# Length.



## foozzzball (May 25, 2009)

Okay, so. When reading online, what's the preferable length for a work?

Conventional wisdom is that a short story should be short enough to read in one sitting, and the majority of online venues I've met prefer works to be under 3500 words, possibly for ease of reading on a screen in that magical 'one sitting'.

Obviously it's problematic to sit down and get confronted with thirty thousand words of scrolling text, or maybe even ten thousand, so an obvious solution would be to cut the work up into chunks and post them seperately, but how many chunks?

How do you handle this, or do you just post epic-sized works all on one page? What length would you say is too long for your average reader to chew through? What, in short, do you do in regards to the length of your fiction and handling those sorts of issues?


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## ElizabethAlexandraMary (May 25, 2009)

Hmm, I write what I feel like writing, I never had to worry about the length of my stories since I don't write much.

But yeah, I guess it's better to break down epics into smaller chapters, else it becomes very hard to get new people interested in the story.


Great topic idea btw.


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## TShaw (May 25, 2009)

Quick answer would be to stress quality over quantity. Obviously.

As for one point of your question, the reader in me wants a story to grab me in the opening so that length really doesnâ€™t matter. Thereâ€™ve been plenty of works Iâ€™ve opened up to read and watch that little scroll bar get smaller and smaller. With a writer Iâ€™m unfamiliar with I have to admit seeing that bar shrink gives me just a tiny twinge of dread at the length, but once I get to know the writer and their work I look forward to see it get smaller. 

Answering as a writer Iâ€™ve had one memorable story that exceeded ten thousand words that got several comments from those that read it stating that when they started they only intended to read it in several sittings but couldnâ€™t stop. Itâ€™s a great feeling getting comments like that. So Iâ€™d say do not worry about your short stories being too long. Concentrate on the story youâ€™re telling and let the reader decide how to digest it.


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## Tiarhlu (May 25, 2009)

I personally hate having to read anything on the computer screen. It drives my eyes crazy. I think I'd give more stories a chance if I had a hard copy. I feel kind of bad saying that because I always want people to look at my own work.

With that said, I think if your story is very long, then chapters are certainly more inviting than one huge page. Those make good break points and give the reader an easier to manage goal.


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## Shouden (May 25, 2009)

as a rule for me, I try to limit my short stories to about 10 pages (which is roughly 3000-3500+) words

Anything longer than that I would submit as a PDF file so that people could download it and read it in more than one sitting.


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## foozzzball (May 25, 2009)

Quality over quantity can indeed help, but that's more in the way of making a reader willing to slog through lengthy texts, rather than solving the issue of lengthy texts. 

Tiarhlu's complaint is not uncommon, at all. So how many words can you guys read into something before your eyes start complaining? A thousand, a hundred, a hundred thousand?

As for Shouden, I know you post really lengthy stuff. How do your readers react to having it all broken up?


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## AriusEx (May 25, 2009)

Shouden said:


> as a rule for me, I try to limit my short stories to about 10 pages (which is roughly 3000-3500+) words
> 
> Anything longer than that I would submit as a PDF file so that people could download it and read it in more than one sitting.



This isn't a bad piece of advice, though I've seen short stories go from anywhere upwards of 50 pages to around 6 words, so it's all a matter of style.  There's no solid rule for when you MUST break it into chapters.


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## Xadera (May 25, 2009)

What I've found, in terms of my own experience and the way others have commented, is that under 5 pages tends to be too short, and over 15 pages is too long, with a page being ~600 words. This is not including how well written the piece is, this is just a generic observation. When I look at a story, if it's under 10 pages I'm more likely to read to the end, whether or not it's good. If it's beyond 15 pages, it's gotta really get to me to maintain my interest. Since I'm on the internet, there's plenty of other things that I can read or do that would make a more efficient use of my time.

If you're writing something epic online, I'd say chapters is definately the way to go. At least that way people can read a chapter and go "ok, that's a good place to leave off, I can come back and read the next tomorrow". However, you might also not want to exceed 10 chapters much, because a new reader might be intimidated that way as well.

So, generically (not considering density and quality), for long stuff a good base-line might be a maximum of 10 chapters of about 7-8 pages per chapter. That's about 50,000 words you can have, which isn't bad when you're just posting it online. Any more and you'll have to use dirty tricks like having the first chapter or two only 5 pages long to sucker the readers in, then jumping up to 20+ pages per chapter after that XD You can always break any of these boundaries, but I think these are near the best to attract more people. Or you could actually develop a very interesting story with great pacing and so on.


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## Shouden (May 25, 2009)

foozzzball said:


> As for Shouden, I know you post really lengthy stuff. How do your readers react to having it all broken up?



*shrug* haven't really gotten comments about that. And I post chapters in order and as for my short stories...can you really break up a string of short stories?


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## greymist (May 26, 2009)

I believe that short stories are better for online reading.  If you post a novel length book (60k-100k+ words), then it is best to break it up into chapters online.  Just my 2 cents


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## ScottyDM (Jun 16, 2009)

I've noticed that with professional websites, that post news articles and the like, that they break up the longer articles. My guess is their "pages" are about 500 words each. At the bottom of each page will be the links to the other pages.

You start reading, get to the bottom of the first page, then discover it's a five-page article. :-? Of course if it's interesting you keep going.

S-


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