Anyway, Here's Something Else (Fic Length Survey) · 2:13am Oct 16th, 2015
Recently, I've been kind of curious about the reading habits of you folks out there. Some people have mentioned that they won't read really short fics, other people won't read incomplete fics, and I'm sure we all have different opinions of what's too long to sit down and read all at once.
So to try to figure out some of this, I made an unscientific, arbitrary, and probably confusing survey for anyone who reads fanfic.
A Link to an Unscientific, Arbitrary, and Probably Confusing Survey about Fic Length.
Please fill it out if you have time, and pass it around to anyone you think will take it. I'm make the results my Monday post, but in the mean time here's a link to the results at whatever time to click it (you also get one after you take the survey.)
Drop any questions below or just yell at me for stuff. That's what the comments are for!
My fav
EDIT: This was a pretty good survey IMO. Some interesting questions.
Applejack!
3473520
Always the right answer! Have a pony!
In my very limited experience, short fics do better than long fics in the short term (when featured). When somepony sees a fic that's less than 5,000 words, it's not a huge investment to tackle it, so more are willing to take a crack at it.
Some ponies might avoid fics that are mini-sized (like less than 3k) because they assume there's not going to be an entire story there, but I still think short fics are going to reach more ponies in the short run.
3473541
I do agree with that, in general. Thought it would be interesting to know if there's a sweet spot-- for instance if there's a bump at 5k, you know at a fic that's 5k is probably going to do better than a fic that's 1k, because the 1k people will probably read it, but so will the 5k people. Plus you could look at those results with the "how long a fic will you read in one sitting" and probably come up with a good guess on optimal length.
But I'm actually more interested in the questions about incomplete fics anyway.
I will read anything as short as a thousand words on the dot if it's interesting, I can reliably take 30,000 words in a single sitting if nothing distracts me, I don't care if the story's complete, incomplete, on hiatus or even cancelled.
One thing determines if I'll read it: Is it interesting?
As for when I'll read it, priority ranking is an entirely different thing.
3473577
I should have asked how long people's "Read it Later" lists are.
Taking this survey just highlighted how incredibly ambivalent I am. Maximum word count? Regular updates? Man, whatever~
derpicdn.net/img/2015/5/23/902221/large.png
So... what does "in one sitting" mean? I answered "under 20k words" to that, but that's because I usually want to get up and go to the bathroom/get a drink/open the curtains/whatever by then. I've read well over 100k words at a time, but I don't think I've ever made it nearly that far without, say the light changing and me having to get up and switch on the reading lamp...
3473608
I meant something closer to at one time. How long will you read before you have to stick a bookmark in it/go for a walk/actually do work at the office/get distracted.
If fics were books, where would they get dogeared or bookmarked.
3473555
I'd rather not muck up your survey because I'm weird: reading fiction is very hard for me (and is the main reason I'm in the Writeoffs, not-so-secretly).
I'd bet opinions on incomplete fics would be all over the map. I've seen ponies post messages saying they won't upvote a story until it's complete, and I've seen ponies follow incomplete works of all lengths (including my past-novel-length monstrosity which still nets me followers most updates). And some of the most enormous this-story-won't-ever-end stories still get featured every month or so out of nowhere.
The only thing I'm curious about is the one that might shape my posting habits: if I have a medium length story, should I post a few chapters to draw attention, or just post the whole thing at once? No idea on that one. I posted Price of a Smile all at once, and it didn't fare well (and though I don't consider it my best fic, it's the only real "award-winner" I have up).
On the minimum completed/incomplete fic length, I would've answered "Wadda ya mean 'minimum length'?" (just because fimfic currently has a 1000 word minimum before publishing doesn't mean it never was nor will be lower
). Similarly for update size, the sub-1000 words option is missing.
Regarding updates, frequency and length go hand-in-hand: I don't mind reading a rapidly-updating fic as long as the updates are reasonably short, I don't mind reading long chapters as long as the updates are reasonably spaced, and I don't mind reading sporadic/randomly updated fics as long as the chapters are reasonably self-contained (which pushes the minimum chapter length upwards).
I will admit that if a story hasn't been updated in over 3 months, on hiatus, or it is cancelled I usually won't read it because I like to know how it ends, and most of the time they will not finish it. For one setting, I chose it doesn't matter how long because I have been know to read 100,000+ stories at once and not sleep for 3 days
I love longer fics but I do read a few shorter in between to give my brain a rest. Last thing, I am a nerd, I either read fimfic or have a book in my hands 
I read all of my books already though, so I mainly read fim 
ok, sorry for the mini rant, time to read 
3473658
The updates did have a "Less than 1,000 words" option.
And I did kind of figure that, with frequency and updates, but I didn't really want to make the questions that complex. That's part of the reason I went with your ideals, rather than what you will read; I figured more people could probably come up with a perfect length/frequency combo than I could accurately measure for ratios.
3473623
Ah. Well, in that case, it's still usually under 20k... but I have been known to occasionally spend an entire day wrapped up in a longer story. The most recent story I can recall doing that with is actually a fanfic: Meta Four's Alarm Clock, which clocks in at 52,517 words, was one I gleefully took in all in one go. The very longest thing for me was probably part 1 of The Last Dark (the fourth book in The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant; technically, I guess that's only reading half a book, but the author split The Last Dark into two "books," so I'm counting it), which I rapturously devoured all 300-odd (hardcover) pages of on the day after Christmas.
Done! :)
3473655
Yeah, that's the one that I'm always iffy on. I'm hoping to get some idea for that based on what people will read in one sitting. My gut says that more than 20k at once will turn a lot of people off, but I might be surprised.
3473591 Over five million words.
3473693
Well, I hope you have a very long later!
I only touch a fic if it's complete or if the author has a proven track record of finishing their projects.
Likewise, I'll only start posting a story once it's fully written… and because I'm impatient I'll typically update every day or two
In that case… ponies!
Done!
FWIW: My RIL is at 1687 stories and 54,481,878 words. Yeah that'll happen...
I click a link once or twice a week that gives me the direct "updated view", and in the last 6-12 months most of the Incomplete stories I have marked have floated to the bottom. I should probably do some weeding.
I've more or less stopped reading incomplete stories unless the author has a good track record of completing chapters (and stories) with decent regularity. Even then, new potentially long stories with small chapters are going into the "wait for it" bin until the word count is up.
I will definitely choose to read a 20k word story in a sitting if it looks intriguing enough.
I read tons of incomplete stories - see my Tracking bookshelf. Even if they're obviously dead I'll still read them. There are some super ideas and concepts in those half-finished stories, many of which I flesh out in my own head. And I've found plenty of non-complete stories that ended on what could have been a natural breakpoint, making the Complete tag superfluous. I'd hate to miss out on great material just for that.
The real problem with talking about fic lengths is that I'm just less likely to read something the longer it gets unless it promises to be good in some way. So, basically, the longer something is, the harder it is to convince me to read it.
Oh man, I read way too many incomplete fics, to the point where I can't keep up with the updates these days. I also happened to check my main reading shelf for on hiatus and cancelled stories the other day, and it was amazingly depressing.
Good survey, though, interesting questions and results.
3473845
I agree with that, but when you're trying to decide how to split up a longer fic, "how good will this look to people?" isn't a very useful question to ask yourself. (Or, at least, it's an almost impossible one to guess the answer for. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many disappointed authors around here.)
WHY IS YOU AVITAR A PICTURR OF A PEN WHEN YOU CLEERLY IS A PERSON, I KNOW, I HAV SEEN YOU
Now off to provide unscientific answers.
I'll give this a signal boost over at /r/MyLittlePony.
3473924
To remind people I write all my MLP fanfic by candlelight in my garret.
3473927
Thank you!
3473873
Some ideas carry stories much further than others, I think. Something like "Twilight finds the foal of her brother and Queen Chrysalis left in a basket on her doorstep" is something which leads to a much longer story than "Luna mistakes Cadance for Celestia's daughter". If I saw a 50,000 word story based on the latter, I'd be intensely skeptical.
I think the question for splitting up a longer story is, "Is this a complete story?" If it is, then maybe it can be its own thing; if it isn't, then maybe it shouldn't. Estee has written tons of stories in her verse, but most of them stand alone, and tend to range from 5-20k words, with a few being longer, which seems fairly reasonable - most of them don't want to be hugely long, but they don't want to be overly short, either.
One interesting thing is that the average length of a story I upvote is only 11,000 words, while the average length of a HR story is 20,000 words... but a no vote story is only 7,600 words long, while a downvoted story is 9,300 (oddly, I have exactly as many no votes as downvotes right now, at 525 each). This might mean shorter stories are worse, but I suspect what it ACTUALLY means is that I'm more likely to take a risk on something which is dubious if a story is short than if it is long. I probably won't touch a long story unless I think I'll like it. Every single one of the longest :| stories is either something which was recommended to me or something which had a strong premise I really wanted to read about. Same goes for all the downthumbed stories - they were all either recommended, very popular, or things I had to read for the royal guard (and stopped after the minimum number of words). So... yeah.
Dunno what I'm saying, really.
3473962
In terms of splitting up stories, I meant more in terms of what 3473655 was talking about earlier-- if you have a story that's 25,000 words, are you better off publishing it all at once, or with a chapter or two to catch interest? What about 18,000 words or 30,000? And how long should those chapters be, and should you post the rest of them as fast as possible or spread them out?
Some of the questions I admit I threw in there just in case there were any weird surprises, but the ones I'm most interested in are the ones about incomplete fics, and the one about how many words people will read in a sitting. I generally figure that you don't want to post more than people can read at one time, but then you also have to keep in mind the ways people treat incomplete fics. It would be nice if there were some hints in this data.
3473971
I've only ever submitted two incomplete stories; both of them had strong hooks. Both are still sadly incomplete (well, sort of; Mistletrapped is basically done, I just need to do a couple more tweaks and post the last three chapters) but... yeah.
Frankly, I think the most important part is whatever is there captures the audience's attention. I suspect "I won't read incomplete fics" goes out the window when something looks interesting enough. Or at least, it does for me.
Just chiming in to say your options for "what's the longest thing you'll read in one sitting" are woefully lacking in larger numbers. I read A Bluebird's Song in a single, seven-hour sitting, and would rather read anything in a single sitting than more than one—even if I have to clear out an entire day to do it![1] (Some longer fics, such as Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, I am willing to concede might better be enjoyed over the course of a few days. Even so, I'd rather get them read sooner than have the reading spread out over a long time, which is why I'm not a fan of incomplete fics!)
Still, that was a fun survey
[1] I acknowledge that this is actually an option in the survey, but I still feel like the numbers end way too soon.
I'll read a 1k story, but I won't bother with a series of 1k chapters. That shit wreaks havoc on the pacing unless done with very specific purpose (which is too rare to make a general exception for). They are an abomination.
My standards for reading incomplete fics are that I have any confidence that the author will continue writing. More important than a minimum word count is an apparent update schedule or evidence they haven't left it for dead.
That said, a fic that I'm not sure if it will update is not ignored. I have a shelf called "We've only just begun", for fics that have only one or two chapters or have recently come back from a long hiatus. For new incomplete fics, if there are at least three chapters published on three different days, then that's enough for me to believe the story will continue and I will either read it on the spot or stick it in 'Read later'. For fics returning from hiatus, I need at least two chapters since the break posted on different days.
I also have a shelf called "Over a year tracking", for fics that haven't updated in 12 months; being on this shelf is my benchmark for caring about my hiatus rule previously mentioned.
For all my other answers, take numbers as very approximate. I'll read a long fic if it looks great, but the longer it is then the better it needs to look from the description (and to some extent, the coverart). MLP Time Loops is the only fic over 500K words to grab me this way.
And for chapter lengths, I think 5000-7000 is the ideal case for everything except one-shots (where the concept needs to be appropriate for the wordcount, instead). I'll read longer ones, but I inwardly groan when chapters are above 12000 words, and get seriously put off when chapters top 20000. I don't ever use the bookmark feature.
3474131
Hay now, I have a story resembling that remark. It's written in journal format, and the earliest portion (not the later stuff, though) is very short entries.
Actually I might have two stories like that; the second is an anthology of minific koans.
A lot of the questions in this survey seemed to assume that the reader follows rigid rules when it comes to what stories they will or will not read. I, at least, never, ever ignore a story because of length, subject matter, or any specific tag; all of those factor together to determine whether I want to give a story a shot or not.
For example, I adore a really big, epic tale, and there are very few shipping pairs that I care about. But I'd still strongly consider a 1,000 word PinkieDash story if, say, it were recommended by the Royal Canterlot Library.
Conversely, I'm typically pretty scornful of stories where the author wasn't able or didn't bother to at least proofread properly, and who wants to read a a story that's been cancelled? But I recently favorited a very typo-ridden Luna/Chrysalis shipfic, because it was long, I like those characters, and the underlying story idea and storytelling was decent enough to make up for the amateurish writing, at least for me. Similarly, I read probably 40 or 50,000 words of a cancelled TwiMoon story because Nightmare Moon is my favorite character and the story was actually quite solid, even if it'll never be finished.
...Anyway. I wanted to point out that there exist some folks like me who have few or no absolute deal-breakers when it comes to story length, tags, or what-have-you, but judge whether or not to read a story based on weighing multiple factors against each other.
Also, I think you mentioned wanting to know how long people's RIL lists are. Mine's currently a bit over 4,500,000 words long, of which I probably won't end up reading more than 4,000,000. I have an entire bookshelf dedicated to stories that were good enough to start but not good enough to finish.
Given my preference for stories in the six or seven digit wordcount range, I'd be very sad if I vetoed stories based on their incomplete status. And things like chapter length or update rate don't really matter either; I just sort of trust that the author will make those decisions that best suit the needs of the story. I tend to focus on chewing through my RIL list and only check updates once over a 100 or so total have accumulated anyway, so that keeps me from being on the edge of my seat waiting for new updates for individual stories. The only thing that disappoints me is when an author doesn't update a story at all, seemingly demonstrating their intent to abandon the fic entirely.
Anyhow. I keep seeing people link to your insightful blog posts, so I figure I'd go ahead and cut out the middleman by giving you a follow. Hope this information was helpful to you in some fashion. ~ Sable
I did your survey, but I really miss the "is there anything you want to add" field.
You asked about the length of an update and I feel there is 1 option missing - "how long the Author feels correct". Trying to make the update "more than X" or "less than Y" to please a crowd is I think the worst idea. The Author should decide how long the update should be - some arcs can be shorter and some stories require way more words to really shine. If I decide that the story is worth tracking then I the Author has my complete faith that any update will be exactly the length it needs to be.
I wrote "Author" with a capital letter as I want to emphasize how much I value their work.
I answered according to my laptop habits, which affects how much I'll read in one sitting. I don't like to read stories longer than 10000-15000 words all in one go when I'm on my laptop, which is most of the time. However, I will read fairly big fics (200,000+) in one go if I download it to a kindle or my phone and I have the time.
I'm one of the only people I've seen that actively seeks out incomplete stuff for most of my reading on here. I like bigger, grander stories, but I also don't have as much time to read as I would like so the staggered chapters for incomplete stuff works out great for me. Plus, sometimes it feels really fun to watch how a story evolves in real time.
No word count is too high if the story is engaging - read all the words!
Or
diefall asleep trying.3474397
Yeah, a lot of people have more fluid reading habit than the survey indicates. But that makes it difficult to get kind of a general picture when you're looking at releasing "Future Story" and aren't sure about how to release that. Everyone balances lenght, tags, quality, and updates differently, and there's only so much an author can control there. But an author can more easily control update schedule or how much of a fic they put out to try to get people interested, so getting ballpark figures there is more helpful, to us at least, than trying to figure out everyone's individual psychology on the subject or getting a lot of answers of "it depends."
3474407
I totally understand that, that's why I specified the "perfect world" thing, I know most people want the author to write the story they want. But when the author is trying to decide between updating daily or weekly, or between one 6000 chapter or two 3000 chapters, if there's a way readers would prefer it they're going to want to take that into account.
Answered as if I hadn't vanished from this site and the world of pony for the last two months. As a veteran of The Sweetie Chronicles and This Platinum Crown, I clearly have no upper limit on word count, however:
1) If you complete in less than a hundred thousand words, I'm more likely to read it because a) time is time, b) it shows that you have the rare skill of being able to finish a story which maybe means you know how to structure one.
2) If you have a shorter story I liked, specially if your long story was a sequel to something I liked, I'm far more likely to take a chance on it.
PS: A bet you could get Bradel to help you with the analysis.
There is one option that you left out as to why you would read an incomplete story (and is the only exception I would make to read an incomplete story).
If the chapters in the story are episodic in nature rather then one long running story. A story like Letters from a Disgruntled Friendship Student, or Tiny Twilight.
3473962 Regarding your third paragraph, just how do you get that data? Is it a plugin or something like that?
3474738
No, just math.
3474882 Oh, Silver Senpai, your answer does not suffice!
For my sins, I am a maths grad. I have wept openly when confronted with the work of Gödel, regretted my adoration of Hardy and mourned the (unnecessary) passing of Ramanujan.
Good lord man, you must explain, i will accept nothing less!
3475479
If you click on a bookshelf, it displays the total word count of stories on that shelf.
As it also displays the total number of stories on the shelf up at the top, you can just take the total word count of stories on the shelf and divide by the number of stories to get your average word count.
3475479
It's worth noting that 3475531 keeps a bookshelf of stories he's upvoted, just to prove he upvotes sometimes.
3475539
3475479
Oh, yeah, I actually have bookshelves for stories I upvoted, downvoted, and no-voted, in addition to like, six later read it later shelves (you're next/read it sooner/read it later/read it eventually, plus a special shelf for Royal Guard stories and another for recent stories that caught my eye that I clear out periodically as stories get too old to be included in a Read It Now post), a tracking shelf for incomplete stories I've partially read, three sets of favorites shelves (top 15/highly recommended/recommended), shelves for stories that made me follow people, stories I edited, stories I reviewed, and stories that had ideas that sparked a story idea in me.
So, yeah. As far as I know, there's no way to keep track of those things other than creating special bookshelves for them and adding stuff to them manually on a consistent basis. Obviously, my system can't count back before bookshelves were implemented...
My overall ratio right now is 659 upvotes:525 no votes:525 downvotes, but all three categories are at least somewhat undercounted.