I have some work waiting to go through another round of my own edits before I submit it, but I'm nervous. What are some unwritten rules or tips I should know before I do? I've read the site rules, but I'm sure there must be things I don't know. Like, how do you deal gracefully with negative reactions, if any? I've seen so many nice comments on stories too. Do writers often reply to their readers? What if I see an error in my story after it's posted? I'm concerned about avoiding common mistakes.
What should I know before posting?
- Thread starter OliviaM
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J_R_Ashunwhy
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What category will you be planning to post in? Some of the possible answers will vary greatly from author to author, but there seems to be some common elements based on category at least.
I would suggest to take all comments and emails with a grain of salt...positive or negative. You can respond to emails that include contact information, but be careful how/what you respond with. And remember to never feed the trolls if you can help yourself.
If you want to submit edited versions of stories, you can by resubmitting the story with the same title and 'EDIT' placed after the title, and in the author notes section. No votes or favorites will be lost in doing so.
I would suggest to take all comments and emails with a grain of salt...positive or negative. You can respond to emails that include contact information, but be careful how/what you respond with. And remember to never feed the trolls if you can help yourself.
If you want to submit edited versions of stories, you can by resubmitting the story with the same title and 'EDIT' placed after the title, and in the author notes section. No votes or favorites will be lost in doing so.
legerdemer
lost at sea
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Welcome and enjoy the trip. It can be a wild ride.
In most cases, most comments I've received have been complimentary and while I'd love more feedback about my writing, I'll take nice over insults any day. It depends a lot on categories, however - Loving Wives in particular is a known pit of vipers. I've never been tempted to post there, but if you do, you need to grow some leather or other protective armor. The site deletes spam comments. You should feel free to delete any comment that you feel threatens you personally or is otherwise over the top - we each do whatever works within our comfort zone.
I tend to thank folks who comment, but then I don't have that many that it's unwieldy. Some categories, like Incest, have gobs of viewers and commenters. Many others don't. It's always nice to be on the receiving end of a thank you note, however short, if I've bothered to leave a comment, but I don't take it personally if an author doesn't respond.
Personally I like comments that address whether readers like my writing, and I make mention of that in an author's note at the beginning or after the end of the story. I also encourage people to vote on the story.
Otherwise, there's lots of threads that address the point you're asking about, and I'm sure the old timers will come along and pipe in.
If you want some extra eyes on your story (stories, soon, I imagine), add a link to your author's page to your signature, and post the link to your story on a thread in the Story Feedback forum.
And above all, have fun!
Most likely Romance or Reluctance/Non-consent. What I've been reading in there seems to fit most closely with my own work. And that's good to know about editing. I'll have to stop myself from abusing that feature.
Thank you! I'm scared but I can't wait.
That's really interesting how there are different crowds for different categories! I hadn't noticed, but then, I don't usually read comments at the end of a story. It makes sense, though. I initially didn't want to have any authors notes at the beginning or end, but your comments are making me reconsider. And good tip about the sig. I will use that.
pocketbooklover
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Set up an email - My first piece of advice is to set up an email that has nothing to do with who you are in real life. My editor, who is a LEO, told me to do this before I posted my first chapter and I'm glad I did. It helps keep my writing life separate from my personal life.
Authors note - agree entirely with this. Let your readers know this is your first story, ask for constructive criticism and remind them to vote.
Bio page - put some background info about yourself there. Your readers will become invested in not only your story, but you. Giving them little glimpses will help with their connection.
Comments - everyone says not to let negative comments get to you, but its hard ignoring them. If they are really abusive, take them down. The worst thing to do is get into a 'comment war' with someone.
Authors note - agree entirely with this. Let your readers know this is your first story, ask for constructive criticism and remind them to vote.
Bio page - put some background info about yourself there. Your readers will become invested in not only your story, but you. Giving them little glimpses will help with their connection.
Comments - everyone says not to let negative comments get to you, but its hard ignoring them. If they are really abusive, take them down. The worst thing to do is get into a 'comment war' with someone.
Bramblethorn
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On this: if your Lit email has any connection to your "RL" identity, even if it's just something like using your regular email as the recovery address for your smut account, make sure there's nothing in the name of the smut account that would let people find your Lit identity.
I set up a Gmail account solely for Lit purposes, but with my regular email as the recovery address. I found that when friends and family used Gmail to send messages to my regular email, Google very helpfully attached the name I'd used for the Gmail account. So it had disclosed the name of my Lit-only email account to people who didn't have that address. Fortunately, I'd chosen a name that didn't easily link back to my Lit profile.
Negative comments: generally best ignored. Often you'll find that other commenters will come to your defense.
Kellazdriel
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Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here.
legerdemer
lost at sea
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I only open my Lit-associated email account from a private browser window, and set it so that it doesn't "remember" that email address. When I close that window, nothing is saved - not the account name, password, browsing history, etc. Different folks care to different extents - I keep everything having to do with Lit separate from my real life. I go one step further, and only browse Lit using a Tor-enabled browser. But most don't need to nurse that level of paranoia.
That's interesting. I did use an old email but I set up a new user login in chrome, which I just recently learned allows for multiple users. It's just me and my husband at home, so I have no one local to hide things from but I did install Ghostery to restrict trackers. Your comment about using Tor is making me wonder if I've forgotten some aspect of staying safe online...
Have fun!
Feedback: Remember the old adage, "laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone."
Take everything with a grain of salt and a smile on your face. I sometimes reply to readers comments, even the negative ones if the person is polite but probably only 10-20% depending on the story.
The separate email idea is a good one. I didn't at first but I do know and it is a lot easier. That's as far as I go and I haven't had any other problems.
Editing is important. Get another pair of eyes to check your story because there are quite a few grammar nazi's out there.
Finally as a new female author be prepared for some very friendly emails from male readers who want to become your friend and eventually ask to see a picture of you naked.
Feedback: Remember the old adage, "laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone."
Take everything with a grain of salt and a smile on your face. I sometimes reply to readers comments, even the negative ones if the person is polite but probably only 10-20% depending on the story.
The separate email idea is a good one. I didn't at first but I do know and it is a lot easier. That's as far as I go and I haven't had any other problems.
Editing is important. Get another pair of eyes to check your story because there are quite a few grammar nazi's out there.
Finally as a new female author be prepared for some very friendly emails from male readers who want to become your friend and eventually ask to see a picture of you naked.
Bramblethorn
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It depends on what sort of protection you're trying to achieve.
Setting up separate user profiles will protect against the scenario where somebody borrows your laptop and accidentally learns about your porn habits. (Thanks browser autocomplete for telling me that at least one of my fundy Christian friends is into hentai torture porn. True story.) For added security against attacks at your end, you can use private browser mode and/or full-disk encryption.
Tor and VPN are protection against "man in the middle" threats, e.g. somebody hacks into your ISP and snoops on traffic passing through. At the moment, somebody with superuser privileges at my ISP could tell that I'm visiting the Literotica forums. If I switch on my VPN, all they can see is that I'm connecting to Tunnelbear, a VPN service; my communications then get passed from Tunnelbear server A to server B (encrypted) and connect to Literotica from there. So my ISP doesn't know where I'm connecting.
One of the benefits of VPNs is that they let you control where you appear to be connecting from. Not so important for US users, but Australians are plagued with "sorry, this content is not available in your country" thanks to zoning nonsense. By using a VPN I can choose to connect via a server in the USA (or wherever) so I can view US-locked content. It also protects me against casual logging of my Australian ISP (we have mandatory metadata retention here, so connections through Australian ISPs get logged by default).
However, if somebody like the NSA got a warrant or hacked my VPN provider, they could find out where I'm connecting. Tor aims to protect against that threat by multiple rerouting: your communication gets bounced around through a whole bunch of different computers before popping up at the other end, and each of those connections encrypts both the message and the destination info. So even if a snooper compromises several links in the chain they shouldn't be able to tell what site you're visiting or read the content of that communication.
lovecraft68
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The ignore feature.
How do I find a beta reader or an editor when I'm ready? I'm assuming there's a sticky'd forum thread somewhere. I should probably go look for that.
Ha ha! Yeeeaaah, I've already been getting random PMs. Not so many that it's a problem. I just delete them. I actually pondered creating a male identity (which I often do on online games and things like that) but I wasn't sure how well more romantic writing would be received from a guy. *sigh* Sometimes the blissful silence on a male avatar can be so nice. Thanks for the heads up.
Thanks so much for the long explanation! I was pretty sure I understood VPNs and Tor but you pointed out a couple of things I hadn't considered.
(By the way, can I just say how much I enjoyed the Copper Coin story? I've been thinking about it all day. It put me in such a nice mood.)
LOL
geronimo_appleby
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How do I find a beta reader or an editor when I'm ready? I'm assuming there's a sticky'd forum thread somewhere. I should probably go look for that.
Ha ha! Yeeeaaah, I've already been getting random PMs. Not so many that it's a problem. I just delete them. I actually pondered creating a male identity (which I often do on online games and things like that) but I wasn't sure how well more romantic writing would be received from a guy. *sigh* Sometimes the blissful silence on a male avatar can be so nice. Thanks for the heads up.
you can filter PMs by creating a buddy list. which makes feedback via that means a tad difficult. but at least you can stop the cyber-wankers pestering you.
oh, and if you've mentioned the category before, i apologise - but what category are you submitting to? if it's Loving Wives...
wooooooooooooooooooooh!
Nooo ha ha. I already got the warning about that. Probably Romance or Non-Consent, or Fantasy/Sci-Fi depending on how ambitious I get.
geronimo_appleby
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bloody hell!
D: Is that bad?
geronimo_appleby
always on the move
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naw, it was just a blurt over the number of category options. if you get stuck for choice, consider novels and novellas. i think the word count is a min of 7.5k, but don't quote me on that.
Oh, yeah. I'm a rambler. And I usually have way too many ideas and get frustrated trying to pick just one. I have a drive filled with stuff in various stages. Making this account and coming up with a plan was a way to give me some direction and motivation.
geronimo_appleby
always on the move
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i've got an 'abandoned' file i'm too scared to look in!
H
HandsInTheDark
Guest
Vaguely curious: how long is Eventually? I'd always assumed this was measured in microseconds, but you're giving me hope that it might actually be hours. Well done, males!
geronimo_appleby
always on the move
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if it involves DIY, like painting and stuff ... it can be months, possibly years.
Bramblethorn
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One option is to post on the Editor's Forum, but it can be hard to find editors there, and you need to do some quality control; there are some well-meaning folk who have multiple errors in their "let me edit for you" posts, which doesn't really inspire confidence.
Or you can pick an author whose style looks compatible with yours, and ask if they'd be willing to edit/beta for you. Some will, some won't, but you're not likely to offend by asking nicely. Some authors acknowledge their editors, and that can also suggest people to ask, although an acknowledgement doesn't always mean that they took the editor's advice!
Either way, it's a good idea to indicate length, genre, and the type of editing you're looking for: e.g. do you just want spelling/punctuation/grammar, or are you looking for comments on story etc? Also turnaround time if you're in any kind of hurry.
(Or do as I did and shack up with a good beta reader, but that takes some planning.)
Depending on the details, I might be able to take a look at a story for you. Feel free to PM
Ha ha! Yeeeaaah, I've already been getting random PMs. Not so many that it's a problem. I just delete them. I actually pondered creating a male identity (which I often do on online games and things like that) but I wasn't sure how well more romantic writing would be received from a guy. *sigh* Sometimes the blissful silence on a male avatar can be so nice. Thanks for the heads up.
You can go for a neutral profile, like I do. It doesn't completely screen out the fuckbois but I think it reduces the volume, judging by what I hear from people with overtly female profiles.
Oh, thanks!
It varies. I get some who launch straight into a PM about their throbbing manhood and what they're hoping to do with it. There are others who start out with some sort of "hey, I really liked that thing you posted" and wait for me to give a friendly response before they start getting hot and heavy.
TBH the second type annoys me more. I like compliments, but it leaves a sour feeling when somebody's obviously giving insincere compliments in the belief it'll get them into my pants.
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