Some doubt's regarding stories(incest)

[MrPixel]

We need a written guide as to how writing guides should be written.

Metaguide.

 

[Katie_Mae]

"Nope, I'm a virgin," I admitted, "mostly into girls." I said...

Sorry your story was sent back. I'd suggest doing a ctrl+f search for common dialogue mistakes, such as [." I said] to make sure there aren't any others.

I've heard rumours that Laurel is very strict on dialogue formatting, and saw one author get rejected for having only three small errors. Considering the general quality required is not so great, I wonder if Laural has an automatic tool to help her check automatically for this.

A [."] Is generally followed by an action beat or nothing, not a [said] dialogue tag.

 

[TheLobster]

A [."] Is generally followed by an action beat or nothing, not a [said] dialogue tag.

The sentence you’re highlighting is not a dialogue tag. It’s a piece of narration that follows dialogue, explaining character’s motivation for having said (well, sent/written) what he said. As such it is correctly punctuated and would be a false positive in your check.

Such non-obvious cases are probably quite rare, though. The litmus test for them is very simple: ask if you could safely break away the alleged tag and put it in the next paragraph. You can’t do that with speech tags and results are very jarring if you try.

 

[Katie_Mae]

The sentence you’re highlighting is not a dialogue tag. It’s a piece of narration that follows dialogue, explaining character’s motivation for having said (well, sent/written) what he said. As such it is correctly punctuated and would be a false positive in your check.

Such non-obvious cases are probably quite rare, though. The litmus test for them is very simple: ask if you could safely break away the alleged tag and put it in the next paragraph. You can’t do that with speech tags and results are very jarring if you try.

Oh, good pick up. I missed that. Still, if Laurel is* using an automated tool, then that might ping it.

*of course, we have no way of knowing.

To the op, if you're confident there's no errors, then you can resubmit with a note to the editor.

 

[EmperorN3R0]

If that's the case, then I don't see anything wrong either. Only minute issue that's somewhat related to punctuation is you don't need quotes around pecs and arms, but I would shocked if he got dinged for that. There's also minor tense confusion here and there, but that's not what the rejection was about.

@EmperorN3R0 your problem most likely lies elsewhere. Perhaps it's in some other scene, where the characters are actually speaking?

I think it might be dialogue mistakes. Thank you for checking. I'll try again and tell the result

 

[EmperorN3R0]

Interesting. It might be because your 'dialogue' isn't actually a dialogue but a transcript of chat messages, so you need to go with different kind of punctuation or formatting.

You may want to peruse the recent tutorial by @FrancesScott for options. Personally I prefer <kbd> for text messages so they look like typed text, but I've seen <em> (italics) or even no formatting at all.

This was very helpful I did use em tag on the story at some place. But doesn't know about other ones

 

[SimonDoom]

My story got sent back. This time I have put line breaks for everyline thinking I won't get any errors and get sent back. But My story got sent back with this

"Status
Sent back
Important Message About Your Submission
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.

Please fix the formatting of your dialogue. The essay "How to Make Characters Talk" in our Writer's Resources section has more information on the formatting of dialogue if you have further questions: https://www.literotica.com/s/how-to-make-characters-talk
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"

then i got a doubt is it because of the line breaks or how i wrote. ⬇⬇⬇ below is a scene from my story. Is it the line breaks or the way I wrote if anyone know kindly tell what to change

"
One night, a guy named Mark DMs me, praising my "pecs" and "arms."

Our chat turns sexual, he seems like he's gay because he was constantly asking for my dick pics with every message.

I'm not gay, but I did end up sending them.

"Have you ever done anything wild?" he asks.

"Nope, I'm a virgin," I admitted, "mostly into girls." I said that so he doesn't send dick pics.

The next day, the chat dives into taboo talk and he sends a nude photo of a woman, then flooding with the chat with that womans pics, atleast 50 pics, big boobs and ass and He kept sending me pics then he sent pics of him fucking her.

My dick got hard instantly.

"Who's that?" I typed.

"That's my mom," he replied.

"Oh, okay," is what i said, but I think it must be some AI. I've seen plenty of pics like that on the internet and plenty of stories like that on the forum.

He spills how he seduced her with late-night talks and stolen touches.

Though this guy is lying, he's lying very well, his story with the picture got me very hard.
"
Thanks.

One thing I noticed is that you constantly switch back and forth between present tense and past tense. That's a common and foundational mistake. Stick with one tense.

There were cases where you used commas where you should have used periods, such as in the last sentence.

 

[iwatchus]

I had one of my early stories bounced, I think in part at least because I had inadvertently sometimes typed soft returns (shift return) instead of hard returns. On my word processor, it looked the same unless I highlighted the text to see the different symbol. But the soft returns are rendered if you copy paste them into the submission box. I did not notice this was happening to me until third or fourth story. But it makes it look like quotes run together incorrectly when viewed on the site.

 

[EmperorN3R0]

I had one of my early stories bounced, I think in part at least because I had inadvertently sometimes typed soft returns (shift return) instead of hard returns. On my word processor, it looked the same unless I highlighted the text to see the different symbol. But the soft returns are rendered if you copy paste them into the submission box. I did not notice this was happening to me until third or fourth story. But it makes it look like quotes run together incorrectly when viewed on the site.

What does soft returns and hard returns mean . I use google docs, android. I write and copy paste into the text box.

 

[iwatchus]

I don't use google docs regularly and I don't remember if they have the same concept, but I think they do.

If you hit shift enter instead or enter (or shift return vs return depending on system), it works differently. The soft return is a line break but not a paragraph break. By the default formatting rules on most word processors, the two cause the same display. But the two characters are different and the soft returns don't show as anything ib stories.

 

[TheLobster]

“Hard return” is a paragraph break. Some aspects of formatting, like margins or alignment, are scoped to paragraphs, so adding a hard return (usually Enter) lets you have sections where this formatting is different.

“Soft return” is a line break, within a paragraph. It’s analogous to an implicit line break that editors insert when words overflow the width of the page; the difference is that it’s explicit and forced (usually with Shift+Enter).

I don’t submit my stories as files, so I’m not 100% sure how Literotica interprets both. Ideally they should both work, but getting forced line breaks correctly when you submit a story as plain text is already tricky enough, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some shenanigans when you upload files as well.