Opinions on story length

[designatedvictim]

1: Finalize the second half and publish a single 80k-90k word file.

My personal opinion is to not do it as One Big Story.

If you do publish all at once, chapterize it at a minimum. Many people balk at single, giant posts, solely due to length.

2: Publish the first half now, and the second half when it is done.

My personal experience is that this is a bad idea.

My first work wasn't done when I started publishing it. It still isn't done.

I released Days One and Two as single chapters each. That went fine.

Then I broke Day Three into pieces to see how it would work and because it really wasn't ready for Prime Time yet.

Due to traditional reader erosion as more pieces are posted, I took a confidence hit and started losing motivation.

I have one piece that I just beat my head against and haven't polished off enough yet, despite some great pointers another AHer gave me on the scene in question.

It's at about 38K-ish words and I have another 40K in the can, but they aren't quite all connected and the 40K has some bits that need filling in, too.

3: The first half can be subdivided into three clean chapters at 12k, 12k, and 14k.
__3a: Publish those separately, spaced a week apart.
__3b: Publish them separately, all at the same time.
__3c: Finalize the second half in similarly sized chapters and publish all in accordance with 3a or 3b.

Again, personally, I'd recommend a 3D: finishing off the end, then chapterize them all and release them each at about five-day intervals.

YMMV