Submitting story without manually putting line breaks between paragraphs?

[ThisNameIsntTakenYet]

That's not going to work on Lit.

I know, it's just the way I prefer to look at my writing while I'm working on it. When it's done I copy it into a plain text editor to remove all formatting, replace all line breaks with double ones and it's good to go.

 

[purpleswordpanties]

An extra key stroke every time you end a paragraph, time consuming and annoying?

Bloody hell, that's a first world problem of the first order, if ever I've seen one .

I should clarify that I was trying to format an already written story. If I was writing the story as I went along, adding an extra line break would be no issue. I was trying to save some time by automating a repetitive task.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I should clarify that I was trying to format an already written story. If I was writing the story as I went along, adding an extra line break would be no issue. I was trying to save some time by automating a repetitive task.

Ah yes, that's different.

I had the same process, in reverse, when preparing some Lit stories for print publication - removing the extra line breaks, adding in para indents. Doing it manually paid off though, I found a whole bunch of editorial goofs in the original text - dozens of typos I'd missed the first time around. It's almost impossible to get perfect copy - I get pretty close, but no longer sweat the 100%.

 

[ThisNameIsntTakenYet]

Ah yes, that's different.

I had the same process, in reverse, when preparing some Lit stories for print publication - removing the extra line breaks, adding in para indents. Doing it manually paid off though, I found a whole bunch of editorial goofs in the original text - dozens of typos I'd missed the first time around. It's almost impossible to get perfect copy - I get pretty close, but no longer sweat the 100%.

After having trained myself to spot small mistakes through my editing on here, I've found a surprising amount of typos and other small mistakes in published books too. If you find that in actually published books worked on by professional writers and editors, I guess we shouldn't fret too much about a few small mistakes slipping in on here either. Of course it's better to limit those as much as possible, which is why I'm editing for people, but perfection is unattainable anyway. Better to just stick with "good enough" and move on.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I hate the gaps when I’m writing. Really throws my focus on what I’m getting out when I see gaps and I like no spacing
.

I hate walls of text, so I break them up in case I have to go back and read them over, which I do quite often. I want it to look as it would to a reader, all nicely broken up into manageable paragraphs with scene breaks and Chapter breaks. I'm just the kind of guy, a final vision kind.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

And I hate gaps that I didn't put there on purpose. But that might be because I also learned to type on an actual typewriter, twenty years ago.

Yeah, a manual typewriter, that's what I learned on and always hit the carriage return handle twice, once to move the carriage back to the beginning and once more to leave a blank line between paragraphs. Only I learned some 55 years ago, in high school. Way back before personal computers were ever thought of.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I should clarify that I was trying to format an already written story. If I was writing the story as I went along, adding an extra line break would be no issue. I was trying to save some time by automating a repetitive task.

In word that's simple. select the entire document, then change the paragraph setting, all except the first two. They should be blank anyway, leave them blank.

Save the doc.

Now do a find and replace.

In case you're wondering the ^p is in the Replace Special and it the first one in the list. If you are using Manual Line Breaks, they are farther down the list.

 

[KeithD]

I should clarify that I was trying to format an already written story. If I was writing the story as I went along, adding an extra line break would be no issue. I was trying to save some time by automating a repetitive task.

Highlight text, click on REPLACE, put change one paragraph mark to two paragraph marks. No time. Easy peasy. That's automating the procedure without adding special formatting for the receiving system to have to contend with.

 

[KeithD]

After having trained myself to spot small mistakes through my editing on here, I've found a surprising amount of typos and other small mistakes in published books too. If you find that in actually published books worked on by professional writers and editors, I guess we shouldn't fret too much about a few small mistakes slipping in on here either. Of course it's better to limit those as much as possible, which is why I'm editing for people, but perfection is unattainable anyway. Better to just stick with "good enough" and move on.

Agreed on the not sweating the small stuff. With the workload Laurel faces in keeping up with giving everyone--not just me--a shot at getting published here, I think long and hard about needing to make her go through the whole process again on one of my already-processed stories to correct "whatever." So far I've never seen the need to do it at a free-use reading site.

 

[astuffedshirt_perv]

I should clarify that I was trying to format an already written story. If I was writing the story as I went along, adding an extra line break would be no issue. I was trying to save some time by automating a repetitive task.

Apologizes for being late to this thread. Y'all doing mad overkill. I write in word normally and then past the text into the text box. It makes a wall of text in the 'preview' pane but when published it is all fixed. The Lit bot replaces all paragraphs with doubles, but does not treat carriage returns as a return. the bot also removes tab and space indentations. Pasted below is what I have from my Word doc (tab indents not showing here):

...blah blah blah and in hopped Kevin from my school.
“Hey, how’s it going?” he smiled easily. “St. Clair?”
“Uh, yeah,” I stumbled.
Kevin was hot. Like wow hot

in preview looks like a wall of text:
...blah blah blah and in hopped Kevin from my school.
“Hey, how’s it going?” he smiled easily. “St. Clair?”
“Uh, yeah,” I stumbled.
Kevin was hot. Like wow hot

on Lit submission:
...blah blah blah and in hopped Kevin from my school.

"Hey, how's it going?" he smiled easily. "St. Clair?"

"Uh, yeah," I stumbled.

Kevin was hot. Like wow hot.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Apologizes for being late to this thread. Y'all doing mad overkill. I write in word normally and then past the text into the text box. It makes a wall of text in the 'preview' pane but when published it is all fixed. The Lit bot replaces all paragraphs with doubles, but does not treat carriage returns as a return. the bot also removes tab and space indentations. Pasted below is what I have from my Word doc (tab indents not showing here):

Another author who doesn't follow the formatting rules for submission.

In the submission guidelines...

7. Please break your story into reasonably sized paragraphs. Reading on a screen is different from reading from a book or magazine, as the flicker from computer monitors is tiring on the eye. Excessively long paragraphs are hard on readers' eyes.

 

[astuffedshirt_perv]

Another author who doesn't follow the formatting rules for submission.

In the submission guidelines...

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how cranky you are, my comments are still correct. Had you bothered to read the thread, you might have discovered that the discussion centers on whether or not to put two returns after each paragraph. The lit guidelines do not ask for two returns. My submission are broken into paragraphs, and the Lit bot takes care of the 'two return after a paragraph' issue before publishing.

And it has been that way since I started publishing in 2001.

 

[KeithD]

the Lit bot takes care of the 'two return after a paragraph' issue before publishing.

Which is good-to-know information. Thanks.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Which is good-to-know information. Thanks.

Except it doesn't always work that way (or at least, didn't).

When I first started submitting, I used the (old CP) text box, cut and paste the content in from Word and... got a wall of text. Great. Tediously go through and add the extra Return in the text box. So I started drafting in .txt for a year or so because it's WYSIWYG, but then, for some reason, .txt wouldn't load with the new CP (it did at first, then something changed, and it didn't).

I then tried .rtf files and they worked, so I've used them ever since - I just attach the file and up it goes, double Returns and all.

Maybe it's browser specific, but I didn't find the text box up-load useful at all, as it in fact made more work for each submission. I now draft using .rtf, and the raw file looks like it will on Lit.

So, like everyone else, I keep on doing what works (which seems to be something different for each of us - I'm guessing different browsers, different Word templates, different format set-ups, we're all set up differently).

 

[MetaBob]

I write in .TXT format

I've been to all the new schools, but in this case, the aggravation of working with a text editor with all the bells and whistles of something like MS Word just ain't worth it even though I'm extremely familiar with it. Some projects need formatting. For creative writing, I don't. I prefer to remove as many obstacles between myself and a finished work as possible, and lord knows I'm good at creating my own, so ... old school it is. Less hassle, at least for me.

I mark up italics, bold, and single-line spacing ("<br>") manually with HTML tags.

Lit's preview mode is actually very helpful. I upload my source file and review Lit's version, which translates my HTML tags to their formatted equivalent. I find that I often catch things when they're displayed differently that I didn't when drafting.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Lit's preview mode is actually very helpful. I upload my source file and review Lit's version, which translates my HTML tags to their formatted equivalent. I find that I often catch things when they're displayed differently that I didn't when drafting.

This confirms it for me - there must be browser specific elements that deliver different results.

I used .txt for exactly the reasons you do. It worked for a year after the new Control Panel was introduced, and then one day, it simply stopped working for me. I was doing nothing different, but .txt no longer worked.

.rtf gave me the same WYSIWYG, and I no longer use html at all, after being bitten by it too many times. Bells and whistles just end up wasting my time, as I discovered the hard way, fixing glitches.

I just type words now, with two returns for each paragraph, and formatting problems have reduced to zero.

 

[astuffedshirt_perv]

Lit's preview mode is actually very helpful. I upload my source file and review Lit's version, which translates my HTML tags to their formatted equivalent. I find that I often catch things when they're displayed differently that I didn't when drafting.

I too use HTML tags on occasion, paste into the text box, and the preview does display those correctly, but the preview shows the words as a wall of text. Once published, every paragraph has a space after it. I highly doubt Laurel is doing this for me. Rather, I suspect Lit uses bots to take text and format it to Lit standards. This will take care of both single returns and double (and presumably triple) returns, ensuring that they all display the same. Tabs are likewise stripped out.

For evidence, there are no "wall of text" stories posted to lit that do not have a space after each paragraph. When you see a wall of text, the author did not use paragraphs. It is inconceivable that every single author has been using double returns.

 

[MetaBob]

A thing I noticed when I first started posting here when I was formatting my submissions according to a previous standard. Laurel doesn't like indents. OK, I get that. I now need to be OK with her (or whoever) taking out my paragraph indents and replacing them with an extra line feed.

Fine.

I used to have multiple hierarchical ways of indicating breaks between paragraphs. Now, here, I have one less.

Fine. Asterisks are still a thing. By the way, Laurel, I love you for everything you do ... Laurel (or whoever) was going through my stuff and apparently replacing the indents with line feeds. I'm pretty sure it was manually.

I'm now submitting my stuff without indents. If Laurel (or whomever) is manually reviewing everything I send, and s/he has to manually replace whatever with whatever, what can I do to make this process easier?

I will do that.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Well, whatever. I always use word, even if I use yWrite for the draft, it goes to word for the polish. And I always use two returns between paragraphs.

But, it's good to know that the installation bot no takes care of the double return, I will still do it that way as that is what I'm used to.

 

[ThisNameIsntTakenYet]

I actually write in Scrivener and have it export to a .txt file. Then a simple search and replace to make all line breaks double and I copy it manually from the file into the submission text box. That's what works for me. Only time I export to a Word file is when I'm sending a story to someone for some proofreading.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

There's no guarantee that Word being able to set it up means the Lit. system is able to replicate it. The most assured way of meeting Lit. format standards is to use absolutely no special formatting styles of your own. You're the author, not the book designer.

Keith, didn't you mention at one time that select heading styles in Word would carry over in an uploaded .doc file but others wouldn't? Please refresh my memory.

 

[KeithD]

Keith, didn't you mention at one time that select heading styles in Word would carry over in an uploaded .doc file but others wouldn't? Please refresh my memory.

That probably wasn't me. I only cut and paste into the submission block directly from stripped-down Word, so I wouldn't have much knowledge of how use of style would work out in any other mode.

 

[oggbashan]

I use carriage returns in Word, then select all, copy, and paste onto Lit.
It works for me almost every time but I check on preview.

 

[alohadave]

Get into the habit of hitting return twice, every time you end a paragraph. It's just what has to be done. I guess for me it's automatic, I don't even think about it - but then, I've submitted a million words or so.

Someone clever will know how to find one para break and replace with two (like a word replace, but for formatting), but I just got into the habit whilst drafting. I draft in rtf, incidentally, which seems to avoid Word html stuff going wrong. The file sizes are bigger, which I don't understand, but it works.

Part of it is that Word defaults to 1.5 line spacing and hitting Enter once looks like a line between paragraphs when it really isn't.

I took typing and secretarial classes in high school, and it's been a habit since then. I still use a double space after a period though online strips it out, and everyone says it's wrong now.

Here's a tip for the search and replace: Ctrl-H to bring up the Replace dialog. ^p is the code for a paragraph break. Put ^p in the search field, and ^p^p in the replace field and it'll fix the issue in on pass.

Edit: What's with all the necro threads lately? I should start paying attention to the dates on posts.

 

[KeithD]

Part of it is that Word defaults to 1.5 line spacing and hitting Enter once looks like a line between paragraphs when it really isn't.

Word line spacing defaults to what you set it to default to. Mine is set to single space.