Dave! I don't read the stories here so I don't know who writes and who doesn't. I just visited your blog pages. Wow! I liked your Body at the Buoy fragment. In fact we write in a similar style. Have you tried sending to Blithe Spirit Quarterly? Ruth Sims and Victor Banis have entries there. It's guest edited by Lori Lake.

M

Dave (imported) wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2010 6:58 am I write short stories that I keep sending to journals to be published and I can tell you, sometimes 1000 words is sufficient and other times 20,000 words is still too few. Even with the stories I post on my website, I have limited control over the length.

It's no different for anyone else writing and posting stories. I used to create chapters. I still create divisions in stories but that is all artificial and up to the author and not the reader.

Paolo wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2010 10:20 am Tell this to Stephen King or JK Rowling.

Now there's two names to conjure with. I can imagine Stephen King writing a castration story to make your hair curl and keep you awake at night. Be careful of JK Rowling though. She could make 'em disappear with a wave of her wand. You wouldn't even know about it until the next time you had a pee.

Paolo wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2010 10:20 am I'm really getting tired of posts and emails whining about the stories and related features, too.

Paolo, you should welcome the whinger and moaners. They keep the board interesting and provoke replies. Without them this board could become bland and uninteresting.

Paolo wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2010 10:20 am Granted, things aren't perfect. But until someone else puts together a site with such a large collection of stories about castration

and eunuchs, this is it.

So it isn't perfect and it never will be. Perfection is not given to human beings. But it does achieve a high degree of excellence and it suits me just fine.

Quite apart from the

Paolo wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2010 10:20 am large collection of stories about castration/eunuchs

this board has collected a deal of information about castration and, as far as I can tell, given encouragement and moral support to a lot of people with real problems. And that is help that they couldn't have got elsewhere.

The managers of this should take pride in what they have achieved - and accommodate the moaners and whingers.

Kortpeel

I don't have any objection to long stories. Or rather, I don't object to a story merely because it's long.

When I come online and I want a bit of slightly naughty entertainment, I'm never searching for episode x of a story I've read before.

I look for a reasonaby pithy story, well written, that has a beginning, a middle and an end all on the same scrollable page.

There are an awful lot of stories quite evidently written by Beavis-n-Butthead-type schoolboys, and these can usually be identified (and discarded) in the first couple of paragraphs. Frankly, I think it's sad that these are probably read solely by other Beavis-n-Butthead-type schoolboys, who would benefit scholastically if they would only bother to look out for the better resarched, well informed literary offerings that can be found here and on other well-respected erotic literature sites.

Sometimes I will try a story that has the dread words "Episode 1" in its title.

If the episode is memorable enough (not only for its storyline, but also for its literary merit, its style, its quickness of action) I might be moved to read Episode 2 when it appears. Or *if* it appears. Because so many writers post bits of stories that they start and can't be bothered to proceed with.

(And yes, in case any of you want to do a bit of dirt-digging, you'll probably find 2 or 3 stories online that I've started and failed to finish! But I'm commenting, not casting stones!)

What upsets me is when a "list of new stories" is hijacked by episodes 85 to 95 of a story that, by definition, is not new!

A serial story should be allowed one entry in a list of stories, not one entry for every slow, merit-deficient. mind-numbing chunk that the author throws our way!

And yes, just my opinion. Other opinions may vary.

Of course there is the possibility of serial stories. In this, each chapter is a story in itself. A different book, if you will. I think that if you look at these kinds of serial stories, they look a lot like a Tom Swift or a Left Behind series.

The characters do not necessarily need to be continued in this style of serial series writing, just the situations in the context of story frame.

Comments?

Ideas?

Bluecowboi (imported) wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2010 10:59 am I think it is simple. If you think the story is to long don't read it.

What I would like to see is an easy way to locate a completed story for download or printing or reading.

That's a pretty good idea.

Old Greebo (imported) wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2010 1:24 pm What upsets me is when a "list of new stories" is hijacked by episodes 85 to 95 of a story that, by definition, is not new!

A serial story should be allowed one entry in a list of stories, not one entry for every slow, merit-deficient. mind-numbing chunk that the author throws our way!

And yes, just my opinion. Other opinions may vary.

I so agree with you.

Yes A-1, you're right. The Thecia stories are a case in point. But the Thecia stories only appear from time to time, and I get the impression the author puts pen to paper (as it were) only every now and then, without it being a serial story where you won't understand the plot unless you've plodded through every previous story.

I tend to read about 60% of the Thecia stories.

The current main offenders look to me like stories that the authors might actually have completed, but they are cutting them into chunks and throwing them at us one by one, intead of dumping them on us in one lump from a great height!

...

Old Greebo (imported) wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2010 2:26 pm but they are cutting them into chunks and throwing them at us one by one, intead of dumping them on us in one lump from a great height!

Which isn't permitted, if you read the submission guidelines.

If there are 10 parts of a story in the tank in one day, or one that's so long that the scrollbar can't be seen, it's trashed.

Old Greebo (imported) wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2010 1:24 pm What upsets me is when a "list of new stories" is hijacked by episodes 85 to 95 of a story that, by definition, is not new!

A serial story should be allowed one entry in a list of stories, not one entry for every slow, merit-deficient. mind-numbing chunk that the author throws our way!

And yes, just my opinion. Other opinions may vary.

I so agree with you.

Then you get some code written up to prevent that and send it in to IE to implement.

<<...

Old Greebo (imported) wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2010 2:26 pm but they are cutting them into chunks and throwing them at us one by one, intead of dumping t

Paolo wrote: Thu Jan 21, 2010 4:47 pm hem on us in one lump from a great height!

>>

<< Which isn't permitted, if you read the submission guidelines. If there are 10 parts of a story in the tank in one day, or one that

's so long that the scrollbar can't be seen, it's trashed.>>

Fair enough, Paolo. But it seems to me that as soon as you set a rule, the b*ggers find a way round it!