Putting aside the wisdom of posting such a behemoth, will a 50,000 word chapter be arbitrarily sliced by the site's algorithms?
Putting aside the wisdom of posting such a behemoth, will a 50,000 word chapter be arbitrarily sliced by the site's algorithms?
No, it's not completely arbitrary. While glitches happen occasionally that lead to mid-sentence breaks, it's my understanding from prior discussions that it's looking for paragraph breaks.
I've definitely had odd page breaks...but I'm not asking about page breaks, but rather whether or not a 50K-word chapter will be posted as one. I've seen stories in which there's a "this was too long and thus broken up into multiple chapters" header attached to stories. Those may only be older stories, but I thought it was worth asking.
Well, the page size limit is around 12K words, and I've seen stories with 6+ page chapters, so I'd say it wouldn't get broken into multiple chapters.
I've already posted chapters longer than 12K words. I just don't want to post something at 50K and have it broken (into another chapter) at a point I don't want it to be broken. Lazeez, can I get a ruling here?
I've posted chapters that exceeded the limit and never had a single question or complaint.
I wouldnt worry about it. the people here do good work.
Shad
The story delivery system's limit is 55000 characters including the HTML tags. That's 55000 of the actual text. Not including the headers and the footers.
Anything above 55000 characters should be delivered in pages.
Before the current system, way back something like 10 years ago, I used to divide long stories with no chapter breaks manually. Though that didn't affect chapter postings at the time.
But that's no longer done. Now it's automated.
Thank you, Lazeez. I'll obviously have to break it up into two chapters.
Not required for SoL. If the story has more than the maximum number of characters the system will break it up into pages, and there is no limit to the number of pages a story or chapter can have. If you want it to be one big chapter it can be, but it will have a number of pages to that chapter.
Rather than the technical delivery of display pages, there ae other issues involved too. While novice authors love stories that delve into every detail, with more experience, most authors learn to focus on concise, powerful storytelling rather than the traditional 'a day in the life' stories, which simply follow the characters around each day to seen where they end up.
Unfortunately, on SOL where readers tend to read multiple ongoing stories, reading a single chapter at a time, the emphasis ends up on LONG chapters and Never-ending sagas, that continue long past the story has forgotten the central issues behind their stories.
Thus I tend to stress shorter 'event-based' stories, which jump from one story event (meeting someone knew, a crisis breaks out, fights, makeups, or other significant events), which tend to result in more tightly-focused stories.
Thus, I for one prefer shorter, more focused and less rambling chapters, but I'm definitely in the minority here. I'm almost afraid to post my newest story, "The Holes Binding Us Together", since as a pre-teen focused fantasy, the chapters are VERY short, the first 5 chapters averaging only 1,500 to 3,000 words. While the later chapters are longer (and more adults become involved and the conversations grow in depth), the main storytelling is very succinct and SHORT.
While novice authors love stories that delve into every detail, with more experience, most authors learn to focus on concise, powerful storytelling rather than the traditional 'a day in the life' stories, which simply follow the characters around each day to seen where they end up.
It's also possible to go too far in the other direction, to be too concise, in which case, rather than powerful story telling, you end up with a series of events bereft of any kind of setting.
"I made a bet today that I could get more than two words out of you." He replied, "You lose." Silent Cal... circa 1924
Okay, but that still doesn't explain how it relates in any way to the comment of mine that it was in reply to.
In the story I'm most currently working on, I've just written a dialogue scene including the words 'Richard isn't stupid'. ;)
AJ
Seems rather obvious to me.
It's also possible to go too far in the other direction, to be too concise
Silent Cal was notorious for excessively concise statements, thus the Silent Cal moniker.
My comment was explicitly about writing fiction/story telling. I find the connection between that and a politician with a reputation for being a "quiet man" to be anything but obvious.
It's also possible to go too far in the other direction, to be too concise, in which case, rather than powerful story telling, you end up with a series of events bereft of any kind of setting.
I think arguments about whether to write a story in a concise style or in a more loquacious style are too simplistic.
Unless you're writing literary fiction, in which nothing important happens, a story will contain scenes where fast, concise writing is appropriate eg action scenes, and scenes where slower, more eloquent writing is appropriate eg when scene-setting or tension-building.
AJ
I think arguments about whether to write a story in a concise style or in a more loquacious style are too simplistic.
I actually agree with this. Authors should write what the story demands and focus less on chapter lengths.
If the author concentrates on either maximizing verbosity or maximizing conciseness, the story will suffer for it.
Unless you're writing literary fiction, in which nothing important happens, a story will contain scenes where fast, concise writing is appropriate eg action scenes, and scenes where slower, more eloquent writing is appropriate eg when scene-setting or tension-building.
For the most part I agree with this. However, even the fastest paced actions scenes need some sense of setting.
Is there a standard somewhere that denotes how many words equals a novel?
It varies by genre.
https://thewritelife.com/how-many-words-in-a-novel/
General Fiction
Flash Fiction: 300–1500 words
Short Story: 1500–30,000 words
Novellas: 30,000–50,000 words
Novels: 50,000–110,000 words
Fiction Genres
Mainstream Romance: 70,000–100,000 words
Subgenre Romance: 40,000–100,000 words
Science Fiction / Fantasy: 90,000–120,000 (and sometimes 150,000) words
Historical Fiction: 80,000–100,000
Thrillers / Horror / Mysteries / Crime: 70,000–90,000 words
Young Adult: 50,000–80,000
Note: There are dead tree science fiction and high fantasy stories out there well over 150K words.
Battlefield Earth is 400K words.
Alternatively novellas seem to top out at 40,000 words for award purposes (Wikipedia, spit), which correlates with recent book reviews in the literary pages of my newspaper. However the reviewers do sometimes describe 45K words as a 'short novel'.
AJ
Thanks. Though it appeared to be one persons (Atwood) opinion of it, that should be enough to get started on researching it with it used as a baseline.
I've obviously read Battlefield Earth.
I don't know how disturbed to be that I already have two completed books here on SOL that are longer than that. And the one I'm currently posting will also be longer than that.
I have a 320k here a couple 55ks and am currently posting a 150k novel.
Honestly, I believe that 'novel-length' is entirely what the author decides to make it.
Write your story and enjoy. the rest is up to your readers,
Shad
I have a 320k here a couple 55ks and am currently posting a 150k novel.
Honestly, I believe that 'novel-length' is entirely what the author decides to make it.
Write your story and enjoy. the rest is up to your readers,
Shad
Agreed. After a few hours of research, I find there is no standard for word count, nor page count. Bucket fulls of opinions though.