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Okay. I have a story ready to post. It's one I've edited by another writer. Here's my question. It's about 80,000 words, according to my info thingie in word. Is that too big to post all at once? Do you all prefer shorter chapters or do you like to read a story in one shot from start to finish? Will the site accommodate a story of that size without problems? Is there any size limitation on the length of a story?
Okay, so that's four questions... although two of them are more or less the same question worded differently... okay, okay! THREE of them are sorta the same. Sheesh!
Curious Cathy
Comments
Posting Size
Eighty thousand words is quite a bit to take in one chunk. That's the length of a short novel. I don't know how long your chapters are; however, I think you would do best keeping your postings 5,000 to 8,000 words. I recently posted a 20,000 word story as an experiment. I think it was a good story; however, it didn't get the response I thought it should. I feel I should have broken it down into six parts. The length of each posting would have been around 3,000 words which is much more palatable, and the readers could get a little bit at a time instead of being turned off by the length.
Portia
Story Size
I have seen stories on BCTS that range from 1200 words, to 10,000 words to a few that that were gigamgamous at around 80,000 words. 10,000 words is about the limit for one sitting for me. Though the really giant ones, I have a low tech marking method. I just have a piece of tape run down the frame of the screen, and when I have to stop and shut down I just mark the cursor on the tape. :)
Cut and paste
I prefer to cut and paste the entire story into Word and read it from there. It allows me to alter the type size to my liking and in some extreme cases, I might even play with the formatting. Then when I come to a point where I need to stop reading, I insert *** and then when I go back I just search for ***, delete it and read on.
For that reason, I prefer it all in one chunk. However, so long as the story is complete, posting it in sections at a prescribe interval works for me. I especially like it when the poster tells me in advance, how many postings there will be and what the posting schedule will be.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
How big to post?
That's a hard question and one that you have to take in several factors. One is the more posts you make the bigger footprint you make on the site. That means more people will get a chance to see that some part of the story is active. That's important since with so much activity here, stories can come and go without you noticing them. The stand alone stories are better with them staying on the page for a week, but if your's is too long and end up in parts, it can be swallowed by the mass of serials.
You also have to bear in mind how the story reads. Very short chapters may not be very filling, needing perhaps more than one per post. Additionally not all are equal either. Finding good spots for breaks can be challenging since you have keep each post interesting so your readers continue reading.
I have that decision to make with my newest one too. It's not easy!
hugs
Grover
story size posting factors
There is another factor to consider... Large file sizes take a great deal of time to download.
Many people who frequent this site have slow or even dial-up connections (yes, there are still people out there who are so limited). The slower rates require LONNNGG download times and therefore are more subject to errors and failure on download attempts. That is the primary reason I do not post an entire novel in one chunk. Yes, I also know that Amazon takes and downloads everything in one big bite but that doesn't mean just anyone is able to take advantage of that speed.
Other than that, the previous arguements are all valid.
Anesidora
I had more complaints...
I have only had one story smaller than that. My first two stories I posted all at once without complaint but because of a post similar to this, I posted my next story (Life Renewed) in chapters on here and in full on FM. My inbox filled with complaints. My read count/kudos also dropped substantially here but the read count rose on FM. My suggestion is to go ahead and post it all at once.
Hugs,
Stef
Story Size
The system will now handle very large file sizes without bogging down the site. Since the buffers are only 64k (that's about 9,000 words) it used to be that the recommend file size was no larger than 8000 words. But buffers are no longer a problem, the downloading is done on a different server than the browsing and uploading so the buffer size does not present a problem because the memory being used will hold several buffer loads at once. Several. :) Like, 200x. No kidding, the database server could actually hold a 2 million word document in memory at one time, now.
However, I would still say that 8-10,000 words is a good large chapter size, because a few people have slow connections and a 64k file is just about right for such a problem. It's also about as much as I, personally, can stand to read on screen at one time. You'll also get more comments posting chapters every other day or so if they are as long as 8-10,000 words. Shorter chapters, like up to 3-5,000 words can be posted every day to maximize comments. Chunks longer than 20,000 words should probably not be posted more than twice a week to give people time to read and comment.
And I would say that 20,000 words is really a nice maximum for file size, people on slow connections will only be slightly discombobulated.
But there are no hard and fast rules here. There used to be a story on site that had a 2gigabyte chapter. :) Eight chapters, the shortest of which was about 60,000 words. It's been pulled and made into a book series. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Word Counts
Eighty thousand words is roughly the size of a novel, in book publishing terms, although different genres have different conventions concerning the dividing line between ‘novels’ and ‘novellas.’
‘Men's fiction,’ and quite a bit of ‘genre fiction’ tends towards smaller page counts, in general, where ‘women's fiction’ tends toward lots more words.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula award categories:[11]
which generally complies with typical ‘men's fiction’ standards.
‘Women's fiction,’ on the other hand, might easily double that, at least in the minds of its readers. You may have noticed that when you see a best-selling romance title on the shelf in a bookshop, or even a supermarket, the book itself tends to be ‘fat.’ Usually, they run about 100,000 to 300,000 words, more or less, and that tends to be the perfectly arbitrary cut-off point for novels which are complex enough to be interesting for many women. If you've read Outlander and its many sequels, by Diana Gabaldon, soon to be a mini-series on Cable and Satellite TV, they tend to be more than three hundred thousand words, sometimes considerably more.
OUTLANDER – 305,000
DRAGONFLY IN AMBER – 350,000
VOYAGER – 385,000
DRUMS OF AUTUMN – 425,000
THE FIERY CROSS – 508,000 [cough]
A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES – 500,000
...and so on.
If you happen to visit her web site, you'll notice that almost all her correspondents are women.
Basically, the perceived ‘size’ of a book depends on its audience, because different genres have different conventions. Mysteries and science fiction tend to be short, but there are no rules set in stone. Mills and Boone (Harlequin) romances tend to be shortish, because this cuts down on costs, and they aim for a ‘quick fix’ market generally.
The Outlander series are arguably either ‘science fiction’ or ‘paranormal’ historical romances, which tend to be ‘fat’ despite their putative ‘genre,’ because their audience is almost exclusively women, and women tend to like words, especially in ‘historical’ novels, because it takes quite a bit of verbiage to truly set an unfamiliar scene. Some ‘Science Fiction’ is the same. The Dune series, for example, are all ‘fat’ books, as are three volumes of The Lord of the Rings, and the many books of the Harry Potter series.
In general, in this particular forum, I'd err on the side of short bites at the apple, if anything, because the readers are sitting in front of a bright screen, as a general rule, and lengthy texts are hard on the eyes, as Erin thoughtfully points out.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Plenty of short Romance novels
It's a set of subgenres, they run about 60-80,000 words and are published in series that are themed. Like Cowboy Romance, or Pregnant but Unmarried Romance, or ... it's kind of endless. They keep dreaming up new themes. I've run three bookstores and those short romances sell pretty good, though most women don't want to talk about buying them. :)
And if they DO want to talk, Katie, bar the door!
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Or even....
pregnant SRU unmarried cowboys?
Love, Andrea Lena