Erotic Novel

[NotWise]

Been there, but my problem was resolved when the disk crashed and it all went away. Backups are good.

The long bit that I wrote got long because it wandered and had stories in stories. Diana Gabaldon called those "bulges", analogous to when a snake swallows its prey and you can still see the bulge in the snake's body -- sort of incorporated but not quite.

If you wandered like I did then you might be able to rewrite it into two or more different story lines. That's a lot of hard work, but it could be worth it.

 

[NaokoSmith]

To pick up on another point you made, when you have been writing a 'story' for a long time, it is interesting to see how your ideas have developed and changed in the later stages of it. Hopefully too, how your writing style has improved!

This can lead to continuity problems, e.g. I know Lien_Geller is looking for feedback on his highly popular series The Missing Dragon, partly because the way he would write it today is very different to the way he wrote the first parts many years ago.

I am wrestling myself with a novel (part of a three set series with many spin-offs, groan), which used to be several hundred words. I started writing it so many years ago, but now I have over-written and over-written it and it's completely changed. I posted it here in several short digestible chapters, got great feedback and now I am cutting it down. There are a lot of chunks of writing which were fun in themselves, lovely descriptions etc etc but which distracted the reader at the start of the story and made people switch off.

So at last I reached a stage where I am attempting to write out my story for the reader, rather than for my own satisfaction.

But yeah, publish it! find some editing support too. People will enjoy it, that will be fun for you. It's a bit different to just leisurely writing it out for your own enjoyment, however it's also fun to do.

 

[GoldenCojones]

Thanks NaokoSmith for the always kind words. I have decided on a title, even though I haven't decided if I'll post it or not. It will be called "The Evolution of Gina" I may test post a chapter or two and see what happens. It'll take a buttload of editing, cutting, chopping, hacking, and sewing to get it presentable, but ... Maybe worth it.

 

[NaokoSmith]

Thanks NaokoSmith for the always kind words. I have decided on a title, even though I haven't decided if I'll post it or not. It will be called "The Evolution of Gina" I may test post a chapter or two and see what happens. It'll take a buttload of editing, cutting, chopping, hacking, and sewing to get it presentable, but ... Maybe worth it.

Get someone to look at it, especially if it's just a chapter or two. It's so helpful to have a second pair of eyes run over something - especially something you have been writing and over-writing for a long time, so you are really attached to it.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

I put up a 40 chapter story. ~200,000 words. It didn't get many views for a long time but about 5000 reads average, lately 21 chapters had red H's up from 16 a few months ago.

It was horridly edited, so I spliced 6-7 chapters into "Saga's and just put them up. a few days ago. Saga 1&2 scored really well, but #3 is lagging,( I think it was one bombed,) but it is climbing up now. I wanted to see if 10K word chapters would score better than 40K word sagas?

Yeah I know what you mean about editing a large work. It took me a long time! I had several editors ignore my pleas for help so I just plugged away. It still has flaws but it's all spelled right now.

That gives me an idea; I wonder how well a story would sale, if it was published in arcs, like manga? Something like that may work on Smashwords, 75page story arcs, instead of one long 300page novel, or something.