and have people explore my stories, which fall into different characters. I'm publishing other stories as go along. Perhaps I'll generate a bigger following. For now, it is what it is.

Again, thanks for the comments. I appreciate all of them.

 

[ChadAlpha]

The moral to this tale: Don't get thy knickers in a twist over numbers unless thou LIKES twisted knockers.

Some small subset of the near-infinitude of LIT readers find some of our stories. Some smaller subset finishes each tale or chapter. Fewer yet vote, and even fewer are driven by some feature of a text to comment on it. And those numbers will fluctuate.....

Always good advice and a helpful reminder!

Because usually the next question is, "That's interesting, why do you say that?" So folk like Simon and myself, who have both idle curiosity and an interest in what the (lack of) data is telling us (which isn't much but it's something) save time by saying, "I think this because..."

The "because" might not stack up against your mathematical tests, but equally, why do you feel that I shouldn't explain my "because"? I have an opinion on this and that, based on the aforesaid idle curiosity and vague evidence as it's presented itself over the years, but it's not dogma, you can take it or leave it. It's an opinion based on quicksand and nothing (thus illinformed, not uninformed), but over the years I've seen patterns of behaviour repeated here, and in my experience, repeated patterns of behaviour usually mean something.

This comment is faulted logic. Simon, I’ve seen you comment on many other threads about the story views, and in those threads, you yourself have pointed out that there’s no way to know how many people will finish reading either a stand alone story or a serial chapter because site data only captures how many people opened the link and gives no information as to what’s actually read!

There could be many reasons for a “fall-off”. Changing categories is certainly one valid reason. Readers simply losing interest along the way, as ruddygore pointed out above, is another valid reason. But, the possibility that 400 people read chapters 1-7 is likely another reason, which would indiciate the exact opposite of a fall-off—it would mean there was not a fall-off but instead that the core audience was retained.

Mathematically, this seems more correct, that the core audience is retained. You describe the change from 8k to 2200 and then 400 as “huge”. In a vacuum, the difference between 8k to 400 may seem large, but in correct perspective—that there are more than 2.39 MILLION registered Literotica site users and an unknowable number of anonymous readers—it’s around the accurate figure for an error function for the unknown volatility of reader interest, i.e., the change of numbers is functionally zero considering the reader pool and how much is unknown about reader interest!

There’s no baseline available of the average “expected” readership for a stand alone story, nor is there data on such for a multi-chapter story. Theres no guarantee that the OP story, or any other, would do better in overall readership as a stand alone story. We don’t even know how many unique site visits there are daily. There’s essentially no mechanism on this site to figure out the data, make comparisons and then answer any question of what happened to change readership interest over a multi-chapter/serial.

And mathematically (and, which you left off from my prior post) the biggest stumbling block is that there’s nothing on this site to measure the heteroscedasticity of the stochastic data of readership. Without that, all of this is presumptive. Available site data only trends towards a handful of mild observations, such as the first post of anything tends to get more reads and is the most likely to get comments, as 8letters pointed out above, and that “high” chapters tend to have less unique views. And to a large degree, it seems that these observations are even given too much survivorship bias too (such as “I would have more readers/followers/popularity if I wrote [something else besides what I write]”).

Which is why I’m still left wondering why some author’s here feel that every opinion needs some padded “justification”. We all have an opinion on something; the OP asked for opinions. Each opinion may be valid enough in and of itself, but it’s still just an uninformed opinion; why make it seem like it’s weighted over other opinions by throwing around indecipherable numbers?

Writers ask questions similar to the OP’s because they are unsure. So I find it unsettling when other writers make it sound like they have “things to keep in mind” from a greater, tested data pool than just general and anecdotal personal experience faultily weighted by selection bias. And I don’t understand why there’s such resistance in these instances to just saying something along the lines of, “I personally wouldn’t do [whatever an OP has suggested that’s outside of the norm] because it just doesn’t interest me and I just can’t envision you getting results that I’d personally find worthwhile” if that’s the case. Becasuse this site is a literal behemoth without any decipherable data, and any writer is fighting for an infinitesimally small segment of the multimillions of daily site visitors’ interest in a numerically blind void.

As a new (at least, new to Lit) writer, I had the same question as OP, particularly because I’ve found I’m drawn primarily to multi-chapter stories. All feedback is helpful, but particularly for newcomers, context is important. To a new member in the forum, most commenters are “gurus” and (at least from me) are accorded a level of deference on site-related questions. For that reason, I appreciate the responses that are (1) clearly stated as a personal opinion (though these are often not very instructive), (2) those that attempt to show the pros/cons of the particular matter and (3) those that without either, encourage or uplift (such as a friendly reminder of what we writers are getting “paid” for this, and therefore to write what we enjoy).

Comments that tend to aggregate a vocal contingent of unknown size as the collective wisdom are often misleading—w/o getting into the politics of the matter, see e.g. the role of the NRA in this US gun debate despite its membership relative to anti-gun proponents. Similarly, here in the forum, opinions that use #s as support for their conclusion (like Simon Doom’s readership #s) come off like they’re Facts, not opinions and, without any additional context, will likely be given outsized weight by new members and serve to discourage rather than encourage.

On that point, thank you Vix for your illuminating explanation on the availability/lack of data (and, it would appear I’m not the only “quant” frequenting these boards). In IRL, I would build on your points and discuss the role of randomness in statistical modeling, Monte Carlo simulations, etc. and require the reading of Nassim Talib’s Fooled by Randomness for a better understanding of the dangers of extrapolation and outsize role of randomness in “non-random events”. Here though, it seems apropos to turn my attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night time, as all things considered, there does not seem to be much barking on the matter.

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

I keep thinking about this post and wondering about stats and stuff, so I went to see the views on my longest series.

Chapter 1 of No Such Thing As Time had 10K views. It sits at a 4.34 with 218 ratings/votes. There are 8 comments.

Chapter 2. 5.5K views. It's at 4.5 with 171 votes and has 1 comment.

Jumping ahead to Chapter 6 which is where the next decline in views happens. It has 2.8K views. It's at a 4.67 with 90 votes and has 4 comments.

The next chapters have stayed around the same views but the last chapter posted had a big drop and I think that's due to me starting a new job and not having time to update quickly.
Chapter 16 has had under 1000 views. It has 790. It's at 4.81 with 26 votes. 3 comments, one of which was mine.

Out of 16 chapters only one, chapter 1, is under 4.5 stars. So I guess I can be happy that even with a huge decline in readers, the people reading are still enjoying it.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I keep thinking about this post and wondering about stats and stuff, so I went to see the views on my longest series.

Chapter 1 of No Such Thing As Time had 10K views. It sits at a 4.34 with 218 ratings/votes. There are 8 comments.

Chapter 2. 5.5K views. It's at 4.5 with 171 votes and has 1 comment.

Jumping ahead to Chapter 6 which is where the next decline in views happens. It has 2.8K views. It's at a 4.67 with 90 votes and has 4 comments.

The next chapters have stayed around the same views but the last chapter posted had a big drop and I think that's due to me starting a new job and not having time to update quickly.
Chapter 16 has had under 1000 views. It has 790. It's at 4.81 with 26 votes. 3 comments, one of which was mine.

Out of 16 chapters only one, chapter 1, is under 4.5 stars. So I guess I can be happy that even with a huge decline in readers, the people reading are still enjoying it.

Once again, one can see the 50% 50% drop and the steady state (with its ups and downs) established at the third chapter. It's uncanny how often this pattern happens, regardless of category - to the extent I think it's odd when I see something different. I can't explain it, but I see this over and over again with multi-chapter stories.

These stats also illustrate what goes on when the writer is "trying to keep up." Releasing as you write is hard work if you're aiming for steady output - as Coffee points out, life gets in the way. I did it once, on a long shaggy dog of a thing, and it became really difficult at times (mainly because I had a major plot twist half way through and had to keep going with another dozen chapters to sort it all out). My mum dying half way through didn't help, either.

The alternative is to write all of a long thing and get it finished, before you publish the first chapter. I've done that too, and the downside was no new content (other than two side projects) in the fifteen months it took to write. There are pros and cons for doing it, both ways.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I keep thinking about this post and wondering about stats and stuff, so I went to see the views on my longest series.

Chapter 1 of No Such Thing As Time had 10K views. It sits at a 4.34 with 218 ratings/votes. There are 8 comments.

Chapter 2. 5.5K views. It's at 4.5 with 171 votes and has 1 comment.

Jumping ahead to Chapter 6 which is where the next decline in views happens. It has 2.8K views. It's at a 4.67 with 90 votes and has 4 comments.

The next chapters have stayed around the same views but the last chapter posted had a big drop and I think that's due to me starting a new job and not having time to update quickly.
Chapter 16 has had under 1000 views. It has 790. It's at 4.81 with 26 votes. 3 comments, one of which was mine.

Out of 16 chapters only one, chapter 1, is under 4.5 stars. So I guess I can be happy that even with a huge decline in readers, the people reading are still enjoying it.

I have been posting chapters of Mary and Alvin for two years, so it's hard to get a handle on the pattern of views. Every new chapter serves an an advertisement for the series as a whole, so earlier chapters are still steadily accruing a small increase in views on a regular basis. What complicates things further is that some chapters spike up in views, it's neither a static number nor a steady decline. Perhaps some people reread favorite chapters. But in the overall picture, it has settled into what I assume are the same 2,000 or so people who read each new chapter. I hope that I will get a overall bump in readership when the series concludes, as I know many people won't read an unfinished series.

Every chapter is over 4.5, which I assume is in part because people who are still reading along are back because they like what I've given them so far.

My Fall and Rise, which is completed, has an interesting pattern. There is the usual decline from the early chapters, but then, viewership spikes up for the last couple of chapters. I guess some people were just interested in seeing how it ends.

I may put some of the theories on this topic to the test. After I finish Mary and Alvin, I'm thinking I might resubmit My Fall and Rise as a single long story.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Oh, and I was also hoping that My Fall and Rise might get a boost from a nomination for the 2017 Awards...

 

[JPGmvny]

For the Neallys, I had a big drop from Part 1 (8.2K) to 2 (4.3K), which you'd expect. The big drop from 2 to 3 (4.3K to 2.7K) was, I think, because 2 had an MF romance (one of the MC's mothers). I left it in Lesbian Sex because that was the main arc. People said not to switch categories.

Viewership stabilized at 2.2K to 2.7K. 3, 4, and 5 were short. That was because 3 and 5 were third-person POV and 4 was first-person. The lowest score was for part 3, which had zero sex and was entirely about the other MC's mother's struggle with her daughter's homosexuality. So that part ended the moment her daughter sees her again, at which point it turns into the daughter's POV. And, of course, part 7 is about that second mother falling for a man.

One of the spin-offs, an MC's aunt's own story, had 9K reads.

In the end, I have a lot of MCs. Some of them show up in other, completely unrelated stories.

I could end all the stories by having a big Christmas party at the Plaza.

 

[MelissaBaby]

For the Neallys, I had a big drop from Part 1 (8.2K) to 2 (4.3K), which you'd expect. The big drop from 2 to 3 (4.3K to 2.7K) was, I think, because 2 had an MF romance (one of the MC's mothers). I left it in Lesbian Sex because that was the main arc. People said not to switch categories.

Viewership stabilized at 2.2K to 2.7K. 3, 4, and 5 were short. That was because 3 and 5 were third-person POV and 4 was first-person. The lowest score was for part 3, which had zero sex and was entirely about the other MC's mother's struggle with her daughter's homosexuality. So that part ended the moment her daughter sees her again, at which point it turns into the daughter's POV. And, of course, part 7 is about that second mother falling for a man.

One of the spin-offs, an MC's aunt's own story, had 9K reads.

In the end, I have a lot of MCs. Some of them show up in other, completely unrelated stories.

I could end all the stories by having a big Christmas party at the Plaza.

I wouldn't read too much into the decline in number, as far as "whys". It's just what happens. People start a series and forget to come back to it. Their wives catch them jerking off to Lit stories. They drop dead.

Mary and Alvin's first four chapters went 21.5k / 7.4k / 5.6k / 6.5k. Why did a thousand readers skip one chapter? Who the hell knows?

 

[ElectricBlue]

Mary and Alvin's first four chapters went 21.5k / 7.4k / 5.6k / 6.5k. Why did a thousand readers skip one chapter? Who the hell knows?

Or read chapter four twice. On a long series I reckon you can gauge which chapters are more popular (read twice) not only from the score, but also the upward blip in Views.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Or read chapter four twice. On a long series I reckon you can gauge which chapters are more popular (read twice) not only from the score, but also the upward blip in Views.

That may well be. The next three chapters went 6.2k / 5.5k/ 6.4k

I'm not going to bang my head on the wall trying to make sense of it. I'm happy that anyone reads them at all.

What I find more interesting is the remarkable consistency of my ratings. Of 42 submissions 12 are 4.84, 3 are 4.83, 4 are 4.82, 2 are 4.81, 3 are 4.80 and 2 are 4.79.

26 of 42 are all in a range of .05 points. Can't say as I think it means much, but it can't help but make me wonder.

 

[ElectricBlue]

What I mind more interesting is the remarkable consistency of my ratings. Of 42 submissions 12 are 4.84, 3 are 4.83, 4 are 4.82, 2 are 4.81, 3 are 4.80 and 2 are 4.79.

26 of 42 are all in a range of .05 points. Can't say as I think it means much, but it can't help but make me wonder.

Which was my point earlier in this thread - that patterns of reader behaviour ARE recognisable, repeated, and surprisingly consistent, however uncanny and counter-intuitive those patterns might be.

Lit is one giant pool of reader behaviour, and one would think it would all be completely random, but it's not. It's like a giant flock of birds. Maybe all the psychic energy of pornsters orgasming simultaneously all over the world (adjusted for different time zones, obviously) sets up something like gravity-waves or dark matter, forces we cannot control, but can sense .

 

[AtowncalledMalec]

Hello I need some advice if anyone has a minute?

I'm new to the site, I joined last week.

I posted my first story already. It was 4k words long so I decided to split it into two parts. I posted the first part but I don't know how to add the second part to it. Does anyone have any advice on how to post multiple chapters? I can't find an answer on FAQs.

Thanks in advance!

 

[JPGmvny]

I'm new to the site, I joined last week.

I posted my first story already. It was 4k words long so I decided to split it into two parts. I posted the first part but I don't know how to add the second part to it. Does anyone have any advice on how to post multiple chapters? I can't find an answer on FAQs.

Thanks in advance!

If you put in the note for Literotica at the bottom of the submission page that it is part 2 of the story, it'll be taken care of. It'll show up as a 2-part story. If you click on My Stories below, you'll see what it'll look like.

But a 4K story is short for Lit purposes. It's about 3.5K words a Lit page. If it hasn't been published, you might want to keep it all together. Even if it is, you can resubmit the whole story as one and note in the note for Literotica that it is replacing the original.

You don't want to break stories into parts without a reason.

 

[AtowncalledMalec]

If you put in the note for Literotica at the bottom of the submission page that it is part 2 of the story, it'll be taken care of. It'll show up as a 2-part story. If you click on My Stories below, you'll see what it'll look like.

But a 4K story is short for Lit purposes. It's about 3.5K words a Lit page. If it hasn't been published, you might want to keep it all together. Even if it is, you can resubmit the whole story as one and note in the note for Literotica that it is replacing the original.

You don't want to break stories into parts without a reason.

Thank you so much for this. I did find another reply in one of the other forums explaining that I can post it as another story and add ch02, and that it should be added to the first part if published.

Most of my work is anywhere between 2k-15k per chapter so I'll have to think about what I'm posting. I appreciate the reply!

 

[JPGmvny]

Thank you so much for this. I did find another reply in one of the other forums explaining that I can post it as another story and add ch02, and that it should be added to the first part if published.

Most of my work is anywhere between 2k-15k per chapter so I'll have to think about what I'm posting. I appreciate the reply!

I should have made clear to give it the same name.

I had a story with some short chapters. Instead of putting them up alone, I included more than one in a particular part. The first part was very short, and I said so at the start. I still got hammered with ratings. Ultimately I had I think 9 chapters spread over 5 parts.

I decided to put them together and post them as "Complete." Lit removed all of the parts, and left it up.

Good luck with however you do it.