# Epic length stories - how would you rather read them?



## Bladespark (Oct 7, 2009)

If you were to read a very long story being posted to FA, would you prefer one very long post every couple of weeks, or shorter pieces posted every couple of days?  

I'm trying to decide how to post my next novel, and I can't decide which way would be better, so I'd like people's opinions.  Which would you rather see?

(I post .txt files, so you would be able to read it without downloading it either way.)


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## Aurali (Oct 7, 2009)

I hope the author takes there time and keeps the reading interesting through out the entire piece. If it bores me, I put it down and walk away, no matter the length.


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## Atrak (Oct 7, 2009)

Define epic length. If you're talking about 100k words or more, then I would go by chapters or parts.


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## panzergulo (Oct 7, 2009)

I have read stories of epic length both in large episodes and tiny chapters. A tiny chapter on every few days was much more comfortable. Also, it's easier to remember what was happening in the last chapter. With the huge episodes once in couple of months I tended to forget what was happening the last time I read an episode.

You can also experiment. I have been writing a series of flash fiction length stories, for example, posting sometimes even five or six of them per week, each one on a different day. So far the series has been my most successful story. Reading four thousand or five or six or sometimes even ten thousand words long chapters takes time... but reading a few hundreds words doesn't take time at all. Even if you read those few hundreds several times per week. Readers are weird like that. On the other hand, such a short format has lots of limitations. The pace and overall feel of the story is very different from a short story, novel or a serialized story.


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## Kaamos (Oct 7, 2009)

> shorter pieces posted every couple of days



This.


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## TakeWalker (Oct 7, 2009)

Larger pieces less frequently. Of course, I would hope that there would be regular chaptering intervals naturally structured into the work (like what I'm doing).


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## Volpino (Oct 7, 2009)

Epic length stories? Is rather not read them an option? 

I'm not too picky on how often they're posted as long as it's within a reasonable amount of time. I don't want to have to be re-reading constantly because it was a month between chapter installments, let's say about a chapter a week at the slowest.

/sarcasm on

If you're looking for critique to go with it, probably about a chapter every other day would be the most I could do. If you just want to make it available, then plop that puppy into a pdf rtf or doc file and just give me the whole thing at once.

If you put it out in txt format, I'll honestly just probably ignore it. Ah, nice stuff in a good boring plain Times New Roman font, 12 point, one and half spaced, and one inch margins all around. Don't care about headers, but if you can't change the default double space between paragraphs, I'll have to shoot you. Make sure that all italics are changed to und....

/sarcasm off

Oh wait. It's not like its a formal submission, so I don't really care. =P Post it however you want.


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## Volpino (Oct 7, 2009)

TakeWalker said:


> ... (like what I'm doing).



What ARE you doing? Do we even want to know?

Oh, you mean in your story. Now I get it. Nevermind


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## SailorYue (Oct 7, 2009)

well pages written is very diferent from pages typed...

if theyre very long chapters, post once a week. if theyre short chaps post like 1 chapter every other day or so, and be consistant. fair-wether authors are very anoying.


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## GraemeLion (Oct 8, 2009)

For me, that depends.  Are you doing novel length serial?  Or have you written the whole thing and want to figure out how to post it in chunks?

If you're doing a serial, I recommend doing it the way it was done in the "olden days."  Publish four chapters.  Then, once every week or two weeks, give us two chapters.  At the end, give us the last four chapters all at once.

But if you've already got it written out.. post the first chapter as TXT , and then offer the rest as either TXT or PDF.    That's how I'd do it.  That first chapter lets people in without demanding too much from them.. and that gives them the hook to read the remainder.


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## TakeWalker (Oct 8, 2009)

Volpino said:


> What ARE you doing? Do we even want to know?
> 
> Oh, you mean in your story. Now I get it. Nevermind



Damn, it almost worked. <.<

Actually, the one thing I'm doing _wrong_ is that whole "posting things regularly" bit. I mean, lately it's been kind of regular, but I still think I'm leaving too long a gap between sections.


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## LadyMissie (Oct 10, 2009)

Well my attention span could use some work so right now I'd prefer if someone posted little bits every few days. It would also help if you put in a lot of spaces between story ideas than just one block of text.

The idea of a lot of short bits makes me find reading a lot easier than if it's one giant wall.


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## ScottyDM (Oct 14, 2009)

The big ugly-nasty with a serialized story on the Internet is that the vast majority of the time the author posts the story as he or she writes it.

Why this is a recipe for epic fail:
Few people create at a steady pace. So you produce three or four chapters per month and maybe even peak with five chapters in a month, then another eight months go by before you break your creative block and write the next. Readers give up after awhile.
Unless the author is awesome at planning, can stick to that plan, and has the psychological makeup to actually write under such circumstances (some feel their creative soul is crushed by a detailed plan), then the possibility of writing yourself into a corner is pretty high. Or even more likely is the possibility of introducing characters and situations that don't fit the whole.
Of course you did remember to set your latest chapter aside for a few months or weeks before you published it, right? Editing is always better with some space between your first and second drafts... until of course you hit a creative wall and eat through your backlog of chapters. Once you're writing again the temptation to edit the day after you finish the first draft goes up. And the quality goes down.
Admittedly those problems affect the readers and not the author, but I kinda value readers. I want my readers to have a good experience.

One answer is to finish the first draft of your magnum opus, shuffle chapters and scenes to tweak your plot, run it past your beta readers to check for storytelling problems such as plot holes, and only then start your final edits and release your chapters on some schedule.

But as an author I can tell you that's not a lot of fun. We want feedback and we want it now. Not wait a year or two to get it.


One possibility is to split your story up into smallish multi-chapter segments. Write and finish a segment before publishing that and release each chapter on a strict schedule. Then have a signup form on your website so readers get notification of the next segment. Readers wait for the next book in a multi-book story with traditional publishing, so they will wait for the next "booklet" from you.

You can still write yourself into a corner if you don't have a master plan, but at least each segment will make sense. And you won't be tempted to produce a chapter of filler just so you can say you published your next chapter on time.


About a year ago I did some PHP code for a comic strip website. I did it gratis so I still retain copyright. After I finished my first phase I never did get any feedback on what changes they wanted so I kind of drifted away from that project.

Anyway, my code reads a control file with a list of strips and publication dates. Then on the publication date it auto-publishes the next strip. It uses simple "First" / "Previous" / "Index" / "Next" / "Latest" navigation to let the reader navigate through the list of published strips. It could just as easily work with story chapters as with comic strips.

If any author has the discipline to write several episodes ahead, and has a hosting plan that includes PHP 5 and FTP access (for example you're not using FA proper) then talk to me. I can let the code go for free or very near free.

Scotty


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## SailorYue (Oct 14, 2009)

thats one reason why i fail at chapter stories. i cant get around to writing the next chapter cuz my muse gives me new iddeas. and i CANT write them out or plan them with notes and stuff, cuz once its written its out of my head forever. i tried to do it with an awsome inuyasha fanfic... but i just gave up cuz i was BORED with my story. it was like watc hing an episode the 3rd or 4th time in a row ><


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## Digitalpotato (Oct 14, 2009)

Well so long as it isn't a giant block of text. But you should know to split paragraphs up, it's somewhat of an unwritten rule of putting stories online because some people get lost, or they get distracted by somethign else on the computer screen and forget where they are. 

Chapters may also be helpful because it can be easier for someone to pick up where they left off if they decide to kill some time reading your story.


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## Bladespark (Oct 14, 2009)

Heh.

Well, thanks for the input. 

Since there's obviously no consensus, I'll just be doing whatever I feel like doing.  I do wish more people had actually answered my question instead of going off on weird tangents, but I guess that's the internet for you.


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## ScottyDM (Oct 15, 2009)

Here is a more direct answer.

There are times my patience for stuff is about 3 nanometers wide. If I'm on YouTube I'll give a vid about 10 seconds, and I'll avoid clicking on anything over a minute. And if faced with a collection of short stories I'll pick the shortest ones first to decide if I'm going to give that author any more of my time.

For example the Bitey Castle ghost stories. Short and sweet but I still started by reading the shortest first. Read them all and even snagged copies, so they struck me as worthwhile.

Of course that was when I was going through a bout of "humingbird brain". Sometimes I have the patience to read 10,000 + words in one sitting and pick out 10 minute vids on YouTube. I've even watched whole movies on YouTube in one sitting.

I've also noticed that some of the websites that feature longer articles will break them up into shorter sections. I think there is some sort of psychological comfort in being faced with only 50 lines of text, rather than the 300 of the full article.

Or perhaps it was just an excuse to hit the reader with more ads.


So... Write short chapters/scenes or whatever you want to call them. Maybe 1000 to 2000 words is about ideal. Then further break those up into pages (300 to 400 words each, but break at a paragraph).

Seriously though. Complete your first draft before you start releasing chapters. But that is just me.

And let me know if you want any custom website code to manage chapter releases.

Scotty


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## ScottyDM (Oct 15, 2009)

Hmmm, how about some real chapter sizes.

Typically I write somewhat longish chapters, about 3000 to 5000 words. But my latest WIP, a novella, has shorter chapters. Here are the word counts for some of the completed chapters: 1450, 1600, 120, 1450, 750, 1300, 650, and 1850. Yeah, 120 words is pretty short, but it's complete and it does the job.

When I was at Borders a couple of months ago I bought a book directly from the author (book signing, we authors got to stick together). My estimate is that the book is pretty close to a quarter-million words. The author has only seven chapters. 35,000 words per chapter is too damn long for any work of fiction in any form.

Although it's nice if a reader can stop at a chapter break, and go to bed for example, the really good books keep people turning pages. Yes they have chapters, but they create a sense of anticipation so the reader doesn't stop, but will read "just a few more lines" before going to bed. ;-) Ha! I think we all know how that turns out.


With paper and ink delivery I think you can get away with 5000 word chapters, but online I think they need to be shorter.

And pages, break them up into pages.

Scotty


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## Bladespark (Oct 17, 2009)

I have to wonder why everyone is assuming I have not yet written this story?  I have!  I wouldn't be asking about how to publish something that wasn't even written yet.  It was completed a couple of years ago, actually.  I recently did some editing and decided I was ready to share it on FA.

I don't need any custom coding, since, as I said, I am sharing this on FA.

Thank you for your input.


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## Lasair (Oct 17, 2009)

I dont particularly mind.
Though i do like to read in short bursts as i useually end up with little free time.

Furygan and I are writing at the moment, each chapter of the story is on average 3-4 A4 pages long, including split paragraphs etc. and we are uploading each chapter as .txt each time we finish. its somewhat easier imo to be able to take a chapter, go read it at ease, and then come back whenever for the next one.

Then again, we are probably going to upload the story as 3 or so 'collections' of chapters at the very end, for those who want to say print it and blast through whenever they want. As the story works out as having roughly three 'stages' to it.

if i was to make a decision, i would say that to go with chapter by chapter uploads is for the best : )


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## Scarborough (Oct 18, 2009)

From a reading standpoint, I don't really mind one way or the other about how long a piece is. I've read 20-30 pp. on the internet in one sitting, and I've closed my browser from 200 word stories. So I guess it all just depends on how well the story is written. If the story is really good but long, I spend the ink and paper on printing it out.

From a writing standpoint, I usually serialize and do a part every few days, just because it's easier to do a last-minute check on a small part than it is to do a last-minute check on 50 pp.


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## Attaman (Oct 18, 2009)

For Epic Length?  Month-long breaks are fine for me.  Just so long as it's productive months, and each update is at least a good half-hour sitting.  If you're making a novel with updates being chapters, I expect to see at least 5,000+ word chapters on average, preferably up to 15K.


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## TheHowlingDragon (Oct 18, 2009)

Attaman said:


> For Epic Length? Month-long breaks are fine for me. Just so long as it's productive months, and each update is at least a good half-hour sitting. If you're making a novel with updates being chapters, I expect to see at least 5,000+ word chapters on average, preferably up to 15K.


 
i would  have too agree with you on that one!!


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## GraemeLion (Oct 19, 2009)

Bladespark said:


> I have to wonder why everyone is assuming I have not yet written this story?  I have!  I wouldn't be asking about how to publish something that wasn't even written yet.  It was completed a couple of years ago, actually.  I recently did some editing and decided I was ready to share it on FA.
> 
> I don't need any custom coding, since, as I said, I am sharing this on FA.
> 
> Thank you for your input.



I apologize if what I said gave the impression that you haven't written it yet   Many around here talk a good game, but never really publish things online.  I do, but FA has become less than ideal for me, since every time I post something people ask when the characters are going to start yiffing, and I delete it in disgust.    Also, the "fanfiction continuing epic" seems to be a common style here, with people continuously writing without a real plan in advance.

So.. my apologies.  As for how you should post it, I'd LOVE to see one big .txt file.  And I wouldn't mind seeing a link to a .mobi file for the Kindle


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## JMAA (Oct 19, 2009)

THERE ARE WORSE THINGS.


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