Need input on rejected submission

Hey folks.

I just had a submission Sent Back. It was my first, and I'm still finding my way around here, so I wonder if anyone could help me out.

It's a first-person story, narrated by the main character. He is 21 when the story begins, but there are a lot of scenes/vignettes from earlier in his life.

Specifically, there is one line:
"I sure thought about sex-- I was a thirteen year-old boy"

And another, when he is implied to be fourteen:
"I couldn't do it-- I mean, I jerked off, almost religiously-- but I couldn't think of Mary-Jane when I did."

The "Sent Back" notification is vague, listing only:
- "Was there an underage (under 18 years old) sexual relationship in my story?"

Would those two lines be enough for rejection?

Those are the only lines in the entire chapter that are even vaguely erotic. Maybe that means the story sucks, but let me explain:

This is the first of two non-erotic chapters introducing a longer erotic/romantic story. It will eventually have some sexual content, but there is literally no explicit sexual content whatsoever in this chapter, and it was submitted to the Non-Erotic category.

As I said, I'm new to this, but I'm already getting the idea that the site admins have a pretty heavy workload, and out of respect I don't want to waste their time with another submission they can't accept.

Can anybody help me out?

Yes, in Lit terms, the two bits that you quote would count as underage sex.

JackEvans said:

Would those two lines be enough for rejection?

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Yep.

You can't describe a sexual act by or on anyone under 18. It's a recurring theme with age rejections; authors want to give background to the story and develop characters and situations from the character's early adolescence and the story gets sent back.

The obvious solution is to not do that. You might also be able to reframe it without the age references--or maybe better--without a specific reference to masturbation. I think from the site's point of view you wouldn't even mention the less-than-eighteen age unless you were promoting underage sex.

Thanks!

Thanks so much for the swift replies.

That's actually great news. I can easily cut those lines without impacting the story. I'm going through the rest (for the tenth time) to make sure I didn't miss anything else.

I guess I'll give it one more try... lesson learned. If it gets rejected again, I'll just have to assume I can't talk about the character's childhood at all, and that will essentially scrap the whole project, which is already at 9 chapters and pushing 100,000 words. That would be... disappointing.

Your help much appreciated.

Follow-up Question

Hey, not to spam my own thread, but I have a quick follow-up, and I can't seem to find a specific answer elsewhere on the forums.

The 2nd chapter implies that the main character has "made out" with his girlfriend when they are only 16-17 years old. But that's all-- it's just one or two lines implying kissing had occurred at some previous time. It also directly (and repeatedly) states that they're both virgins, and only start experimenting with oral sex after both turn eighteen.

Does this seem inappropriate for publication here?

Is there a more specific guideline on the appropriate treatment of (non-sexual) teenage relationships that I'm failing to find?

Or should I simply avoid it altogether?

And to be clear: this is NOT a high school story, nor one that focuses on teenage romance. This is just early chapter background for a longer story that focuses mainly on a man in his 20's and 30's. One central theme, in fact, is that the character is not very sexually confident as a young man, and does not "find love" until later in life.

Thanks as always.

I don't think generalized kissing is considered sex for posting purposes as long as you don't get too descriptive (kissing genitals would be sex. And jerking off/being jerked off are sex acts).

JackEvans said:

Hey, not to spam my own thread, but I have a quick follow-up, and I can't seem to find a specific answer elsewhere on the forums.

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No-one but Laurel knows the real answer.

I don't think that "made out" is a specific sexual reference, but again, if you can avoid pinning it to an under-18 age, you're probably better off.

I don't think those quotes count as sex if those are the extent of the instances.

I've gotten notes from Laurel that say it is ok to reference characters having had sex before the age of 18, but that any kind of description is where it goes wrong.

First rejections are often triggered by a script that is searching for numbers (1-17, one through seventeen) or specific words (young, girl, boy, nubile, pubescent) to appear more than once.

IF you don't have actual underage sex, resubmit your story as-is with a note that says "This story does not contain underage sex. All particpants are 18 years or older." If it still gets rejected, then you need to start making changes.

Jerking off at fourteen is a sex act at fourteen. Let's not go through this crap all over again.

Saying "I jerked off at fourteen" is not the same as "I was only fourteen the first time I reached down between my legs AND SO ON AND SO ON"

Resubmit it and see what Laurel says. Worst thing she can do is say no.

And yet another question

Yeah, none of the 'acts'-- kissing, jerking off-- are actually depicted in the story, or even described. They're simply implied to have happened, some time before that point in the story.

But I'm not defending myself; I see now it was wrong to include them, and am right now removing all of it.

I've re-submitted the first chapter with those two lines removed, and also removed a lot of references to the character's age-- even though there is no actual sexual content.

It's pretty funny/ironic; my main worry is that the the story will not be well-received because it has so little sexual content. It's more of a 'love story'/coming-of-age story. But now I'm going through all the early chapters and removing/obscuring what little erotic content there is...

-----
One other question, are repeated submissions of the same rejected story annoying/inappropriate to Laurel, or is it just considered part of the normal revision process? I really like what I've seen of this community, and I'd rather just not publish than piss people off.


Anyway, it's very kind of you all to take the time to help out the New Guy.

No punishment for repeated submissions. I've had stories rejected for at least a dozen reasons over the years. Take the lumps and learn.

Cool, good to know.

I am of course eager to learn, but I'm not offended by 'the lumps.' If it doesn't get accepted, I'll move on. And I'll still love this site.

I just don't want to be a pest about it.

AwkwardMD said:

Saying "I jerked off at fourteen" is not the same as "I was only fourteen the first time I reached down between my legs AND SO ON AND SO ON"

Resubmit it and see what Laurel says. Worst thing she can do is say no.

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*Sigh*

JackEvans said:

One other question, are repeated submissions of the same rejected story annoying/inappropriate to Laurel, or is it just considered part of the normal revision process? I really like what I've seen of this community, and I'd rather just not publish than piss people off.

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No, I don't think they annoy her--unless they are repeated often enough that she doesn't think the author is learning where the edges are.

sr71plt said:

No, I don't think they annoy her--unless they are repeated often enough that she doesn't think the author is learning where the edges are.

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To be honest, the edges are a trifle blurred on occasion
.

Handley_Page said:

To be honest, the edges are a trifle blurred on occasion
.

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Well, it makes a little sense. If what was suggested earlier in this thread is true, and some submissions are scanned by a script before they are read by a human, I can see why my first draft might've been tossed out.

It didn't have an underage sex, or any sex, but it could have had enough words (especially words like 'thirteen' and 'fourteen') to trigger alarms.

I had no intention of skirting-- or even finding-- any edges. In fact, I'm worried the story might be a little too overtly 'wholesome' for this site.

But... well, we see if the second attempt works. You folks have at least encouraged me to keep trying, so thanks.

JackEvans said:

Well, it makes a little sense. If what was suggested earlier in this thread is true, and some submissions are scanned by a script before they are read by a human, I can see why my first draft might've been tossed out.

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One of the few things Laurel has posted about the submissions process is that there is no system's scanning like this.

sr71plt said:

One of the few things Laurel has posted about the submissions process is that there is no system's scanning like this.

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Not surprising. In the small amount of dabbling I've done with parsing English over the years, I can report that nothing short of the kind of crunching Google can bring to bear, would come even vaguely close to figuring out what counts as a description of underage sex, or even sex in general. Anything good enough to catch most cases would generate a lot of false positives.

Anyway, don't mention ages in past events and leave credible space between current and past events and you shouldn't have issues. If a character is 21 and mentions doing things when he was "younger", you ought to be fine. Pulling that on a 19 year old character won't or shouldn't work.

And your readers know you characters would have masturbated before 18, because who didn't, so there's no reason to make it a plot point. If you're trying to imply that your character had a certain reverence for Mary at an early age, you can get by with "I had my share of fantasies about Karen and Julie, but... Mary was always different. I couldn't. It felt like defilement."

HandsInTheDark said:

Anything good enough to catch most cases would generate a lot of false positives.
"

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The evidence I've seen (and experienced) is that whatever the current process is, it's generating a lot of false positives.

sr71plt said:

One of the few things Laurel has posted about the submissions process is that there is no system's scanning like this.

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Also good to know.

And it leaves me right where I started: either the submission had a few borderline-inappropriate lines, or it just generally sucked. Or both, I suppose.

Still waiting for approval of the revised draft. And I'm learning how things work. That's a good thing; I like knowing how things work, be it a car engine or a web forum. Thanks for that.