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

 

[rdodger]

I'll join the chorus about making the story complete before posting any of it, unless the first part can stand alone. I think all of us have been burned on various story sites with stories that stop abruptly.

I'm actually dealing with that kind of decision currently, having just finished a 10,000 word story. That's longer than I would usually tackle reading in one swoop, but I'm gathering that Lit readers are comfortable with it.

 

[RocketGrunt]

I've found that people on here like to get 10k-18k words at a time. That's 2 to 4 standard novel chapters, depending on the length you write them.
A Literotica page has about 3k words on it, and readers here often feel shortchanged if they have less than 3 pages and overwhelmed by more than 6.

It's very different to someplace like CHYOA where the readers want to have potential stopping (or branching) points every 2k words.

 

[BlueZen]

I'll join the chorus about making the story complete before posting any of it, unless the first part can stand alone. I think all of us have been burned on various story sites with stories that stop abruptly.

1000% Agree. Lesson learned.

 

[lc69hunter]

As an avid reader, I prefer 2-3 page stories, as I do not have time to read the longer ones (if a longer one catches my interest, I save it to read later). So as a reader, give me chapters, with enough anticipation to want to read the next one.
I am currently following a story that is 10 chapters in. She publishes a new one every 3-4 days, or at least once a week. I could not have, nor would have, read it as one long story

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I've found that people on here like to get 10k-18k words at a time. That's 2 to 4 standard novel chapters, depending on the length you write them.
A Literotica page has about 3k words on it, and readers here often feel shortchanged if they have less than 3 pages and overwhelmed by more than 6.

It's very different to someplace like CHYOA where the readers want to have potential stopping (or branching) points every 2k words.

I tend to average between 3,000 and 5,000 words to a chapter when I write. I then publish all the chapters in a single submission.

I used to submit individual chapters, but those readers who favor my work overwhelmingly stated their desire for single, longer submissions. The rating on every story converted from chapter submissions to the longer single version increased by at least .10 in the score.

As a reader, these are my preference as well. Almost every browser has a feature allowing an active website page to be "pinned" so that it is easy to keep returning to it time after time. I find this more efficient on Literotica than scrolling through multiple chapters of a work to find the next one in the sequence.

 

[old_prof]

than scrolling through multiple chapters of a work to find the next one in the sequence

I know I didn't know how to use Literotica very well as a reader way back when. But a few years ago, before I started writing, I started using the box at the the end of the story that gave me a direct link to the next section. Was that only introduced with the series change? I guess it had to be. Ho along ago was that introduced. I remember discovering the box and thinking I had just missed it previously, but now I'm guessing not.

I know you are a big advocate of single posting. Do you think that UI change has changed any reader sentiment towards single publication versus smaller portions?

BTW, I have two novels in draft form, both of which I'm hoping to publish in the first quarter. I'm going to try one each (one single, one segmented). Not a straight comparison, because the novels are very different, but I'm still curious if there is any difference in their reception that seems to be tied to length. My first novel I published in six roughly 20K portions.

 

[TheLobster]

On a somewhat related note, I can’t believe we’ve gone two pages talking solely about story length and no one has yet mentioned the importance of story girth.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I know I didn't know how to use Literotica very well as a reader way back when. But a few years ago, before I started writing, I started using the box at the the end of the story that gave me a direct link to the next section. Was that only introduced with the series change? I guess it had to be. Ho along ago was that introduced. I remember discovering the box and thinking I had just missed it previously, but now I'm guessing not.

I know you are a big advocate of single posting. Do you think that UI change has changed any reader sentiment towards single publication versus smaller portions?

BTW, I have two novels in draft form, both of which I'm hoping to publish in the first quarter. I'm going to try one each (one single, one segmented). Not a straight comparison, because the novels are very different, but I'm still curious if there is any difference in their reception that seems to be tied to length. My first novel I published in six roughly 20K portions.

I've been here since 2014 and don't remember a time when the "next" and "previous" options weren't available.

My first story published by chapter was in 2015. It has 20 chapters and over 180,000 words. I almost immediately saw feedback suggesting that I post longer stories like it in a single submission. Many of the comments referencing the flow of the story a "page-turner" that readers didn't want to pause between chapters to go to the next one. I published three stories in 2020 in chapters, or parts containing multiple chapters. The same feedback started rolling in. In July of 2023, I made the request to Laurel for the chapters of these four stories to all be replaced with their respective single submission.

I have never had a single comment or reader feedback stating that they would prefer my stories to be broken up. Maybe its the readers that my stories attract?

 

[YmaOHyd]

On a somewhat related note, I can’t believe we’ve gone two pages talking solely about story length and no one has yet mentioned the importance of story girth.

It's the kind of thing you have to train for, really.

 

[IWroteThis]

I know I didn't know how to use Literotica very well as a reader way back when. But a few years ago, before I started writing, I started using the box at the the end of the story that gave me a direct link to the next section. Was that only introduced with the series change? I guess it had to be. Ho along ago was that introduced. I remember discovering the box and thinking I had just missed it previously, but now I'm guessing not.

The new beta feature gives authors control to create their own series instead of relying on the automated process to do it. It was easy to break those series, as any variation in the title of a chapter would prevent it from matching the series. Besides the chapter titles having to be the same, the specific chapter had to be included at the end of the title (and it didn't recognize "epilogue" as a chapter indicator).

So, series have been around, but they are more prevalent and useful now that authors have some control over them.

 

[NewMountain80]

So since this thread has suddenly become active again, I figured I would post an update.

I have those three finished sections which represent a clean story arc for the characters. There isn't a big cliff hanger, just the opportunity to progress.

My work on the second arc has stalled. My writing time is limited, and I have been working hard on other writing projects, erotic and non-erotic, that are being commercially published.

At this point, I am going to start publishing those three here. (Putting one out and waiting until it gets through the process to put up the next.)

Eventually I will return and finish their story, but for now Ren and Rose have been shuffled down the ladder of importance.

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

...and yes, TheLobster, girth is definitely important!

 

[ElectricBlue]

I know I didn't know how to use Literotica very well as a reader way back when. But a few years ago, before I started writing, I started using the box at the the end of the story that gave me a direct link to the next section. Was that only introduced with the series change? I guess it had to be. Ho along ago was that introduced. I remember discovering the box and thinking I had just missed it previously, but now I'm guessing not.

Auto-sequencing has been there ever since I've been on Lit, so my guess, it's been there from the beginning. What the Series function enables you to do, is join together stories with non alphanumeric chapter titles. That's the new functionality.

I know you are a big advocate of single posting. Do you think that UI change has changed any reader sentiment towards single publication versus smaller portions?

I'm inclined to think younger readers with shorter attention spans driven by constant feed social media has a bigger effect than any change Lit has introduced.

BTW, I have two novels in draft form, both of which I'm hoping to publish in the first quarter. I'm going to try one each (one single, one segmented). Not a straight comparison, because the novels are very different, but I'm still curious if there is any difference in their reception that seems to be tied to length. My first novel I published in six roughly 20K portions.

There's no way of knowing for sure, because apples ain't oranges. Based only on my own story file, I don't there's a discernible difference. I've got several short novella length pieces published as standalone stories, and similar length chaptered stories, which have similar scores.

The one advantage of chaptered stories for me, is that you get an idea of the number of people who have actually read your story (from the last chapter stats). With a standalone story, you don't have a clue.

 

[YmaOHyd]

As a reader, I strongly prefer chaptered stories over single submissions. It's easier to open and close the tab or window and easier to maintain your place in the story; it's easier to put the book down, essentially. Reading through something that's a single 40 Lit-page submission can be a pain in the ass.

 

[Britva415]

I would just say, don't feel like you have to write to a number. Be okay with discovering the lengths of the sections/chapters/episodes as the story dictates. It will probably come out better than trying to make them fit some idealized size.

Name one of Procrustes' guests who found his bed "just right"

 

[RocketGrunt]

I've been here since 2014 and don't remember a time when the "next" and "previous" options weren't available.

My first story published by chapter was in 2015. It has 20 chapters and over 180,000 words. I almost immediately saw feedback suggesting that I post longer stories like it in a single submission. Many of the comments referencing the flow of the story a "page-turner" that readers didn't want to pause between chapters to go to the next one. I published three stories in 2020 in chapters, or parts containing multiple chapters. The same feedback started rolling in. In July of 2023, I made the request to Laurel for the chapters of these four stories to all be replaced with their respective single submission.

I have never had a single comment or reader feedback stating that they would prefer my stories to be broken up. Maybe its the readers that my stories attract?

You have to get to the end of a story/chapter before you get to the comment box. Readers who feel that not enough material has been posted in the chunk will get to the comment box and have the opportunity to say so. Readers who feel that the section is too long will generally give up before getting to the comment box and say nothing.

Since the preferred length of reading chunks varies from one person to another, an optimal length will still have some readers wishing it was longer and some readers wishing it was shorter. So if no one is commenting that your sections are too short, that means that you are posting sections that are too long.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

You have to get to the end of a story/chapter before you get to the comment box. Readers who feel that not enough material has been posted in the chunk will get to the comment box and have the opportunity to say so. Readers who feel that the section is too long will generally give up before getting to the comment box and say nothing.

Since the preferred length of reading chunks varies from one person to another, an optimal length will still have some readers wishing it was longer and some readers wishing it was shorter. So if no one is commenting that your sections are too short, that means that you are posting sections that are too long.

The preferred length is more dependent upon the pace, flow, and quality of the writing.

If you look at only those comments in the last chapter/part of a story and gauge the feedback from those who finished all the parts, you will have the truest measure of preference.

 

[RocketGrunt]

The preferred length is more dependent upon the pace, flow, and quality of the writing.

If you look at only those comments in the last chapter/part of a story and gauge the feedback from those who finished all the parts, you will have the truest measure of preference.

Actually, not really. Writing is already broken up fractally. Books in a series, chapters, scene breaks, paragraphs, sentences. The question of how much text should appear in a post on Literotica is quite independent of all that. People interact with this website differently than they interact with a book, or with a file on their kindl, or even with other sites.

On CHOYA, the stories are divided into tiny pieces with a teaser or branching point to go to the next page. The format gets angry if the pieces are longer than 2k. On MCStories, 3k word stories are normal, but longer works out to 25k or so are accepted. On Literotica, each page is about 3k words when filled and readers want to be given 3-6 pages at a time.

If no one is telling you they want more of your stuff, you're giving them too much of it at a time.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Actually, not really. Writing is already broken up fractally. Books in a series, chapters, scene breaks, paragraphs, sentences. The question of how much text should appear in a post on Literotica is quite independent of all that. People interact with this website differently than they interact with a book, or with a file on their kindl, or even with other sites.

On CHOYA, the stories are divided into tiny pieces with a teaser or branching point to go to the next page. The format gets angry if the pieces are longer than 2k. On MCStories, 3k word stories are normal, but longer works out to 25k or so are accepted. On Literotica, each page is about 3k words when filled and readers want to be given 3-6 pages at a time.

If no one is telling you they want more of your stuff, you're giving them too much of it at a time.

As I mentioned in a different thread, I don't view Literotica as any type of publishing trend setter.

What is allowed here, and what mostly amateur writers publish here, often does not meet the accepted conventions of standard publishing practices, whether print or online. You, for example, publish piecemeal chapters so your readers have no opportunity to read beyond what tidbits that you give them at a time. Of course they are likely to leave feedback asking for more. They've made an investment in the tale that they don't want to squander.

I get a significant number of comments wanting more of my stories longer completed, but it's because the readers enjoy my writing, not because I've left them hanging with an incomplete story.

Completeness is the difference, not the length.

 

[RocketGrunt]

I don't actually know what you mean by "publishing trend setter," that seriously just sounds like random words drawn out of a hat.

Anyway, if you're BurntRedstone and you have over twelve thousand followers, you can post a 90k word story in one big lump and still get a hundred and fifty thousand views and three hundred comments. For those of us with less than one eighth the follower count, it pays to play the game the way the readers of this site are wont to play it.

So first of all: New Stories. The most valuable real estate for getting eyeballs (other than your own followers, obviously) is the New Stories tab. This means that posting six times gets you more views than posting once. And posting sixteen or twenty six times gets you more views still. However big or small your story is, you'd be on the new stories list twice as much if you cut it in half and submitted the stories on different days.

Second of all: angry readers. A typical chapter in a novel is 3-6k words, but Literotica readers specifically get annoyed if they get story pieces of that length. Those lengths fly in other contexts, but the way the text is presented that comes out on one page or with a truncated second page and it "feels" like the reader is being shortchanged.

That's the essential tension. You'd be noticed by more people if you split your story up and got onto the new releases more times, but if you split your story up too much people get pissed.

The preference for story chunks that are more than 10k and less than 20k on this website is very strong. Also, you should put a sex scene into every chapter. A novel that took twelve 5k word chapters to get to the sex scene would be totally normal, but the way Literotica readers interact with the site, accusations of being "slow" mount up if you go two or even one chapter with no one having an orgasm.

Wherever you write, you should always have respect for what your readers are expecting to read. If you're writing a comic book, you have a few dozen pages and minimal dialog to tell your story. If you're writing a shelf breaker fantasy novel, you have two hundred thousand words. If you're writing for Literotica, you should be able to break your story into pieces that have between 10 and 20 thousand words each in a way where each section has at least one sex scene in it.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

I don't actually know what you mean by "publishing trend setter," that seriously just sounds like random words drawn out of a hat.

Anyway, if you're BurntRedstone and you have over twelve thousand followers, you can post a 90k word story in one big lump and still get a hundred and fifty thousand views and three hundred comments. For those of us with less than one eighth the follower count, it pays to play the game the way the readers of this site are wont to play it.

So first of all: New Stories. The most valuable real estate for getting eyeballs (other than your own followers, obviously) is the New Stories tab. This means that posting six times gets you more views than posting once. And posting sixteen or twenty six times gets you more views still. However big or small your story is, you'd be on the new stories list twice as much if you cut it in half and submitted the stories on different days.

Second of all: angry readers. A typical chapter in a novel is 3-6k words, but Literotica readers specifically get annoyed if they get story pieces of that length. Those lengths fly in other contexts, but the way the text is presented that comes out on one page or with a truncated second page and it "feels" like the reader is being shortchanged.

That's the essential tension. You'd be noticed by more people if you split your story up and got onto the new releases more times, but if you split your story up too much people get pissed.

The preference for story chunks that are more than 10k and less than 20k on this website is very strong. Also, you should put a sex scene into every chapter. A novel that took twelve 5k word chapters to get to the sex scene would be totally normal, but the way Literotica readers interact with the site, accusations of being "slow" mount up if you go two or even one chapter with no one having an orgasm.

Wherever you write, you should always have respect for what your readers are expecting to read. If you're writing a comic book, you have a few dozen pages and minimal dialog to tell your story. If you're writing a shelf breaker fantasy novel, you have two hundred thousand words. If you're writing for Literotica, you should be able to break your story into pieces that have between 10 and 20 thousand words each in a way where each section has at least one sex scene in it.

You make a lot of assumptions and generalizations.

I understand the logic of your first point, but I tend to view things longer term. Within a week a story will fall from the new stories list and be dependent on other factors to keep attracting readers. If your only draw is the continual publishing of new pieces to the story and that works for you, great. Keep in mind, by doing so, you are also alienating the growing number of readers on this site who have expressed a reluctance to start reading a story that isn't complete. There are too many unfinished works on here for many to take a chance on investing their time with another one.

You have published 5 stories, and three of those are currently showing as still in progress. We have approximately the same number of followers, though I doubt that we would have many in common. Yours may state their preferred submission length to you as mine do with me. Consider that the readership, and thus their expectations and preferences might be different.

 

[RocketGrunt]

You make a lot of assumptions and generalizations.

I understand the logic of your first point, but I tend to view things longer term. Within a week a story will fall from the new stories list and be dependent on other factors to keep attracting readers. If your only draw is the continual publishing of new pieces to the story and that works for you, great. Keep in mind, by doing so, you are also alienating the growing number of readers on this site who have expressed a reluctance to start reading a story that isn't complete. There are too many unfinished works on here for many to take a chance on investing their time with another one.

You have published 5 stories, and three of those are currently showing as still in progress. We have approximately the same number of followers, though I doubt that we would have many in common. Yours may state their preferred submission length to you as mine do with me. Consider that the readership, and thus their expectations and preferences might be different.

Uh... yes. We do have a similar follower count. You are even ahead of me by nearly two dozen at the time of this posting. A subtle difference is that I've been posting here for almost 14 months and your earliest story went up here eleven years ago.

So to start with: Murky Water comes in at 16 Literotica pages, which probably means it's nearly 50k words in length. It has 12.3k views and came out 9 months ago, so I imagine that viewership has slowed to a trickle. You could have gotten more viewership by splitting it into four sections. By explicitly putting it up as "Murky Water (1/4)," "Murky Water (2/4)," etc. you'd signal that it was complete while still getting it to spike on the new releases page four times instead of once.

Another important thing you'd get to do is to have four different sets of tags. Obviously you've noticed that readership numbers are much higher in Taboo/Incest and Loving Wives than they are in Sci-Fi/Fantasy or Novellas. Your incest work gets seventy thousand views and your celebrity fanfiction work gets a tenth of that. That is what it is, but one thing that can get you readers is tags. People who search by tags get a grab bag of things across the site, and one of the main ways to search is for tag intersection and tag accumulation. That is, when you put in a search tag, the site gives you other tags that appear with it on at least one story, and you can click on those to refine the search.

You can only put 10 tags on a story, but by having more than one section on the site you can put a slightly different set of ten tags on part 2 and part 3 and part 4 means that the series as a whole will show up in tag searches that it would not and could not if it was all in one pile.

As for my work, my complete novels aren't published here because they aren't porn (I put them on my Patreon instead, because I have fans who like to read my non-porn work). One of my stand-alone stories was converted into a series because it was popular and I received dozens of requests to do so. Every single chapter and stand alone story I have published here has gotten a Red H because I put things in places where I think they will be appreciated.

It's not just about writing better, it's also about writing to the audience you're looking to get. The site itself has constraints on how works are presented, and it doesn't makes sense to try to fight against that.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

A subtle difference is that I've been posting here for almost 14 months and your earliest story went up here eleven years ago.

subtle but decisive, sir!
that clearly establishes who has the longer dick, IMHO!

 

[WhoDunIt77]

I tend to prefer the chaptered approach, especially in the 1-3 page range as it makes it easier to read a little bit at a time and more importantly, as time permits. Kinda like doing that now as a contributor as it make creating the chapters easier and allows for a bit more flexibility in what I want to add and where vs creating it as a big lump then posting it as such too.

What does bug me though is the stories that just stop part way through (there’s several on Metabods like that) with not continuation or conclusion.
With all that said, I do promise not to just stop randomly when there’s still more story to tell too!

To me it’s kinda disappointing when it is shown as completed even though there could be more stories to tell (the one I’m working on could end up like that). I would like to know that if we mark a story as completed, can we remove that or would we just start something along the lines of a second book in the series? It will make that decision easier for me down the road.

 

[YmaOHyd]

To me it’s kinda disappointing when it is shown as completed even though there could be more stories to tell (the one I’m working on could end up like that). I would like to know that if we mark a story as completed, can we remove that or would we just start something along the lines of a second book in the series? It will make that decision easier for me down the road.

I'm 90% sure you can change the series to In Progress after it's completed. Starting a follow-up is fine too; people do that pretty regularly.