Question

I know about the story rules "No child porn. No beastiality."

I'm doing a story where a girl is trying to talk her sister (12 and 11) into going skinny dipping with her. There is no sex, and no other participants, and not even any anatomical descriptions, but the older sister does take off her clothes and comments on what it feels like without a swimsuit in the water.

The section is important for later character motivations in the story, so I would rather not cut it, but don't want the story to not be posted because of this one scene.

Would something like this be allowed past the moderator rules?

Is there a way for me to ask directly before I submit the story?

Nudity counts as "sexual activity", so it's not likely to pass except by accident, and then could get rejected after the fact if someone reports it. More than a sterile mention of past nudity pre-18 won't fly. Having it happen in the present of the story or for more than a line or two of dry narrative talking about the past is asking for a rejection.

Even mentions of a barely pre-18 looking at girls in bikinis a couple of years before can get you bounced.

Think you're going to have to cut it for publishing on Lit.

Thanks. I've got a workaround, but it doesn't fit as well into the story. I guess that's the life of an author...change it or don't get published.

JrByrdmann said:

Thanks. I've got a workaround, but it doesn't fit as well into the story. I guess that's the life of an author...change it or don't get published.

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Have you considered asking Laurel (a PM will do it)

JrByrdmann said:

I know about the story rules "No child porn. No beastiality."

I'm doing a story where a girl is trying to talk her sister (12 and 11) into going skinny dipping with her. There is no sex, and no other participants, and not even any anatomical descriptions, but the older sister does take off her clothes and comments on what it feels like without a swimsuit in the water.

Is there a way for me to ask directly before I submit the story?

Click to expand...

As described, that could be enough to get it bounced - the visual image alone is focused on young bodies. Try sending a PM to Laurel, with the proposed text, and get a reading now, would be my suggestion - or, wait and see.

I suspect it won't be accepted, and your best option is to publish it in the form you want it at another site, rather than compromise the story.

Why is the MC naked with the 12 year old important to the story?

Lindsay_O said:

Why is the MC naked with the 12 year old important to the story?

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Is a 12 year old talking to an 11 year old - both identified as girls - about how good it feels to be nakies swimming. Dunno why would need lots of details of a nature that could be construed as sexual, is just pointing out the interpretation of the words OP said what seemed different from your understanding.

I'd plan on changing the situation or plan on posting this one elsewhere.

I ended up rewriting this section

For those who asked, these were two sisters raised in a very strict religious family where public nudity is sinful. Scene meant to show older sis starting to break away from family tradition and try something a friend had told her about while they were on a summer vacation at a lake. MC is younger sis and was brought to be dared into sharing the experience/blame and for safety. MC didn't participate this time, but older sis turned into annual tradition. MC finally tries it on older sister's last summer trip with the family before going off to college (and they get caught). The purpose was to establish why the MC hates being nude later in life.

I went back and reread this section of the story with a pedophile focus, and could see where what I originally saw as two innocent sisters could be taken in a way I had not intended (which is the point of the rule in the first place).

I rewrote it to make the last trip the first time they try it, with some dialog to cover their upbringing and it flows better and doesn't have that creepy feeling any longer.

Thanks for the advice (especially the indirect stuff I get from reading other's posts and stories).

That sounds like the sensible route.

Anything other than “remember that time when you were 11 and I talked you into skinny dipping with me?” probably wouldn’t have flown.

My series Best Friends is a very nudity-focussed story and features two protagonists who have been friends since childhood. It originally began with a scene where the two female leads were children and wound up having to strip off and walk home in the buff after falling in a brackish ditch while playing somewhere they shouldn’t have been, as a way of providing a pseudo-explanation for why the central character might as an adult find herself with a recurring urge toward public nudity. But I quickly realised that this was likely to attract a readership I didn’t particularly want and of course would have been a breach of Lit’s guidelines, so I nixed it and instead put a couple of lines in where the now-adult protagonist suggests a childhood experience might be the root of her behaviour.

I think that was the better option anyway, rules aside.

In The Book of Ruth the narrator mentions his family practicing casual household nudity since the kids were prepubescent. But no details. Reporting is okay; describing is not.

Hypoxia said:

Reporting is okay; describing is not.

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That sounds about right. I've had nude children in some of my stories, but only mentioned their presence and what they were doing, and not what they looked like. No problem from Laurel.