Newbie help

[OldGoodPup]

New writer here. I've submitted 4 stories, 2 have been published. One (for a contest) under NonConsent/Reluctance, one under Romance. One Pending.

One has been sent back with a boilerplate message. For the life of me, I can't figure out why.

1515 words. It's well punctuated, including the dialogue. Its got paragraphs. It's a tale of non-married, gentle, F/m, femdom with no significant BDSM. I placed it in the category of Erotic Couplings. It does have a brief (2 sentence) description of consensual male cum eating. Could it be that this scene is disqualifying for Erotic Couplings?

Will the mods send back a story just for wrong category? Must cum eating fall into the Fetish category? Other suggestions for categories for this story?

Thank you

 

[AwkwardlySet]

It would be unusual for a story to be sent back for that reason. Can you paste the message here?

 

[Bamagan]

Can you copy the rejection message? Possibly it contains details someone here could suss out. The category does not seem likely to be an issue, they would more likely just recategorize it themselves, as they sometimes do already.

 

[OldGoodPup]

Here is the message:

Dear Writer,

Thank you for your submission to Literotica. We appreciate the time and effort you've taken to write a story and submit it to our site . However, we've found that we cannot post your submission in its current form. The checklist below may help you in re-examining your manuscript.

Were there any serious errors in punctuation or formatting (i.e. submitted in all capital letters, capitalization errors, etc.)?
Was the story not broken into appropriately sized paragraphs?
Please feel free to re-submit the story after a Volunteer Editor has examined it, or after you've made revisions. You can find a list of Volunteer Editors here.

Please consult our Writer's Resources section and make sure you read our submission guidelines.
If you have any questions on these, please let us know.

Thanks for your time, and look forward to reading you again!

Laurel & Manu
Literotica.Com

 

[OldGoodPup]

I am awaiting a response from a volunteer editor.

 

[gunhilltrain]

It's another symptom I think of the strain behind the scenes at Lit. Rejection notices are usually boilerplate or don't make any sense. PM (actually, it's called a conversation now) Laurel and briefly make your case. She likely won't respond, but she may make some change like a different category and then publish the story.

That's what happened to me a few months ago. She just changed the category. I suspect that she has trouble keeping track of everything rejected and why it was done.

 

[Bamagan]

Yeah, nothing very informative there unfortunately. I guess you can direct message Laurel like they said, and maybe double-check the submission guidelines to make sure there isn't a toe out of line regarding ambiguous ages or something else they're strict about.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I am awaiting a response from a volunteer editor.

I see, she used the grammatical-error boilerplate. That has never happened to me. It would be interesting to run the story through Grammarly (there is a free version) and see what comes up.

I can't tell from that exactly what was noticed. You did get two other stories through, so you must have some abilities as a writer. (I'm not trying to criticize you.) I had another site once ask (demand?) that I use Grammarly. I suppose I was making more errors than I had imagined. I did as requested, and it helped catch some things I wouldn't have noticed on my own.

 

[MrPixel]

Yes. Not a category issue, that's also clear to me at least. The rejection message may be boilerplate, but it's specific boilerplate: something is off with punctuation, grammar, or flow organization.

Don't know anything about Grammarly, but failing that I would stand by for feedback from the volunteer editor.

 

[OldGoodPup]

I see, she used the grammatical-error boilerplate. That has never happened to me. It would be interesting to run the story through Grammarly (there is a free version) and see what comes up.

I can't tell from that exactly what was noticed. You did get two other stories through, so you must have some abilities as a writer. (I'm not trying to criticize you.) I had another site once ask (demand?) that I use Grammarly. I suppose I was making more errors than I had imagined. I did as requested, and it helped catch some things I wouldn't have noticed on my own.

No offense taken. I will try grammarly. It's either the category or something very subtle.

 

[OldGoodPup]

Yes. Not a category issue, that's also clear to me at least. The rejection message may be boilerplate, but it's specific boilerplate: something is off with punctuation, grammar, or flow organization.

Don't know anything about Grammarly, but failing that I would stand by for feedback from the volunteer editor.

Clarification: I am waiting for volunteer editor to respond to my initial request for help.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I see your stories are very short in general. You can send it to me and I will take a look at it right away since I have some time now.

 

[OldGoodPup]

I see your stories are very short in general. You can send it to me and I will take a look at it right away since I have some time now.

Sent via your feedback page (Was that the right way?) Thank you.

 

[Bamagan]

Sent via your feedback page (Was that the right way?) Thank you.

That can take days to arrive... at 1500 words or so I think you can just direct message him using the little envelope icon.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Sent via your feedback page (Was that the right way?) Thank you.

I didn't get anything yet. I'll send you my email in a forum PM

 

[gunhilltrain]

No offense taken. I will try grammarly. It's either the category or something very subtle.

I was trying to suggest that Lit makes mistakes too in the reasons it makes rejections. And yet, having more moderators is not always the answer. That other site has a number of volunteer moderators, and they use a lot of their own discretion in making decisions. It's not worth describing it all, but they can have some strange (to me anyway) reactions to stories based on their own opinions.

People can be very arbitrary, and it's exacerbated by the impersonal nature of doing everything online.

 

[Bamagan]

I was trying to suggest that Lit makes mistakes too in the reasons it makes rejections. And yet, having more moderators is not always the answer. That other site has a number of volunteer moderators, and they use a lot of their own discretion in making decisions. It's not worth describing it all, but they can have some strange (to me anyway) reactions to stories based on their own opinions.

People can be very arbitrary, and it's exacerbated by the impersonal nature of doing everything online.

On the other hand, the impersonality of doing things online does mean that any rejections you get will usually be related to the work in question, and not the clothes you're wearing or how much eye contact you make, or most of the other little things that people find annoying or alarming in face-to-face meetings and make them want to reject your stuff because they think they can see who you are (not their kind of people, in other words). Online interactions certainly exacerbate some bad behaviors, but I'm not sure arbitrariness is much affected aside from the way the medium forces it to be expressed.

 

[gunhilltrain]

On the other hand, the impersonality of doing things online does mean that any rejections you get will usually be related to the work in question, and not the clothes you're wearing or how much eye contact you make, or most of the other little things that people find annoying or alarming in face-to-face meetings and make them want to reject your stuff because they think they can see who you are (not their kind of people, in other words). Online interactions certainly exacerbate some bad behaviors, but I'm not sure arbitrariness is much affected aside from the way the medium forces it to be expressed.

The only time I submitted writing face-to-face was when I was on a college newspaper nearly five decades ago. And yeah, even though there was no money at stake, interpersonal disputes could get quite intense. I guess I was struck by how petty nineteen-year-old people could get. It broke my illusion that "youth" were always cool somehow (that was a big idea left over from the "counter-culture,"
however that was defined).

I mostly stayed clear of it until my girlfriend (who was also on the staff) got into a dispute with the editors and she quit/got fired. (Yes, you can get fired as a "volunteer.") Nobody said anything directly to me, but after that is was clear that my contributions were no longer welcome. It took me a couple of months to accept that and I drifted off without truly saying good-bye. Decades later, I wrote about some of that experience here:

https://classic.literotica.com/s/the-past-is-a-foreign-country

 

[OldGoodPup]

Thanks for all the help. Resubmitted. We'll see

 

[ElectricBlue]

Yes. Not a category issue, that's also clear to me at least. The rejection message may be boilerplate, but it's specific boilerplate: something is off with punctuation, grammar, or flow organization.

Don't know anything about Grammarly, but failing that I would stand by for feedback from the volunteer editor.

Writers need to check their text thoroughly, especially dialogue punctuation and format. That's usually where the grammatical content falls over.

New writers often appear to rush their submissions, don't take enough time to edit, often don't know basic grammar. Slow down, read it again, read more closely - you're writing a story, not sending someone a text message.

 

[RejectReality]

Carefully check all your punctuation around dialogue. For whatever reason, that seems to be a pet peeve of Laurel's, and she catches it more often than any other grammar error. Probably half of those rejections are because you have a flub or two where your punctuation is outside the quotation marks.