Best practices to deal with story rejection

[avatar_roku]

Hey folks! The intention of this thread is to get advice on the best practices to be followed when a submission gets rejected.

I understand Laurel and Manu are super busy. It's a huge responsibility to run this site and they must be getting tons of submissions every day. (BTW, just wondering, do they go through each and every submission themselves? Or do they have volunteers helping them out to review those submissions?)

Anyways, coming to the point. There may be times when we might feel that the submissions were unfairly rejected and/or the rejection note may not be elaborately helpful. To make matters worse, I think the unwritten guidelines are a bit fuzzy and ever evolving. So something that may have been approved earlier may not necessarily go through now.

I recently submitted a story under the Mature category. The story is about an affair between a college guy and his mature female professor. The characters were of legal age and were created completely from my imagination. While writing the story, I had imagined certain celebrities in those roles, like a fan casting. It helped me visualize the characters better. I put the names of those celebrities in the author's notes at the start of the story. I told my readers that they could look up those celebrities online if they wanted to visualize those characters from my perspective. The names of those celebrities wasn't mentioned anywhere within the body of the story, it was there only in the author's notes.

The story was rejected with a note that it should be posted under the Celebrities category. Since I strongly felt that the story belonged in the Mature category, I removed the celebrity names from the author's notes and re-submitted it.

Strangely, it was rejected again citing the exact same reason as before. I triple checked and found absolutely no celebrity references in my revised story. I sent out an email to Laurel and Manu requesting them to point out the objectionable portions, so I can edit them. Unfortunately there was no reply. I sent out a PM to Laurel, requesting the same. No reply. [Edit: Just received a reply after starting this thread. Editing the post to point that out.]

I am a regular guy with a job, family and responsibilities. I am not a full time writer. I have an imagination and an an urge to indulge in this creative process of writing. But it takes a lot of time to write and edit these stories. It's heart breaking when the stories are rejected the first time after putting in so much effort. It's almost soul-crushing to have it rejected a second time when you're confident that you had addressed the issue already. And then there's no answers to the genuine queries when you ask them.

This is not a rant against Laurel and Manu. I just want to know how to deal with such situations. What are the best practices and steps that an author can take to make it easy for all parties involved?

 

[PennameWombat]

Hey folks! The intention of this thread is to get advice on the best practices to be followed when a submission gets rejected.

I understand Laurel and Manu are super busy. It's a huge responsibility to run this site and they must be getting tons of submissions every day. (BTW, just wondering, do they go through each and every submission themselves? Or do they have volunteers helping them out to review those submissions?)

First off, here's a thread: Rejected story? What now?. The second entry in that thread provides 'how to respond and contact Laurel' info. But not sure your question is covered exactly in that. And this thread on Celebrities (and Fan Fiction) Celebrities, for context.

The older-timers than me here state that it's Laurel herself, and only her, who reviews and approves/rejects every submission. There has been discussion whether she uses some sort of text analysis software but that's never been definitively proven nor disproven.

Anyways, coming to the point. There may be times when we might feel that the submissions were unfairly rejected and/or the rejection note may not be elaborately helpful. To make matters worse, I think the unwritten guidelines are a bit fuzzy and ever evolving. So something that may have been approved earlier may not necessarily go through now.

You're not necessarily wrong. It's possible this thread will trigger a rant depending on who sees it. I'll just end my statement now.

<snip>The story was rejected with a note that it should be posted under the Celebrities category. Since I strongly felt that the story belonged in the Mature category, I removed the celebrity names from the author's notes and re-submitted it.

Yes, depictions of celebrities are a borderline area. I only mention real people in contexts where it's clear they are not in the story, not participating. For instance, my characters discussed the US presidential election of 1980, Ronald Reagan vs. Jimmy Carter. But I'd say your statement was in essence (regardless of your actual text), "I based my characters on these real people." Thus, it's a Celebrity story. I'd have likely made that same conclusion.

Beyond just the direct mention of 'celebrities,' any attempt to 'up age' them (e.g., referring to under-18s but 'my story is set years later after they've turned 18' will get rejected, e.g., Harry Potter.)

There's also this: "We do not publish non-consent stories involving real-life people, groups/organizations, or copyrighted characters."

My guess is that there might be some 'memory' of your earlier statement? So the story characters too closely resemble real-world?

If your story is under 10,000 words, I'd be willing to take a look, PM me, don't tell me the celebrities you had in mind (make sure original author's note's not there). If I see anything, I'll let you know, if they're Indian very good chance I won't have much of a bias.

Strangely, it was rejected again citing the exact same reason as before. I triple checked and found absolutely no celebrity references in my revised story. I sent out an email to Laurel and Manu requesting them to point out the objectionable portions, so I can edit them. Unfortunately there was no reply. I sent out a PM to Laurel, requesting the same. No reply.

Never email. Only use the PM to Laurel. See link above for how to respond. So that's good. How long has it been?

I am a regular guy with a job, family and responsibilities. I am not a full time writer. I have an imagination and an an urge to indulge in this creative process of writing. But it takes a lot of time to write and edit these stories. It's heart breaking when the stories are rejected the first time after putting in so much effort. It's almost soul-crushing to have it rejected a second time when you're confident that you had addressed the issue already. And then there's no answers to the genuine queries when you ask them.

This is not a rant against Laurel and Manu. I just want to know how to deal with such situations. What are the best practices and steps that an author can take to make it easy for all parties involved?

I've had some stories placed in different Categories than I submitted.

One outright rejection was around Under-18. The message was unclear. What I worked out was that while at a swimming pool, a mother flirted with a young man (both already established as over 18) who worked at the pool while her children splashed in the kiddie pool. I edited it so that her children were away with their grandmother and she was at the adult's pool doing the flirting and it passed. I have other stories with plenty of children running around and just carefully separate any sexual action in time and formatting from the children.

 

[Rob_Howard]

Hey, I understand the frustration of rejection. My first story ever submitted on Literotica was rejected, because I didn't follow proper formatting. I was asked to go through the 'Writer's Guidelines'. Fortunately, after fixing the formats based on the guidelines, my story was accepted.

I'm still don't know much about the rejection practices of this site. I would suggest you to wait for replies of some experienced members of this forum.

But you can first go through similar threads regarding 'rejection', 're-submission' in the forum, while you wait for replies on this thread.

After you get some satisfactory replies on this thread, I guess you can specifically write a note under 'Notes to Admin' section while submitting, stating that you have removed the names of the celebrities and your story belongs to 'Mature' category.

 

[avatar_roku]

My guess is that there might be some 'memory' of your earlier statement? So the story characters too closely resemble real-world?

Thanks for the reply and the links. Will go through them.

The characters are completely fictional and have their own personality. The celebrities were just a template of how these characters look. I had mentioned those celebrity names just to guide my readers towards my own imagination. I have removed the names as it doesn't really make or break the story. The story stands on its own.

Never email. Only use the PM to Laurel. See link above for how to respond. So that's good. How long has it been?

Got it. In fact I received a reply from Laurel on PM shortly after posting this thread. I have edited the original post to reflect the same. I'll re-submit the story again and hopefully it should go through.

I guess you can specifically write a note under 'Notes to Admin' section while submitting, stating that you have removed the names of the celebrities and your story belongs to 'Mature' category.

That's a good advice. I'll keep that in mind.

 

[Bramblethorn]

After you get some satisfactory replies on this thread, I guess you can specifically write a note under 'Notes to Admin' section while submitting, stating that you have removed the names of the celebrities and your story belongs to 'Mature' category.

This is good advice for a lot of rejection-related issues. I've used this field pre-emptively to mention things like "this story begins when one of the characters is 14, but nothing sexual happens until after she's 18".

I don't think Laurel takes such notes on trust, but it does seem to help ensure that they don't get mistakenly bounced on a skim-reading.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I've used this field pre-emptively to mention things like "this story begins when one of the characters is 14, but nothing sexual happens until after she's 18".

I don't think Laurel takes such notes on trust, but it does seem to help ensure that they don't get mistakenly bounced on a skim-reading.

Likewise. My Arthurian novel has a prologue which featured a premenache girl who is traumatised by a tidal wave, thus triggering witch magic - I flagged it to Laurel and noted there was no sexual content until the next chapter, by which time she was explicitly stated as nineteen. No problems.

Similarly, my latest fetish piece has a 2000 word EB café scene with a baby present, but by the time sex begins, the bub is off with his gran. Similar heads up in the Note to the Editor, again, no problems.

 

[gordo12]

This is good advice for a lot of rejection-related issues. I've used this field pre-emptively to mention things like "this story begins when one of the characters is 14, but nothing sexual happens until after she's 18".

I don't think Laurel takes such notes on trust, but it does seem to help ensure that they don't get mistakenly bounced on a skim-reading.

I always use the note field to outline (explain) anything I think is contentious. I also quote the beginning sentence to the paragraph to make it easy to find. Never had anything rejected including category choices. If I feel it's off category somewhat I'll explain why I picked that category.

As for trust, it's an elusive thing. I know that these days I get published in around two days so maybe that says something.

As for reading all the stories? Either that woman has the fastest eyes on the planet or she's using keyword software. Or maybe both. I've seen a lot slip through lately so I'm going with the software.