How long is “too long” before the next chapter of a story?

[alohadave]

You can request to "resubmit" a story under a more appropriate category?

Yes. I resubmitted one from Erotic Couplings to Lesbian when I wrote a second chapter.

 

[Bramblethorn]

But if the project is that ambitious, such as series tend to be, there are beta readers for that kind of feedback.

As a new author here, I was lucky enough to have a partner who would beta a novel-length story for me. But she wasn't a Lit regular and wouldn't have been able to gauge how it'd be received here. Many new authors don't even have that, and the VE portal is hit-and-miss at best.

Even in professional publishing, it's common for writers to publish instalments as they go. The Green Mile, Abarat, Edwin Drood, Harry Potter, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Locked Tomb, ASOIAF, and countless more series, all published in instalments.

Yes, many of them do suffer from exactly the kinds of problems you've mentioned with this mode of writing. Yes, many of them have experienced long delays and some will never be completed. But in most cases the alternative isn't complete, perfected stories, it's never getting those stories at all.

Readers who hope for a higher standard of organisation on an amateur site probably need to recalibrate their expectations.

 

[Orcwords]

There could be a couple of influences triggering the comments you mentioned:

1. Readers of the Novels/Novellas category EXPECT longer reads. Submissions less than four Lit pages will not impress them.
2. The premise of your story so far indicates that it has a strong tie-in to another category, such as Incest/Taboo. Non-Consent, etc. By submitting piece-meal, readers have only a portion of the content that could place the entire work into better context for them.

I have published 10 stories in Novels/Novellas, four of which were submitted as individual chapters. The feedback I received from readers was that they preferred longer, single-submission stories. I had the chapters all replaced with a single submission and the scores increased in every case.

For what it's worth, I actually bought Heavy Traffic on Smashwords because I much prefer seeing a long story published as a single unit.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

For what it's worth, I actually bought Heavy Traffic on Smashwords because I much prefer seeing a long story published as a single unit.

I appreciate that. Thanks

 

[Belegon]

I'm currently writing what is essentially a sequel to three stories with the same characters that I wrote when I first started here. the first one went live in 2003, so we are looking at a 22 year gap. so far, my biggest challenge is getting myself back into the "voice" of characters I wrote that long ago. I know my style is a bit different, but I don't think it will result in people disliking the 2003 story, so I'm not greatly worried about that. The male lead is fairly easy because so much of him is autobiographical, if only because I had no clue how to write a man other than me. Which of course, begs the question of how bad the writing from a female POV is. I think that my female POV writing has always been somewhat decent, so I'm hopeful I can swing back into Gena's head without too many problems.

 

[TruthwithaTwist]

I’m struggling with the same quandary right now. I have a fun multi-parter about my 30th birthday weekend in Vegas here. First three chapter came out and then I sort of stalled a bit.

In hindsight, I wish I had written it all (or most) and published it in a more timely manner. Good/bad news is, I don’t have an April Fools story this year, which may give me time to finish the last three chapters, finally.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

I've posted a chapter story as one submission, by chapter, and recently broken down in books, which is doing both.

 

[Belegon]

Last week I saw chapter 2 of a story in the new list. Chapter 1 was published in 2000.

And here I was naively wondering if the 16 year gap between my posting stories here was near a record. Of course, the very high rate of submissions to this site made that unlikely.