How long is too long?

The title of the post says it all. How long is too long for a story. I am working on 'New Town New Life number 3 European Vacation.' I am up to almost 7,500 words and only about 3/4 through. Is close to 10,000 words too much for a single story?

Judging by comments I have received about my longer stories, it is best to split them into episodes/chapters of no more than 3,500 words. It takes a bit of thought to make each episode "complete" in itself but shouldn't be too difficult.

Geoffrey Stirling.

I agree with Geoffrey that longer stories are often better received when split into parts. I guess that does depend somewhat on the story though, and whether it is suitable to be split.

In my opinion the issue with split stories is to get at least a reference to spanking in each part. Few LSF readers want an entirely vanilla episode.

Geoffrey Stirling.

Interesting question. The simple answer (at least for me) is that the story should be as long as it needs to be, no longer and no shorter. Achieving this is a skill with which a lot of us struggle. Speaking for myself, my shortest story, Serious Punishment Spanking, is 1791 words. My longest, Collared at Thanksgiving, is 13,428 words. The rest of my stories range between those two. I don't start a story with a specific word count in mind. I start with a concept and/or a character and let the story flow naturally. I thought about sectioning Collared but determined that breaking it up would disrupt the flow. On the other hand, I have written many serials that had natural stopping points. In the end, each writer needs to do what seems right.

It’s entirely up to you! Personally, I look at splitting a story into two parts if it gets much over 5,000 words.

The story is as many words as it takes for the author to tell it. It is then up to the reader if they want to commit to a long story all in one go. You can edit things out (it’s why we have drafts). I’m not a fan of lots of exposition, although I have been guilty of it. When reading through it, ask yourself, do I really need all this extra detail and background to effectively tell the story? If the answer is no, then remove it. I used to post in a short story comp at another site (not spanking related) and they had 1500 word limit, that really made us think about word count.

I write long stories and then chop them up into parts. There is a huge difference in readership after a story hits 5,000 to 7,000 words. It has to do with the way the library works. Look at my series and there's only one or two (Bamber comes to mind) that were written as different stories.

My stories seem to average out at between 2500 and 4500 words - with a few exceptions. There's a saying from the 1960s that a story should be like a mini-skirt - long enough to cover the essentials, but short enough to hold the interest!

Dividing longer stories into parts can work, providing you can find (or make) natural dividing points within the story.

The problem can be that the readers expect something interesting in each part, so if you're writing a long build-up to a spanking, then you might end up with a three-part story with not even a hint of spanking in the first two parts - and the risk that readers will lose interest before reaching part three!

As a reader, I don't like to read a story over 20000 words.