Vignettes/Sketch Stories Versus Longer Fiction

As a writer of vignettes and what I like to call "spanking flash fiction", I find it much easier to compose these one-off scenes with one-off characters, and trickier to write a decent, captivating serial.

However, I like to read both types, and will gravitate towards longer serials with character buildup throughout.

I'm curious about others' thoughts and preferences as to length of spanking fiction. What's your ideal?

Something to 'get my teeth into' - definitely! A decent story length of around 5,000 words is good for me (not split into parts either).

When I have time (insert manic laugh) I love a 300,000 word novel. I can really get my teeth into one of those!

A 300,000 word novel would be great fun to read!

I suppose my preferences too depend upon what the author does with the length, if it's just filler, I'm not going to be too captivated.

In "real life" I am a lover of long novels, but as I am not very fond of reading long (and secret!) stories on a screen (perhaps I should finally buy that Kindle I have been talking about for three years?), I prefer my spanking stories relatively short, or at least cut into reasonably sized chapters. My own stories tend to be between 2500 and 5000 words, but that is probably just because I am unable to think up anything longer. If a story is more than 6-7000 words, I have to push myself to read it, but it helps if it is by one of my favorite writers. At the other end, I have a passion for 11 word limericks...

That has always my opinion of what works best on the LSF. When I first came here, I worked hard to shorten my stories to sub-5000 words. Sometimes though it just isn't possible.

Note: The popularity of Seegee's stories makes me wonder about that "wisdom" though. He regularly posts 10 to 12,000 word stories that do very well indeed without even bothering to break them into serials.
I think the lesson there is that good writing trumps everything else.

Diana Gabaldon, anyone?

For spanking fiction I prefer standalone stories less than 6,000 words--as both a reader and author. If a serial has all the parts posted at the same time I may consider reading it; but I don't usually have the patience to follow a lengthy story split into chapters over a long period of time. That's just my own personal preference. There have been many successful serials here that follow that pattern though, with many devoted readers awaiting each new installment.

@Alef: I think I have the same feelings as you, I can't read anything really long on a screen.

@Guy: I'll have to look into Seegee's work, myself. I just don't know how capable I would be at putting together a long spanking story, or if such a story would maintain my interest.

@Janine: I quite like standalone stories, but I am also partial to the serial format, and writing new chapters as you gauge readers' reactions. But that's me.

A lot of the writers of epic fantasy go into the many 100,000's of words. While my 'short's stories often seem to wind up novelette length or close to I struggle to hit the 100,000 word mark in a novel.

I feel that epic fantasy as a genre can sometimes be a little much for me.

Novelette works for me-I'll have to check out some of your longer pieces, Seegee.

Thanks Aurora. I've always been conscious of how long my work gets, and it was one of my concerns when I first started posting work online that it may be too long for people's tastes, but as Guy very kindly said about me, it didn't seem to bother the readers overly. I found writing Bared Affair articles helped me with shorter works, because there I did have a word limit that had to be adhered to. It depends on what you read in epic fantasy. The authors can get a little caught up in the minutiae of the worlds that they've created and the story becomes bogged down with a lot of excessive description. Robert Jordan (author of the Wheel of Time) was notorious for this. I remember someone saying that by the time they'd read his description of what someone was wearing they not only knew the style, colour and cut of the dress, they knew how it had been made, had the family histories of the weavers and seamstresses and the names of the individual silkworms that had made the material in the first place.