Short stories/prompts, yay or nay?

I'm curious to know what your opinion is on short stories or prompts, stories that are around 1000 words or even less, and whether or not you frown upon this kind of writing.

I personally can't force myself too hard on writing a story, and even my most motivated chapters have been only around 800+ words if I'm lucky, but I see that much of CHYOA write long chapters, and some can even pick up the pace immediately just a few days later and that makes me curious if others are willing to even read shorter stories, or if there's some kind of invisible status quo that needs to be met, lest people just quit immediately.

 

Short stories are great and should never be frowned upon. Do you mean to ask as in being individually posted as stories? In that case, I would just advise having a collection rather than 200 individual one page or two chaptered works. Consider making an anthology for that stuff.

as for prompts, any prompt can be posted in Story Ideas to give inspiration to other authors. None of it should be frowned upon. Sometimes stories really work well as a short length. It can help with pacing too as instead of having 20 chapters where the story is drawn out, you just have a few dedicated and straight to the point.

 

Some of my favourite stuff is short stories - erotic or otherwise.
Attributed to Hemingway is this one in its entirety:

"For sale,
Baby Shoes.
Never worn."

Might be good if there was a decent single repository somewhere that we could put all our short stories in. I've got afew too, but because they're not part of a 43 chapter depth epic, they only get about 3 views each.

 

(I'm kinda glad that Google remembers my login details 'cause I sure as hell don't)

Do you have a lot of these short stories? You could make a "Story" that is a collection of these stories with the first chapter being a brief synopsis of the short stories. It would make for a nice digestible format.

 

Personally, I like a little build-up or slow-burn in my erotica, so I prefer longer works, but that's an individual preference. Plenty of people like short stuff and quick writing that gets to the point. There are other erotica sites where "one-shots" are a thing. It's a popular term in fan fiction, meaning that it's a quick, one-off story or scene. They're quite popular! I don't know how that differs on chyoa though, since the allure of multiple paths seems to invite longer works...

I think the real ticket is to write what you love, and if that's shorter stuff, then rock on! Readers will gravitate to things written with passion behind them.

 

What do you think about a story collection of short stories based on images? I mean captions.
Back then, I have a tumblr blog, before tumblr purge all their porn, where I make captions inspired by porn images and gifs, but given my writing style, those are big captions that could be compiled as small chapters. For example, the last "caption" I wrote was 2500 characters, so it could work as a CHYOA chapter with the image and the story.
I am tempted to move those to CHYOA given that here, unlike those reblog sites, people come primarily for the text and not for the images. In Tumblr, I have no way to know if people like my posts because of my captions or because of the images, and the reblogs where captions are removed make it even worse.

PD: I also add that all those captions are small stories in the same fictional version of the future. Instead of making a big story of a fictional future porn world, I wrote small insights of different girls in that world.

 

@wicker has a story along these lines "Image inspiration chapters" thats worth checking out.

 

Just be sure to credit the source. You can embed the image, but it’s important that the original sources get credited as well. You can put a link below the image so people know where it’s from. Using Pinterest isn’t a source either. It’s preferable to find the original source, however, there are cases where the original source was removed and in that case it’s best to either find the person who made the image and link one of their accounts (DeviantArt, Twitter, Instagram, Pixiv, etc.). Promoting the original source when possible is always important.

 

When I said images I actually mean porn photos and gif, not drew images or hentai. It is similar to the ones used in the story Image Inspiration Chapters.

 

I read a "story" on the site within the last 48 hours. I can't recall title or author, but each "Chapter" ended with a question to which there was only 1 possible answer.

It ended OK... Yet I wish I could recall it to call it/them out, because I kept thinking, "Post this on Literotica, not here!"

 

I don't see any problem with linear stories on CHYOA.
When authors publish them here, they can add small chunks at a time and thus can get feedback while they're writing instead of writing a whole novel just to finally realize that readers would stop after the second chapter.

 

When I joined, I thought the site was for people who liked the ability to make changes, have options, etc

There are sites to post full stories, and I didn't think this was going to be one.

Also wicker's "IIC" (IMO) is 50-50. Nothing wrong with anime, pics, etc with a story, but (again, IMO) shouldn't be dependent upon the other.

 

The philosophy behind CHYOA is geared toward freedom. If your story doesn't risk breaking the law (or isn't spam or ridiculously devoid of content), then you are free to publish whatever you like. The site is indeed 'for' branching stories, but that doesn't mean non-branching stories have to be banned.

As for why one would publish linear stories here, the site has a modern interface that is not overly awkward or irritating to use (Literotica), nor is it mostly children (Wattpad), nor is it frowned upon to write original content (AO3), nor does it reject stories based on quality or content except for the bare minimum required by the law, but it still has a large user base.

 

There are sites for non-branching the way CHYOA is for branching. Everything should be in its place.

As for why to publish there, same as to publish on paper or any site: Readership, fandom, and the results of that. But why to publish there as opposed to a site more-favorable &/or not clearly (& I think the site states so, or at least it once did) meant/set aside for another type that has less such sites...?

 

A lot of photos are copyrighted and have models attached to them, so even if they aren’t drawn, you should still credit where you found the photos. Sometimes people post free versions like on 4chan or whatever but the work themselves is still not theirs, and the models or companies should be credited if possible. Sometimes they aren’t copyrighted so you can use them without doing so, but you should still make the effort to see if they are.

 

Unfortunately, this idea is quite antithetical to CHYOA's purpose. I cannot imagine Friedman banning stories unless they threaten the site's existence.

There is a limited number of appropriate sites with an equivalent or larger userbase than CHYOA. Many of these approve or reject stories on a strict case-by-case basis, which makes it quite challenging to write anything other than vanilla since the acceptability of your content depends on the whims of whoever happens to review it. Others are overly restrictive in other ways, such as users needing to create and verify an account before they can even view stories.

Others are quite well managed and designed, and fill a certain niche, much like CHYOA. However, they do so by disapproving of content outside of those niches, whereas CHYOA simply supports branching stories and markets them as its focus. For instance, it is almost pointless to publish an original story to AO3 (a fan-fic site) unless it fills one of those time-honoured fill-in-the-blanks tropes like Alpha/Beta/Omega settings. Wattpad's fanfic craze has settled down over the years, and they don't officially fill a niche, but its average user age seems to be around 11-15. That's not to say they won't read your erotica, but that they would likely become your main audience, which I'm not sure I could stomach. In general, publishing erotica to sites that aren't dedicated to adult content has its challenges anyway.

The only completely generic, non-tailored erotica site I know of that's larger than CHYOA is Literotica, and I, like many others, find it too difficult to work with. Whenever I am forced to look at that "literotica.com EROTIC STORIES" repeating wallpaper I can feel the cells of my eyeballs slowly be drained of their will to live. I have worked with Linux terminals with more effort directed into their graphic design; I have seen cave paintings with a less outdated appearance. The new beta story layout is bearable, I suppose, but still far messier than CHYOA, and with less of an apparent community presence, though I might be biased on the latter point. Also, Literotica actually has significantly less support for multi-chapter linear stories - you have to publish chapters as individual stories and indicate the story title and chapter number in the chapter title, rather than adding new chapters to an existing story. As a consequence of this, you can't have any single chapter of less than 750 words, you can't have menus or note pages, and the system is swamped with every single chapter rather than just stories and reports.

The CHYOA system is not simply rare. It is unique. It would be a great shame if any type of (legal) story could not be published on it, even those types that I personally despise.

 

Not in the least, and I don't see why he doesn't ban the non-branching, since there exists another site for them named in your post.

As for the rest, I didn't understand all of it, but I assuredly disagree with your expression of the "limited number", while also laughing at your referring to create accounts & the like, which is minimal and easy-to-do work.

Lastly, I agree with your description of CHYOA as "rare" & "unique", including (as CHYOO was) in being set largely for stories with multiple places that offer multiple directions to continue in, often starting with only the 1 choice, but potentially expanding to dozens.

 

As a moderator and someone who has been on the site for more than ten days, I can assure you that the current stance of site administration is that stories that do not risk harming the site are allowed, full stop. The fact that it is possible to post them somewhere else is an incredibly weak reason to ban them itself, let alone when posed to someone who is so ideologically opposed to censorship.

Clearly.

My points still stand.

 

The duration of my membership & your "full stop" notwithstanding, you have no idea of my oppositions or any such thing.

It was my understanding that Literotica was for full stories & CHYO_ for branching. If I'm wrong, OK. Regardless, however, I will likely attempt to check back with the same story in a few days (if I can recall it) & add branches so it fits the site the way I knew it to be. (I should be allowed, as I am the only one being incorrectly described as opposed to censorship &/or other things concerning the sites.)

 

Just because CHYOA has the feature to choose your own branches, doesn't mean every story ever published into this site has to be, nor should authors/stories be removed because they prefer a more linear storyline.

While the site does have a bare minimum/requirement before being published, you won't be reprimanded because you posted short stories.