Formatting question for a written letter inside a written story

[ravenmx]

I have written a story and inside the story there are several paragraphs which I have input as a letter scattered amongst the monologue of the story.

What I have done is indented the intended "letter" paragraghs in 7 words on the front and the back and spaced three between the monologue and "letter".

I am wondering what the "proper" way to do this might be. The indentations indicated a change, but I am not sure people that it wouldn't be confusing to readers.

I have seen people split up parts of a story with ---- or some other features but if I do this they would be prominent throughout the story.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

 

[LadyCibelle]

I have written a story and inside the story there are several paragraphs which I have input as a letter scattered amongst the monologue of the story.

What I have done is indented the intended "letter" paragraghs in 7 words on the front and the back and spaced three between the monologue and "letter".

I am wondering what the "proper" way to do this might be. The indentations indicated a change, but I am not sure people that it wouldn't be confusing to readers.

I have seen people split up parts of a story with ---- or some other features but if I do this they would be prominent throughout the story.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Hi Raven and welcome to the EF.

First of all, unless I'm totally mistaken, your indentation of the letter wouldn't even show when you submit your story so there isn't much point in your doing it. Someone more knowlegeable with the coding of the stories when submitting them might tell you otherwise but I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong.

What I recommend my writers to do in such a case is to italicize the letter so it stands out from the actual story.

 

[ravenmx]

Thank you Ladycibelle for the welcome.

Italics are a great idea.

Thank you very much

 

[LadyCibelle]

Thank you Ladycibelle for the welcome.

Italics are a great idea.

Thank you very much

You're welcome It's a pleasure to help when the question is so clearly stated

 

[Guest]

All indents on Lit stories are removed by the script conversion process and will not show up.

Setting off the quoted letter with quotation marks is another method (but I actually prefer LadyCibelle's method, too ).

Although I haven't tried it, another trick to make a short "letter" stand out from the rest of the story text that will fill up the entire line on the story page is to insert a paragraph mark at a somewhat pre-defined distance. That way the quoted letter doesn't align with the right-hand margin and appears as a kind of ragged-edge construction:

It's been awhile since we spoke to each other,
so I thought I'd write. To be perfectly honest,
I missed you ever since your plane flight out
and found myself asking whether there is ever
a chance you would return. I know that sounds
a bit silly since we only met once, but I thought . . .


Because indents won't appear in a Lit story, it restricts some of the mechanisms we would use in writing, so we can take some liberties to be creative to compensate. But no matter your preference on a selected style, pick one you like and be consistent with its use.

Best regards,
Manxy

 

[Weird Harold]

First of all, unless I'm totally mistaken, your indentation of the letter wouldn't even show when you submit your story so there isn't much point in your doing it. Someone more knowlegeable with the coding of the stories when submitting them might tell you otherwise but I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong.

What I recommend my writers to do in such a case is to italicize the letter so it stands out from the actual story.

In print publishing, a letter, note, or similar citation is indented on both right and left margin one "tab stop" (generally eight characters in a fixed font) Letter and notes are usually italicized as well while signs, banners, and the like are sometimes in Bold.

In HTML there is a command to duplicate the double indent-- much the way the quote above is indented and boxed: The BLOCKQUOTE tag.

If you submit in text or C&P format, you'll need to add the blockquote tags yourself and notify Laurel that they are there to prevent the scripts from stripping them out -- instead of (or addition to) I or B for italics or bold inside angled brackets (<>) use BLOCKQUOTE and /BLOCKQUOTE to bracket the part you want double indented.

Although I haven't tried it, another trick to make a short "letter" stand out from the rest of the story text that will fill up the entire line on the story page is to insert a paragraph mark at a somewhat pre-defined distance. That way the quoted letter doesn't align with the right-hand margin and appears as a kind of ragged-edge construction:

That technique will cause the letter to double space when Lit's scripts process the story -- what you need in Word calls a "Manual Line Break" and HTML just labels BR placing <BR> at the end of each shortend line will achieve the "right indent" effect you want.

 

[Guest]

.
.
.
That technique will cause the letter to double space when Lit's scripts process the story -- what you need in Word calls a "Manual Line Break" and HTML just labels BR placing <BR> at the end of each shortend line will achieve the "right indent" effect you want.

_________

Thanks for clarifying, WH!

 

[Weird Harold]

_________

Thanks for clarifying, WH!

Not a problem. Conversion problems from word-processer WYSIWYG formating to HTML formating causes a lot of problems so I've had ample reason to dig into what happens and why.

 

[Guest]

Well, lookee here, right under our noses . . .

The recent winning entry in the Free Speech contest, Celebrate Freedom!, by sophia jane: http://english.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=200077


She and her editor, Softouch911, apparently already had this figured out, likely using using the techniques and process described by Weird Harold above to ensure the story conversion scripts didn't strip out the the important formatting in this story.

Kudos!

 

[ravenmx]

Thanks everyone for the replies.

It is appreciated.