Do you write a chapter and post right away or do you write several chapters and slowly post over days? What's your posting strategy? I've been trying to always have three or four chapters in my back pocket, so if I get busy I don't leave readers hanging for too long.
Somewhat depends. Normally I just write a chapter and publish it. I don't really plan stories out that much, as I enjoy going with the flow. However, if the story is still really high up on the Recently Updated, I'll leave it to rest for a little while. That is unless I don't have publishing permission and have to wait for it to be checked.
I used to write a couple chapters and then post, these days I try to stagger the release but I'm basically write a chapter-post a chapter.
I normally only ever publish once I have a complete sex scene done. Don't want to leave the readers blue balled, so I want to make sure there's enough new material there for them to "work with" as it were...
My chapters are super long these days... 20-35 pages... and with continual edits as I write, take me forever to write. So, I post right away. Often with a primal scream of release.
I usually write one paragraph and then post it. Since I am a slow writer, and a terrible proof-reader, I rarely have multiple chapters that could be posted at 0ne time. If I did, I would spread them out over time; probably every half day or 24 hours.
Most of the time, I have the next chapter significantly written, but not edited. I like to know I'm not writing myself into a corner.
I would ideally like to do that but my chapters end up being too long and time taking that I end up posting once I feel enough has been conveyed. I see a lot of benefit of writing a few chapters, one of course giving readers something not leaving them hanging but more importantly from a story telling point of view the flexibility to modify the plot as it might be developing in your head. I think it can make reading a lot more immersive if for example a subtle hint was dropped, a clue or easter egg given that gets revealed down the plot line. Having that power to modify before publishing can be a vital tool for such scenarios. Of course one could do that after publishing as well but it seems like a cheat, knowing most of the readers following my work end up reading the chapter within 24 hours of the post.
In the same way, it allows you to accidentally including logic inconsistencies which are harder to overcome if you already wrote a couple of chapters. So I guess it's pretty much depending on the author's abilities in these areas.
When I'm launching a new story, I like to have the 'foundation' set -- so the Introduction, an Author's Notes branch (because I like to keep those out of the middle of the other branches), and the initial branch to one or two chapters deep. If I'm setting up a Game rules story, I like to have the entire setup in place -- all initial variable definitions, any pre-game logic chains the reader has to go through -- stuff like that. Of course, the big example of that in my stuff's sitting unpublished because I haven't had time to finish that part of it, so... you know. Take it for what it's worth.
