minimum word count

I do get annoyed by many of those empty chapters that just serve to take up space and make navigating the stories more confusing. Maybe there could be a minimum word count. I would say 50 words would be appropriate. That means there is some content while not alienating the newer writers.

However I do think there should be an exception for the creator. That way it's still possible to post a list of options if someone really wants to. They just have to go through the creator first. I know that this puts additional hassle on the creator but the idea it to disincentivize the super short chapters as much as possible. CYOA is nowhere near as bad in this as Writing.com where sometimes half of the chapters are empty but it's still there and it's getting worse.

 

I think this is a good idea, it's annoying to see in overview what looks like an exciting thread of chapters and you quickly discover it's essentially 1 word chapters the whole way down!

 

"Choice farms" are the worst. We had a discussion about it on my discord at some point. 95% of the time it's about passing the work onto the next writer to get them to write something the "choice farm" author wants to see.

There are cases where a well-involved thread might have a pivotal moment or character asking a plot-heavy question that might result in a chapter of less than 100 words, but it's rare to see ever see it used this way. It's almost always the former case of a lazy participant wanting to see someone else write their fetish fuel for them.

 

I don't like a minimum word count as it really depends on the chapter how long it should be. (Additionally, you could still work around a word counter by adding meaningless stuff or adding "words" that aren't shown.

I guess such meaningless chapters are mostly added to "public" stories as there is no editor who could decline them.
(So I'd rather remove the "public" option.)

 

While I think people should still have the option to make their stories open (such as was appropriate for the NaNoWriMo story), it's generally a bad decision made by authors who don't particularly care about the overall quality of their story.

The issue at hand is not the brevity of the chapter per se, but the fact that it's lacking the kind of substance that should be reasonably expected of a chapter. As mentioned above, there are reasons for very short chapters, but it is fairly obvious at a glance whether those reasons apply to a given chapter. As such, I wonder whether it would be beneficial to rule that chapters must be a minimum of, say, 75 words, unless there is a reasonable justification for their length.

 

Who should judge what's a reasonable justification for a short chapter?

Every story is different, so I think the story owner/editor is the best choice to decide on that. And if they do, "public" doesn't make much sense.

 

I can't really imagine any cases that would fall in "grey areas" - perhaps just giving the author an opportunity to explain before any action is taken would be a sufficient measure. After all, moderators have to make tough judgements all the time. While that's not something I want to significantly increase, I think if a chapter is important to Game Mode, or can only fit a negligible amount of content before the next decision point (such as by categorising a wide range of options), then the chapter's usefulness will be rather obvious. Perhaps it's just my own inexperience talking, as I don't often read huge public stories.

 

Even when you are laid bare to a lot of options I think you can make it happen at the end of a decent length chapter.


On a related note I also think they should do something about all those stories that have like 6 chapters and never go anywhere. A solution could be that there is a minimum word count that a story needs to have. If your story hasn't reached that minimum after 24 hours it's automatically deleted. I think 6.000 words sounds about right. It's still easily possible to make a story without many huge chapters in it. Just write them all before hand and then post them.

 

Your numbers are a little... unrealistic for anyone who has, you know, a job or classes or any responsibility that prevents them from writing 6000 words in a single day. While I personally do write ahead, and it's generally a good idea to have plenty of initial content for your story, neither should be requirements for writing on CHYOA. You can clean up the site without driving away newcomers.

Regardless, something like this would necessitate a function for total word counts before being implemented. I also dislike the abrupt deletion - maybe revert to draft or just have it be checked at moderator approval, since 24 hours won't really help anyway.

 

I even explained in the post how you don't have to write the 6000 words in one day. You can just write it out in a word document and then post it once it's finished.

Also I was talking exclusively about new stories. If you are a newcomer you should start with adding to existing stories.

 

When I reviewed new stories, I declined ones with less than 250 words of an actual storyline. (Not counting words for world descriptions, explaining story mechanics, character biographies, and choice chapters.)
So basically start counting when a character starts doing something. (Like "You wake up.")
Though 250, as currently stated in the rules, is actually not much and I think 1000 would be a meaningful length that should be doable for a new story.
I also think this would be of advantage to the authors. If there is no actual content, the readers might just forgo faving the story even if the author adds content later.

(But that is story related and doesn't quite fit the topic of the thread. So that could be a suggestion on its own.)

 

I think 1000 words is quite low to actually get a story with some substance. I think it should be that you can't just post a concept as a story. You need to actually make the story.

 

And I suggested that such a measure should not be a requirement of authors. If you need to devise ways to get around your rule, then it's a bad rule.

That's even worse than what you initially suggested. I can elaborate on this point if you desire; this idea was raised and discarded some time ago, if I recall, so I'd rather not beat a dead horse.

Genesis did specifically state - and this is written into the rules; check rule 6, point 3 - that story conceptualisation is ignored when determining the substance of a story.

I think 1000 words is reasonable. I've certainly never published a story with less content. Short stories are often that length or less. I'm not quite sure where you're getting this notion that it's insufficient to "actually get a story with some substance."

It seems your suggestions for restrictions on story publishing are based on a very specific kind of story. I would caution you to remember the distinction between bad stories, and stories that are just different than what you're used to writing.

 

I don't get you. Why do you need to get around that rule? I don't see why demanding that every new story at least has a little bit of substance and is not just a handful of ideas is a bad thing. It's not excluding people at all since a lot of the larger stories are pretty vague and offer plenty of room for experimentation. It would greatly help reduce the number of empty stories around.

What? It's an ideal and not a rule. I didn't say newcomers should be excluded from making new stories. I meant it's not recommended.

I don't see what that has to do with anything. I never said that any of the concepts that people have are bad. I said it's bad if they just have a concept and nothing more. It leads to a lot of empty stories.[/quote]

Those short stories are very focused and the stories here are not. They are CHYOA. I mostly choose that number of 6.000 because it would be hard to just make a list of concepts that doesn't go anywhere with that number without it being too difficult.

As I said before it's not the quality of the stories I have an issue with. It's that a lot of stories are just empty. I also indeed am basing this on a specific kind of story; the kind that exists here. I know there can easily be stories of 1000 words but those are focused shorts and those aren't really a thing here.

Mostly though I don't get what the problem is with those restrictions. You can still post stuff easily. Either as part of another story or if you're more ambitious as your own story. It just keeps a lot of empty stories at bay.

 

The concept and the character biographies shouldn't count towards the minimum number of words. (Unless it is done "on the way".)

The idea is that you actually start the story and don't expect others to write the story for you.
250 words are a start. I would prefer 1,000 words and think that would be sufficient.

A minimum word count should also offer the reader a chance to find out about the writing style of the author. Writing a concept or character biographies are a different thing. They don't show if the writing is what the reader expects it to be.
So a minimum word count should also help new stories to get more Favs right after being published.
(If a story only describes the concept, I pretty likely won't fav it.)

You could basically write 100,000 words about the world and/or the concept without qualifying for approval.
Only after starting a storyline where a character starts to do something, the content qualifies for being counted.

 

That's somewhat of a motte and bailey - you're not just suggesting substance requirements. The 6000 words is the issue here.

That is still a bad recommendation, but if you're not trying to enforce it, then fair enough.

And I said that moderation already has this covered. You don't need a 6000 word rule to stop "empty" stories when there's already something to prevent them.

That's a fair point, but given stories don't need to be finished, just started, I think 1000 words is plenty. And again, you don't need to worry about lists of concepts - they're already ignored.

'Bad' here meaning empty stories, among others. And you shouldn't effectively ban certain story types because they're "not really a thing." What would you do about, for instance, the long serial type stories that JerkGently writes - make him have ten chapters ready to go for the same benefit as one? Or what about Game Mode stories - if 6000 words normally is a lot of work, then 6000 words plus coding is insane.

It keeps quite a lot more than just empty stories at bay. I don't think it's quite clear to you just how much content 6000 words usually constitutes. You're asking authors to write 10% of an entire novel before even contributing to the site.

And no, the ability to add to other stories isn't good enough. You seem to think that's somehow the primary or default way of writing on this site. Making a new story is not at all 'ambitious', though your suggestion would certainly make it such.

 

Um, yes and? What does that have to do with anything?

1000 seems a bit on the low side for this. Since stories here and not a one line thing.

But the stories here are open so seeing the style of the writer isn't really helpful. Since quite often more than half of the chapters are done by other people.

Indeed. But this isn't a high literature class. I just picked something that requires enough time that you can't just whip it up.

Why is it a bad recommendation? I would think it's best. Start with adding to other stories and once you've gotten the hang of that make something of your own.

Well it's not really working because there are plenty of empty stories all around.

If they are already proven writers then it's fine. But here you can easily then just hold off on posting stories until you've reached 6000.

You don't need to post a new story to contribute to the site. As I've said multiple times you can just add to existing stories since many have such vague concepts that you can do pretty much anything with them.

I know it's not but is it such a bad thing if it was? That it raises the minimum a little? Right now there are a handful of massive stories and massive amounts of stories that go nowhere at all. So why not make it that if you want your own story you need to have a level of commitment to it?

 

With all due respect... and in the nicest way possible... looking at your profile, you've never actually written anything to CHYOA, yes? You're not actually an author yourself. So, please, just trust that I'm speaking for most authors when I tell you the following.

It's not.

Stories here are not usually open.

'Enough' time to you is far too much time to those that are actually forced to spend it.

It's a bad idea because it demands additional work from new authors.

Link them.

Nobody has to prove themselves to anyone. It's the content that matters.

It is not easy by any definition of the word.

But what if someone doesn't want to write on someone else's story? What if they want to make their own?

Yes. Very, extremely bad.

Yes. There exist stories smaller than 1000 chapters. There exist stories with less than 12 writers. There exist stories that are not updated daily. Too bad. Deal with it.

This is already the case.

 

To put in my two cents, if you're a reader who is bothered by the stories that never end up getting a lot of updates, there are already ways to manage this. The only place where that is really an issue is if you're using the New Stories section; if you stick to the recent updated story section or even look at which stories have recent activity, then probably 9/10, that's going to be an active story rather than a new one that just got approved just by simple probability.

I myself like to use the New Story section so I can find openings I like and invest early with likes and favorites. I hope that encourages them to write more. Often they don't-- that'd be one of those dead stories you're talking about-- but I hope my encouragement propels them in the direction of contributing to it regularly.

On the other hand, if you don't have the time to take a gamble on those, then just don't read the New Stories section and I think that'd cut out a lot of your issues with getting burned on small stories that don't update.

As a side note: we writers can also have the courtesy to tell readers when our story is "dead," if it is such. I myself threw a note on my old Yu-Gi-Oh story to tell folks not to expect more updates and to feel free to reach out to me if they want to adopt it... not that I think it was especially heavy in traffic to begin with. Of course, 99% of the time a writer isn't going to want to or won't remember to do that. It's nice when somebody does, though.

 

See, Amen to this.
I like more...more is good...but we also have to remember that this is generally collaboration land. 250 is a decent taste, and 1000 is about a page and a half of good substance. If you wanna truly pass the story baton back and forth, these are perfect numbers, really.

I've done a few 6000 word chapters, but imo--shit--if you're writing 6000 words per chapter, why not just play around with some hooks here and sell e-books? Those are REALLY good-sized chapters and 8-12 of them essentially make a marketable novella if the writing's solid!