[Krista] Where I'm at and...

[wildone]

2 hours ago, Krista said:

This is why I can't be trusted to do Anthologies/Writing Contests/Prompts... 

I'm of the opinion that these chapters over 14,000 should be split. But I'm dealing with a defiant Krista.

So you, kind readers, what do you think? Can you sit down for a chapter 14K + to read, or do you have no real care on chapter length?

[chris191070]

24 minutes ago, wildone said:

I'm of the opinion that these chapters over 14,000 should be split. But I'm dealing with a defiant Krista.

So you, kind readers, what do you think? Can you sit down for a chapter 14K + to read, or do you have no real care on chapter length?

I can happily sit through a 14k chapter (there's a few authors who post chapters that long). 

It might not be possible to split the chapters, it would possibly disrupt the flow of the story 🤔 

[Mattyboy]

9 hours ago, wildone said:

I'm of the opinion that these chapters over 14,000 should be split. But I'm dealing with a defiant Krista.

So you, kind readers, what do you think? Can you sit down for a chapter 14K + to read, or do you have no real care on chapter length?

I broadly agree with Chris on this. Some people define short stories as under 10k  words, and novelettes as under 20k. 

Chapters 6-10 there on that list seems to be averaging over 16k.  I don't mind long chapters when the novelette really is the storytelling unit,  but if those four chapters became six they'd still be averaging over 11k words each. 

Ch46 of TBY I see was 18k, and that worked because it was all one day's events,  but overall  I really liked the pacing and sizing of your TBY chapters that were mostly 5-8k. 

Long can work fine, and so I think I'd need to know more before I made a call on whether your chapter 8 should split or not.

 

[Mattyboy]

12 hours ago, Mattyboy said:

Matt Ashby was a pretty interesting character that  didn't get a lot of lines.   Wild is likely correct about "don't cross the streams"   but otherwise I'd like to hear a bit more about Ashby

Oh  I see from re-reading Ridley that it was spun off from what I guess is this project.  Some of your comments kinda signaled that you had a lot more sorted out on Matt's backstory than Ridley made clear.  

I'm keen to read this after you can sort yourself out with Wild.

[Thirdly]

I know some readers like consistency in chapter lengths. But we weren't treated to exact chapter lengths in the past. There was one book I read where one chapter only had one sentence. That's it! Just one sentence. So, so long as something is happening in those long chapters and I'm invested in what's going on, I don't care how long or short they get...

At least, not until I have to go back and edit 30-page long chapters like I've recently had to do. To be fair, the story had 20-30 pages per chapter fairly often with entertaining content. But I was still kicking myself over having to edit such long chapters. 

Reading them, however, I keep chugging along.

[ReaderPaul]

I don't think any chapter should be over sixty-five thousand words long.  (Although I read a chapter on another site which was 93,000 words long.)  If the story telling is good, bring in on!

[Krista]

23 hours ago, Mattyboy said:

Matt Ashby was a pretty interesting character that  didn't get a lot of lines.   Wild is likely correct about "don't cross the streams"   but otherwise I'd like to hear a bit more about Ashby

We don't know much about him other than he's dating the foreign exchange student, doesn't average that many points per game, and at some point had a falling out with Ridley when they were best friends. So, for me at least the mystery of Matt Ashby could go anywhere with the information given.  

But, wildthang said no... pity. 

[Krista]

11 hours ago, Mattyboy said:

Oh  I see from re-reading Ridley that it was spun off from what I guess is this project.  Some of your comments kinda signaled that you had a lot more sorted out on Matt's backstory than Ridley made clear.  

I'm keen to read this after you can sort yourself out with Wild.

I have been a bit open to the possibility of a Ridley mini-series, where I focus on different characters. But to be fair, Gabe, Ridley, Matt, and Ridley's father Tim were the 4 main characters with information backing them. Gabe's story is mostly told through his interactions with Ridley. Tim's would be 'after' he comes home, because we know what happened to him before that. Unless there is a hidden love story between Tim and his friend, but that is not the case... I'll unload that smoking gun for people who were curious. lol. 

So that leaves Matt Ashby. Or, made up characters that we never saw. I guess the recovery and homecoming of Tim would make for a good bit of story, but maybe as follow-up 1-shot story with Ridley. 

--- But this current project was based on Learned to Lie, the story contest Secrets. With Joel. It's been a bit, so you may have to reread the first part. That's why I'm complaining, I've written a nearly 200k story based on something that should have been done at 7k, yet here we are. lol. 

[Krista]

9 hours ago, ReaderPaul said:

I don't think any chapter should be over sixty-five thousand words long.  (Although I read a chapter on another site which was 93,000 words long.)  If the story telling is good, bring in on!

Yikes. How many chapters were there before and/or after the 93k word one? That's a novel not a chapter.  

10 hours ago, Thirdly said:

I know some readers like consistency in chapter lengths. But we weren't treated to exact chapter lengths in the past. There was one book I read where one chapter only had one sentence. That's it! Just one sentence. So, so long as something is happening in those long chapters and I'm invested in what's going on, I don't care how long or short they get...

At least, not until I have to go back and edit 30-page long chapters like I've recently had to do. To be fair, the story had 20-30 pages per chapter fairly often with entertaining content. But I was still kicking myself over having to edit such long chapters. 

Reading them, however, I keep chugging along.

I am one of those readers. I like consistency, or near consistency. I've read books where the chapters are blank, as a numb passage of time sort of deal as well. People get creative, I guess.  I have put a few of my chapters into Grammarly, and some of the larger ones estimate between 50 minutes - an hour and a half to read through. If the writing is, like you said eye-catching and interesting, then word length can be overcome. If it isn't, then it becomes a bit of a struggle.

12 hours ago, Mattyboy said:

I broadly agree with Chris on this. Some people define short stories as under 10k  words, and novelettes as under 20k. 

Chapters 6-10 there on that list seems to be averaging over 16k.  I don't mind long chapters when the novelette really is the storytelling unit,  but if those four chapters became six they'd still be averaging over 11k words each. 

Ch46 of TBY I see was 18k, and that worked because it was all one day's events,  but overall  I really liked the pacing and sizing of your TBY chapters that were mostly 5-8k. 

Long can work fine, and so I think I'd need to know more before I made a call on whether your chapter 8 should split or not.

 

Those swim meets took a lot out of me to write. Knowing that some of these chapters are well over that word count does worry me a little bit. Over 11k was the average chapter length before some of the larger latter chapters came into play, it went up marginally. Which, to me is far beyond my norm. I like writing in the 5 - 6 1/2k range. I think that's always been a happy place for my writing. 

A lot of this writing was me sitting down an writing, I didn't have a set goal for what I wanted in the chapter, aside from following through on plot points of previous chapters. With the goal of seeing the story to its end. So, the writing itself probably 'could' be broke down in some chapters into multiple parts. In others, I don't think it can. So there is a struggle in my mind right now with: How difficult will it be to rectify consistency Vs. The overall outcome still being inconsistent based on what doesn't separate easily.

I am known for large outlying chapters here and there, that's been pretty consistent with me. At least with TBY those were usually relegated to Swim meets or bigger one-themed events. I think I had a larger chapter miss horribly with readers on TBY and that was the trip to the boardwalk/fair chapter. I got a few PM's saying 'for the words you used, they didn't do a whole lot and it was boring.' That would be my biggest fear with some of these chapters.

Edited May 1, 2025 by Krista

[Krista]

22 hours ago, chris191070 said:

I can happily sit through a 14k chapter (there's a few authors who post chapters that long). 

It might not be possible to split the chapters, it would possibly disrupt the flow of the story 🤔 

Yeah, flow is something you can't look at word length and know, so I have a feeling I'm going to have a ton of re-reading in front of me.  These chapter lengths are very different from  my usual 5 - 6 1/2k norm. That alone does worry me. 

Ridley and Elias were both written in 1 part though. Wildthang and I broke them up... but the difference being, both of those are under 40k... not nearly 200k. lol. I may not have it in me to make the attempt, but if I honestly think the story needs me to do it, I'll probably at least give it some effort. 

Edited May 1, 2025 by Krista

[Krista]

Fixing the floorplan of a house is going to be the death of my sanity... why do I hate myself by writing an importantly functional large home for a character... and then do it all wrong. It isn't something that could be held together by imagination, duct tape, and magic... 

At this point I may pay someone to fix this mess...  (Not really, I may be overdramatic about this entirely)

The Wildthang and I have been brainstorming and attempting to fix an error that probably should have been paid closer attention to - since you know, the birth of my describing the house in question started in Chapter two... and here we are, near the end of the writing of the damn thing and I realize that the way the house exists (mostly because Steve made an off-handed comment about it), well, it wouldn't make sense or be structurally sound either.. lol. 

This is why I prefer writing about simple homes... simple structures... and not a whole lot else when it comes to such things.

[Krista]

I've been able to behave myself and the last two chapters have been around 8k, so that makes three in a row. I have also found, with the help of Wildthing a natural split in some of the larger chapters earlier in the writing. I'll have to go through and find others, or leave a few large chapters intact. I do think some of them are one themed, just larger. The story is well over 200k in words now, so still a bit more massive than I ever thought it would become. 

We also did fix the wonky descriptions of the layouts within the floorplan of the house and property (I think), only time will tell with that one, I may be a bit author blind to the function of the house/property. I definitely didn't feel my most sane when attempting to come up with a fix that didn't require me to do thousands of words of corrective writing just to fix a floor plan issue. It was nice knowing that I focused on a lot more than house in a lot of the writing as well, thankfully I gave them more things to look at.

I 'think' I am at the point where the next part will end the story. So, editing and such will start and hopefully posting. I will be working with getting Part 1 edited/reposted. Since it is linked to a contest, I'll have to likely repost it as a unique document and I'll post it alongside Part 2. If I'm wrong with how that will need to go, I'll need to confirm that before I do it. I've been known to make a mess and break things on GA over the years.  

I'm always working up to a bit of a struggle when it comes to ending a story. I rewrote the ending to Shadows twice, mostly because Wildthing told me I couldn't end it the way I wanted. I argued, but lost that argument when he finally landed on good points... as much as that pained me. Then I did a five part epilogue for The Best Year just so that I could work in all the ideas I wanted without prolonging an already too long story. 

Maybe this one will have a smoother send off than my other larger projects. 

After the writing is finished - I don't know where I will go next, if anywhere. The story I had bouncing around in my head for a bit, even before I decided to continue this current project has kind of died out in my head. It would be a story unlike anything I've written in the past, it isn't a romance, there are a lot more adult and mature themes going on, and older characters. It was going to be my rebellion story, getting myself away from coming of age romances that I've dwelled in since 2004. 

When explaining my plans for the story I was told that it may be too much as well, which has me worried. It is easier to explain how something should be, than putting in the work to pull it all off in any sensible way. It was going to be a smaller project named "Ellis," to go along with the naming theme of Ridley, Elias,  and this one. To make it a sort of an.. unconnected series.  When an idea sort of becomes a bit neglected I tend to continue to do so. 

So, Learned to Lie could be the beginning of my retirement; especially if it bombs.  

[Krista]

I hate ending stories. 

[Krista]

The writing for, "Learned to Lie," is finished aside from edits/necessary rewrites as we start to really iron out on the editing/beta reading. It ended with 20 chapters, but that is going to change as we've already found a few places where some of the larger chapters can be split. I don't know how many of the larger chapters have been looked over for that, but I'm guessing between 23 - 25 chapters may be the end product. The word count ended up being roughly: 238,590. A lot larger than the 7k I wanted this project to be over a year ago, mind you, but here we are. 

Now, I just need to convince Wildthang that the ending is what it is, maybe this one we won't fight over for weeks before I relent, stop being stubborn, and listen to him... rewrite it three or four times, until he's satisfied with himself.  Hopefully we can get the first chapters out before the end of the month. I'm going to edit and re-post Chapter 1 alongside Chapter 2, after that it will be one chapter a week until it is finished. (Tentative schedule). It may end up with an Epilogue, at the moment it has none.

Edited June 27, 2025 by Krista

[chris191070]

20 minutes ago, Krista said:

The writing for, "Learned to Lie," is finished aside from edits/necessary rewrites as we start to really iron out on the editing/beta reading. It ended with 20 chapters, but that is going to change as we've already found a few places where some of the larger chapters can be split. I don't know how many of the larger chapters have been looked over for that, but I'm guessing between 23 - 25 chapters may be the end product. The word count ended up being roughly: 238,590. A lot larger than the 7k I wanted this project to be over a year ago, mind you, but here we are. 

Now, I just need to convince Wildthang that the ending is what it is, maybe this one we won't fight over for weeks before I relent, stop being stubborn, and listen to him... rewrite it three or four times, until he's satisfied with himself.  Hopefully we can get the first chapters out before the end of the month. I'm going to edit and re-post Chapter 1 alongside Chapter 2, after that it will be one chapter a week until it is finished. (Tentative schedule). It may end up with an Epilogue, at the moment it has none.

Looking forward to reading it 😀 

[Mattyboy]

So  I feel this works out to 

3 hours ago, Krista said:

The writing for, "Learned to Lie," is finished aside from edits/necessary rewrites as we start to really iron out on the editing/beta reading. [snip]

Now, I just need to [snip] relent, stop being stubborn, and listen to him... 

 

[Jeff Burton]

4 hours ago, Krista said:

The writing for, "Learned to Lie," is finished aside from edits/necessary rewrites as we start to really iron out on the editing/beta reading. It ended with 20 chapters, but that is going to change as we've already found a few places where some of the larger chapters can be split. I don't know how many of the larger chapters have been looked over for that, but I'm guessing between 23 - 25 chapters may be the end product. The word count ended up being roughly: 238,590. A lot larger than the 7k I wanted this project to be over a year ago, mind you, but here we are. 

Now, I just need to convince Wildthang that the ending is what it is, maybe this one we won't fight over for weeks before I relent, stop being stubborn, and listen to him... rewrite it three or four times, until he's satisfied with himself.  Hopefully we can get the first chapters out before the end of the month. I'm going to edit and re-post Chapter 1 alongside Chapter 2, after that it will be one chapter a week until it is finished. (Tentative schedule). It may end up with an Epilogue, at the moment it has none.

I also look forward to reading it.  May your battle with Wildthang be swift and victorious!

[Krista]

19 hours ago, chris191070 said:

Looking forward to reading it 😀 

I hope so! 

16 hours ago, Mattyboy said:

So  I feel this works out to 

 

Lol... yes. He does have his work cut out for him, the final chapter ended up with almost 26k words and 52 pages. So, yikes. We'll probably be splitting it up. I've already rewritten the ending myself once before he got his beady little eyeballs on it. I had to write 5 chapters to end TBY, I don't want to be doing that with this story unless the 26k words breaks up to 4 - 5 parts, then I've already done it.

14 hours ago, Jeff Burton said:

I also look forward to reading it.  May your battle with Wildthang be swift and victorious!

Sometimes to keep his morale up I have to... *sigh* give him a few little victories here and there. I mean, he does put up with me still. 

----

As an aside, it is nice to know that I still have that ever present struggle when it comes to ending a story. To be honest me writing all of this without readers has my impatience and apprehension rather triggered. I 'want' to engage this go better than I've done in the past. Thinking that I can do that with the whole project written is a whole new thought process for me. Knowing how this story is going to go chapter by chapter is going to give me a complex, I know it. 

Edited June 28, 2025 by Krista

[Krista]

Chapter 2 is posted.

[wildone]

Geez, it has nearly been 2 years since the first chapter was posted the first time  You'd think she'd give a link or create a signature in profile  

 

 

[Krista]

7 minutes ago, wildone said:

Geez, it has nearly been 2 years since the first chapter was posted the first time  You'd think she'd give a link or create a signature in profile  

 

 

Thank you, and hush your face. 

Also, I forgot how to make fancy signatures (or never learned, truthfully) ages ago - don't expect to see one for this story.

[Jeff Burton]

9 hours ago, wildone said:

Geez, it has nearly been 2 years since the first chapter was posted the first time  You'd think she'd give a link or create a signature in profile  

 

 

Oh the sass.  I couldn't do that Krista kinda scares me sometimes.

[Krista]

11 hours ago, Jeff Burton said:

Oh the sass.  I couldn't do that Krista kinda scares me sometimes.

He knows my motivation wanes alongside all the geographical logistics and hurdles I'd have to maneuver around.

but...

[PrivateTim]

On 1/24/2014 at 5:50 PM, Krista said:

...where I'll be going...  Clever eh?   

Which comes to the, 'where I'll be going,' part.

As of right now, I have no idea. Where do I want to go? I know where I don't want to go. I do not want to revisit the Fanfiction for Twilight.bit more of my time to writing... or at least whilst the motivation to has lingered. 

How about channeling your inner Dom and finishing his abandoned stories?
I feel like dang Linus in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear.

[Krista]

4 hours ago, PrivateTim said:

How about channeling your inner Dom and finishing his abandoned stories?
I feel like dang Linus in the pumpkin patch waiting for the Great Pumpkin to appear.

It has been so long since I was able to sit down and enjoy a Dom story. 😮 And it is sad that he disappeared on us so long ago.