What Is the Longest Story You’ve Ever Written?

The one I'm working on at the moment

well, I've never posted on Tapas before (I came over from using Wattpad, and am not currently posting novel work anywhere so posting frequency is not something I've had to worry about for a long time haha) so I can't draw on any experience posting on the site. But my longest story was 184,000 words at final count and ~370 pages in microsoft word (it is completed). It took me two years to finish, mostly for Life Reasons (bereavement, mental health, etc.) which put it on hold for weeks at a time, so I couldn't say how long it would have taken under normal circumstances. My current work in progress is at 86,000 and it has taken me six months to get to this point, including planning time. I'm thinking I'll be done with the first draft by September if all goes well

I don't think I can help but write longer stories. I just don't get the ideas for shorter works. I enjoy getting really absorbed with certain worlds and characters and adding lots of plot elements and by the time I've put all that in, it's evolved into a monster haha. My books average about 110 to 150K words.

The longest thing I ever wrote clocked out at 400,000 words when it was 'done', and when I rewrite I'll be splitting the whole thing into different books because omg that's long (I wrote it during NaNoWriMo right out of high school, had a looooot of time on my hands). It's nowhere near finished yet as a reborn series, but will probably get some words stripped out because you know... NaNo.

I write series of books a lot, intertwining stories or big stories that need to be broken up. I struggle with writing short things... I think the book I published with my cowriter ended at 120,000 words so that's a good idea of finished volume.

My longest running project right now is Blood Moon, which is just under 90,000 words and now in part two... going to be a long ride! I try to update regularly but life tends to get in my way pretty often now >.>

Around 120k words, in two parts, a finished novel. It took about 8 months on-and-off, but most of it was written in short, intense marathons separated by weeks (or months) of inactivity. I think the actual writing time would amount to two - three weeks total.

I'm not very fond of using pages as the measure of length, it can be very misleading. My 120k words took 210 a4 pages, but my formatting is... Idiosyncratic, to say the least. It could easily be wrapped down to a much shorter length.

As for preferred length, it's a bit hard to say. I used to prefer writing long stories by a mile, but since then I've been stuck with an intense writing block for almost 4 years. Right now, I'm happy if I can write just about anything - short forms, novellas, flash fiction, any self-contained story. My biggest dream is to write the next part of my novel. It's experience like no other, and doing a short form can't really replicate that. Beggars can't be choosers, though.

My experiences with writing long forms are heavily influenced by the constraints and demands of my novel, so I don't believe they'll apply to everyone. The few things that come to my mind:

• What helped me the most was setting myself clear goals and objectives in the real world. Writing is a form of communication, so the best first step is to establish what I want to communicate.
  What is the message of my story? What do I want to show to my reader? What kind of feelings, thoughts or impressions do I want to evoke? What would I like to give to my audience through my writing? What would I like to get out of writing and sharing it?
  I prefer to answer these questions from a get-go, before I even start conceptualising the story itself. It helps me establish what exactly do I want to write, how do I need to write it and what kind of tools (style, narration, plot structure, characters, etc.) I need to accomplish that.

• Planning ahead helps, but only if I have a clear image of my story (see above). My favourite method is establishing what Doctor Who would call 'set points in time': A number of specific scenes that have to happen in the story. Everything in-between is the room for improvisation and 'pantsing' - I literally write whatever needs to happen to reach the next set point.

• It helps a lot to have a set ending of the story, or at least several alternate endings to pick from. It might be vague, but a clear final scene tends to make truly powerful stories - the entire writing is leading to a single, well-defined moment. If I have a clear idea of the ending, I like to write it before anything else.

• I see each chapter as a self-contained short form. It relies on the information and developments from the previous parts, but it should have its own exposition, build-up, climax and resolution. A reader who opens the book on a random page should be able to understand what happened in the chapter (if not how it fits the big picture).

• If several chapters are directly linked together, I try to end each of them in a climax that gets resolved in the next chapter, and so on until I reach the resolution of the bigger scene. In this case, of course, the chapters are not self-contained - however, they build a single self-contained part of the plot.
  For example, let's imagine that the protagonists are looking for a villain. In the first chapter they're searching for him, introducing the location (exposition), showing the search (build-up) and finally finding him (climax). In the next chapter he flees and they set to pursue him (resolution to previous chapter), then a chase scene unfolds (build-up) until they catch up and confront him (climax). In the next chapter the fight breaks out (resolution), the protagonists and the villain lock in combat (build-up) that ends up with the villain throwing a smoke screen (climax) and escaping. The protagonists lose their chance to catch him (the resolution of the whole longer scene).

You're not alone in this! My characters have a life of their own, and they decide to show me stuff when I sit down to write. That's how my story takes form, and it's probably why it gets weird sometimes ^^"

Skaarin got freakin' whack!! But yeah, this is definitely how I write everything of mine! Used to write with someone and when they left my life, I felt like my children were losing a parent. My characters are far too real to me. A planet's worth of my own heart. Think it'll break some more before I'm done writing. As in, by the time I die. I will never stop writing. I get far too attached to things.

It's beautiful, what you say here. And so true! I feel like I'm closer to some of my characters than to my own family, and I cry with them, laugh with them, suffer with them... It's more than just imagination, it's like creating a whole new life and helping it grow

But my goddess left the world and I feel as though I failed my creations!!!

Or, rather, I did feel that way. But their lives still need closing, and I still had plans for them. So, I'll finish them anyway. I even learned my name when she left! And learned that Rastona could view dreams. Ironic. I never would've finished his character with her around, when I thought we'd be creating everything together. But I made her into lore, and made it so Rastona's friend dreamt of their "mother." Best shit ever.

Miss writing half my stories WITH SOMEONE though. But it's almost been two damn years already. Damn. Now I need friends that are actually cool. Art's okay, sure. But none of my friends write!

Aww that's sad... And yet you've discovered things you wouldn't have if this didn't happen, so it's still something?
How do you write with someone? I've never tried it, none of my friends write either, and I haven't been out there for long so I haven't had time to explore this...

We just did rps through text messages. Spent more of my time with her that way than I'd like to admit. She wasn't so far from me, but we just wrote together. Grieved awhile when she left. But I'm at a state where I'm happy with what we had. i think that's why I can face my characters again and lead them through to the end. What kind of King would I be to abandon my own creations? A Lord bows back to his kingdom and provides. And now that I've grieved and learned what I had to, I get to teach them of grief, and they will overcome it.
She helped me create, sure. But the loss helped me understand how to create what her and I never would've accomplished together. And now I know more. With purpose fulfilled we can walk separately.

(Also, I'm tired early tonight. My mind's leaving punk and turning King. I have two gears I speak in and these responses are definitely longer. So I might just rest.)

EDIT: And sad as it is, whatever created me was a damned good author. Wrote the events of my story and archives of my mind in such a way that I can obtain something, even out of loss. I want to usurp my author.

If you want to write with people this way, maybe you can ask if someone has a Discord or something where you can interact? I'd be down for it, but I'm too new to the writing thing so am not yet as good as I would like, and english is not my first language (even though I'm not doing too bad, when I'm tired it takes a lot more energy to think in english). If this doesn't bother you, I'm willing to try
It's good that you can gain something out of loss, it's an important part of personality creation and, more largely, of life.
It's also good that you didn't give up on your creations, and that you taught your characters the same lessons you learned. You can be proud of yourself for not abandoning them and instead, helping them grow.

I'm down to work through Discord! I think I'm out for tonight, but I'm just Seriphus on there, #5108. I'm just getting used to discord.

If we come up with something, that'd be rad! I'm most active online Monday-Thursday, but I'm recently limiting myself to emails on weekends. We'll set something up, I'm sure.

And I would never give up on my creations, they're like family or children of mine. But I've had experiences where I've given up on myself. My car could tell you much more about that than I could, though.

Avlu'un and goodnight. I need rest.

(Just to let you know I added you on Discord, we'll talk again when you can good night!)

Can't say. I think it was 15 or 20 pages before, 10k words.

To be honest my life.

LOL!!! Wait, okay let me be serious, it was sometime ago on Wattpad, I had a widely successful novel and brainchild that was the embodiment of my hard fought commitment to actually finish a story, with an intended milestone of 25 chapters. Life, however got in the way and i decided to delete my account and the book with it. Never bothered to back it up either.

So yap, one of the dumbest decisions of my life i must admit, and now i have to start from scratch!
with my new book: CALAMITY CARMEN
*snobs and dramatically looks away *
Anyways such is life.

My current novel, Princes of Eden that is 251 pages or 134,044 words which I haven't fully uploaded yet. It took the most drafts I've ever done when it came to a story as I made various changes to characters, character roles and importance, settings and a number of other things. It taught me to push to finish such a lengthy story and do side chapters that connect to the main plot and character motivations.

My longest atm is 55k words with an average of 2.2k words per chapter. My current wip is 35k, and I'm aiming for 80k~.Wait whoa what the hell―5 months??