How can I stop a future lit story from being massacred?

[TheCaptain]

Okay hello folks, I'm hoping some fellow authors could lend assistance or suggest a course of action that could help me out. I've submitted stories to Literotica in the past in both .doc and .rtf formats, and for the most part they've come off alright... though there have been mistakes in layout now and then, there hasn't been any obvious errors in the way the story has been posted and everything's been pretty much as I intended it when it went up online.

Now with my latest story Vixxxen Ch.01, half the text on page1 has been placed in the middle of the page running out from that point, and at another point on page2 when I started a paragraph with a sentense in Itallic, there was a gap in the text of at least three lines that I had not intended. These are NOT mistakes that I myself made in the final story file.

It frustrated me that supposedly, this story was meant to be submitted manually because it was sent to the site in .rtf format, and yet somehow the story had been mangled in a couple of sections and the way that it is presented to the public online now suffers because of it.

I doubt that sending some correspondence to the people who run Lit would do any good in this case, but I would like to know if there's any technique I could apply in the future - perhaps a possible new format to work in or way to lay out the next story I type up, that might help preserve my own work and allow Lit to present the work in the manner that I see fit...

Hope this is clear enough for you guys lol If this is not an uncommon matter and it has happened to others as well, please feel free to post your own incident... and maybe how you overcame this annoyance, or how you learned to work around the problem? Thanks for the help,

Capt

 

[S-Des]

Actually, it's easy to fix. You resubmit the story with the exact same title, except you add (edit) at the end. In the normal submission time (6-8 days), it will be put up in place of the mangled one. Assuming there is nothing that you did, it will be good the second time. Personally, I prefer copying and pasting the story. That way I can read it in Lit's format (which occasionally helps me catch little things like a couple of spaces at the end of a paragraph, which adds a blank line). I use the final readthrough to make sure I'm 100% happy with what I have. All you have to do is use HTML tags (like <i> and </i>) to make italics, bold, or any other effects you need.

 

[TheCaptain]

Actually, it's easy to fix. You resubmit the story with the exact same title, except you add (edit) at the end. In the normal submission time (6-8 days), it will be put up in place of the mangled one. Assuming there is nothing that you did, it will be good the second time. Personally, I prefer copying and pasting the story. That way I can read it in Lit's format (which occasionally helps me catch little things like a couple of spaces at the end of a paragraph, which adds a blank line). I use the final readthrough to make sure I'm 100% happy with what I have. All you have to do is use HTML tags (like <i> and </i>) to make italics, bold, or any other effects you need.

wow S-Des, that sounds like some real promising advice there, thanks for the assistance!

and real quick too, cheers for that

Capt

 

[S-Des]

wow S-Des, that sounds like some real promising advice there, thanks for the assistance!

and real quick too, cheers for that

Capt

Well, I have plenty of experience in having to fix my mistakes... We're all up tonight, worried about a friend.

 

[TheCaptain]

Well, I have plenty of experience in having to fix my mistakes... We're all up tonight, worried about a friend.

lol, i know how that is but I'm somewhat successful at screening them out before submissions... a few small grammatical slips nonwithstanding What irked me the most about this was, I've seen stories from time to time grossly mangled by layout errors, and have found that they suffer because of it. As a reader it was hard to follow the story when the text ran way out into the blue section of a story page, had huge gaps in between two major sections etc, etc. I dont want my own stories to turn out like that if it can be helped

Ah that's not good at all, my thoughts are with your friend... I know how tough battles are sometimes, medical issues n such


Capt

 

[S-Des]

As a reader it was hard to follow the story when the text ran way out into the blue section of a story page, had huge gaps in between two major sections etc, etc. I dont want my own stories to turn out like that if it can be helped

Ah that's not good at all, my thoughts are with your friend... I know how tough battles are sometimes, medical issues n such


Capt

I know someone has mentioned why that happens, but I can't remember it at the moment. If you keep this thread on the 1st page for a couple of days, someone may know the specific reason behind it. I'm actually a newbie myself...just started writing in January. But I'm really enjoying it and have found that letting a good editor tear it apart for me improves the story, and teaches me how to write better (I was an awful English student in high school and college...I've learned more about grammar in the last 10 months than in my entire formal education).

 

[TheCaptain]

I know someone has mentioned why that happens, but I can't remember it at the moment. If you keep this thread on the 1st page for a couple of days, someone may know the specific reason behind it. I'm actually a newbie myself...just started writing in January. But I'm really enjoying it and have found that letting a good editor tear it apart for me improves the story, and teaches me how to write better (I was an awful English student in high school and college...I've learned more about grammar in the last 10 months than in my entire formal education).

Ah okay, yes that would be interesting to know. Well for me anyway, it's a great passtime to have, writing, extremely enjoyable stuff, and I've been doing it since I was a kid as a hobby and a fun release. I'm glad you're enjoying the experience... trust me, the more you do it, the better you'll get till you'll be galloping away with leaps and bounds

Capt

 

[Weird Harold]

These are NOT mistakes that I myself made in the final story file.

Are you sure about that?

The missing text at the beginning of chapter one is probably not something that can be found in your copy of the file, but the additional lines after the italics might be.

Lit -- and any HTML page -- has trouble with "non-printing characters" that are usually invisible in your word processor. Because Lit's pages word-wrap to fit the window size, things like a manual line-break in the middle of paragraph that doesn't cause problems with the margins in your WP will cause a new paragraph in the middle of a sentence if you don't catch it before posting.

In MS Word, you can turn on the "show invisible" function to find a lot of the problems once you know what to look for. I wrote a How To essay on testing your story formatting before submitting to help people find hidden and special characters that cause problems. Once you've used it a few times, it's fairly easy to spot the problems without actually doing the conversion.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

The words flowing into the blue area is from writing too many letters in a row, breaking the format.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" is the usual offender.

I just looked at your story though, and I didn't see that happening anywhere. It might have been a temporary glitch upon you loading the page? It isn't there now, so don't worry about that.

I did notice one case of the italics following a really big gap above them at the bottom of the first page though. I don't know what caused that.

Also, clicking on "Next Page" takes you page 3. I think that might be a word count issue, but I don't think you actually miss any text when that happens. Not sure though, I didn't read your full story (I just finished another and am quite sated right now )

 

[TheCaptain]

The words flowing into the blue area is from writing too many letters in a row, breaking the format.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" is the usual offender.

I just looked at your story though, and I didn't see that happening anywhere. It might have been a temporary glitch upon you loading the page? It isn't there now, so don't worry about that.

No sorry, I was using that as an example of a previous story I had read where there were problems with its layout... I apologize, as I could have been clearer explaining that

I did notice one case of the italics following a really big gap above them at the bottom of the first page though. I don't know what caused that.

Also, clicking on "Next Page" takes you page 3. I think that might be a word count issue, but I don't think you actually miss any text when that happens. Not sure though, I didn't read your full story (I just finished another and am quite sated right now )

yes that was one of the two main issues I've noticed, as well as the text problem from about halfway down on the first page

but going from the page the link started on to the 3rd one was my error, TGP... seemed the initial link I provided in my first post was to the second page of the story, where it should have been to the first Apologies.

I think, though, that I might just follow up S-Dex's advice and copy-paste my full story across when submitting... maybe even try to resubmit this last posted tale to try and get it edited

hope you enjoyed yourself

Capt

 

[TheCaptain]

Are you sure about that?
-- Snippet --
Once you've used it a few times, it's fairly easy to spot the problems without actually doing the conversion.

that could very well be the case, but what I was referring to with that comment was that I don't think I really require the work of an editor... that could be extreme arrogance or ignorance on my part, or maybe a little of both who knows

Capt

 

[Weird Harold]

that could very well be the case, but what I was referring to with that comment was that I don't think I really require the work of an editor... that could be extreme arrogance or ignorance on my part, or maybe a little of both who knows

Capt

I generally rely on self-editing to spot formatting problems. A second set of eyes is always useful, but not always necessary, but using an editor or not is really another issue.

Cut and Paste (with the HTML codes for Italics, bold, and special characters) is the way to go if you want to minimize the chance of your story formatting being messed up. It does require a bit more pre-submission prep, but it voids the many potential problems with the remnants of changes that are left in RTF and DOC format files.

Submitting in "Flat Text" format is the second best option, but that strips out the Itlics and bold unless you add the HTML codes as you would for C&P submissions. Converting files to Text format strips out all of the garbage your word processor imbeds in DOC or RTF format and is closer to the HTML format.

If you really want to submit in RTF or DOC format, it's usually a good idea to convert your document to the Plain Text Style -- or save it to TEXT format and back to RTF or DOC format just before the final formatting check -- to minimize the amount of word processor specific WYSIWYG formatting.

 

[TheCaptain]

cool... now what about a possible resubmission of my mangled story, and any previous stories that I might feel are also messed up in some way that I could change?

If I was to submit a story with exactly the same title, bio etc with a note in the box saying <edit> as S-Des suggested, would the fresh story be superimposed over it? And would I lose all the stats that had been gathered thus far, votes, hits etc?

Just weighing up my options here... if you could help me with this info, thanks

Capt

 

[Weird Harold]

If I was to submit a story with exactly the same title, bio etc with a note in the box saying <edit> as S-Des suggested, would the fresh story be superimposed over it? And would I lose all the stats that had been gathered thus far, votes, hits etc?

To fix "Vixxxen Ch.01" submit a corrected version as "Vixxxen Ch.01 -- EDIT" with a note in the comments field that the posted version is corrupted. You might want to add that there are no changes to the story to minimize re-approval time.

All of the stats should remain the same unless you request they be reset because they don't reflect a true picture of the story you wrote and submitted. The link in your signature should still be valid and point to the edited version, but I wouldn't want to guarantee that; whether the story retains the same ID number depends on how the replacement is done and I've never tracked a replacement story to see how it's done.

 

[TheCaptain]

To fix "Vixxxen Ch.01" submit a corrected version as "Vixxxen Ch.01 -- EDIT" with a note in the comments field that the posted version is corrupted. You might want to add that there are no changes to the story to minimize re-approval time.

All of the stats should remain the same unless you request they be reset because they don't reflect a true picture of the story you wrote and submitted. The link in your signature should still be valid and point to the edited version, but I wouldn't want to guarantee that; whether the story retains the same ID number depends on how the replacement is done and I've never tracked a replacement story to see how it's done.

cheers, thanks very much for the help all this has been very informative, and the new prespective on things will help me immensely with later submissions. Later in the day, I will try resubmitting the story to hopefully get the necessary corrections made, and see if there are any others that need alterations.

Capt

 

[Dr_Strabismus]

Here's a tip for users of MS word:

You can use Word's Find & Replace to automatically insert ALL the italics and bold markup for literotica, in one go. This saves a lot of time.



Here's what you do.

Bring up the Find & Replace Dialog (Ctrl-H is th shortcut to do this)

Select the Replace tab.

Click in the Find what: text box, but leave it empty.

Click the Format drop-down menu at the bottom of the dialog, then select Font... option. This brings up another dialog, titled Find Font.

In the Find Font dialog, highlight italic from the Font Style list box.

Select OK to dismiss the Find Font dialog.

Now you're back in the Find and Replace dialog. It should say Format: Font: Italic just below the blank search text box.

Now. click in the Replace with text box, and type this:

<i>^&</i>

which means surround all the italic text with <i> and </i> markup.

You can then do the same with bold, by selecting bold in the Find Font dialog instead, and using

<b>^&</b>

for the replacement text.

Once you've done this with the document, you can just select the whole thing and paste it when you want to submit to Literotica.


I just tried it with the following text:

That’s not a very good idea.

And it came out as

That’s <i>not</i> a very good idea.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Doing that is not a great idea if you have italics that cross more than one paragraph. It's important to keep all formatting contained within the same paragraph, or you might get unlucky. For example, if you have:

Text text text text.

Text text text text.​

...and Lit decides to break the page between those two paragraphs, you'll end up with:

<i>Text text text text.

-------page break-------

Text text text text.</i>​

(Or worse)

 

[TheeGoatPig]

Here's a tip for users of MS word:

You can use Word's Find & Replace to automatically insert ALL the italics and bold markup for literotica, in one go. This saves a lot of time.



Here's what you do.

Bring up the Find & Replace Dialog (Ctrl-H is th shortcut to do this)

Select the Replace tab.

Click in the Find what: text box, but leave it empty.

Click the Format drop-down menu at the bottom of the dialog, then select Font... option. This brings up another dialog, titled Find Font.

In the Find Font dialog, highlight italic from the Font Style list box.

Select OK to dismiss the Find Font dialog.

Now you're back in the Find and Replace dialog. It should say Format: Font: Italic just below the blank search text box.

Now. click in the Replace with text box, and type this:

<i>^&</i>

which means surround all the italic text with <i> and </i> markup.

You can then do the same with bold, by selecting bold in the Find Font dialog instead, and using

<b>^&</b>

for the replacement text.

Once you've done this with the document, you can just select the whole thing and paste it when you want to submit to Literotica.


I just tried it with the following text:

That’s not a very good idea.

And it came out as

That’s <i>not</i> a very good idea.

Now THAT I should save someplace, as I have been avoiding using bold and italic text because of the hassel of coding it all from word to Lit.

 

[Dr_Strabismus]

Doing that is not a great idea if you have italics that cross more than one paragraph. It's important to keep all formatting contained within the same paragraph, or you might get unlucky. For example, if you have:

Text text text text.

Text text text text.​

...and Lit decides to break the page between those two paragraphs, you'll end up with:

<i>Text text text text.

-------page break-------

Text text text text.</i>​

(Or worse)

That does happen if you maintain italic style and hit enter in word to create a new paragraph, so that the paragraph marker itself has italic style.

The simplest solution is to use find and replace to search for paragraph markers (using ^p in the search textbox) that are italic, and replace them with style: not italic.

Although this sounds complicated, its a hell of a lot quicker and more reliable than inserting markup manually.

 

[TheCaptain]

okay I'm working on my resubmission for lit, and is this the way to get italics in the submitted story, or like in the forums, this the way to do it?

and I like to use section-breaks like ##... would I do it the same as in the forum?

# #​

or like this

# #​

alright, thanks for the assistance, as always

EDIT: okay well looking at the post, it seems that none of it really matters it all works, lol I didn't know this, cool

Capt

 

[Weird Harold]

okay I'm working on my resubmission for lit, and is this the way to get italics in the submitted story, or like in the forums, this the way to do it?

To get italics in your story, use the HTML syntx instead of the vB code syntax: <i>Like this</i> i.e. use right and left carets <> instead of square brackets [] to enclose the tags.

 

[TheCaptain]

To get italics in your story, use the HTML syntx instead of the vB code syntax: <i>Like this</i> i.e. use right and left carets <> instead of square brackets [] to enclose the tags.

ah okay then, and that would apply to <center> as well?

Capt

 

[Weird Harold]

ah okay then, and that would apply to <center> as well?

Capt

Yep. If it's pointy its HTML and if it's square, it's vB code -- stories are formatted with HTML. Most of the tags are the same, it's just the delimiters that are different.

the HTML definitions also include predefined "variables" that are in the format &xxxx; for special characters like a non-breaking space or em-dash. Those usually work in the forums as well, because it's the browser that parses them and not the forum software.

 

[TheCaptain]

Yep. If it's pointy its HTML and if it's square, it's vB code -- stories are formatted with HTML. Most of the tags are the same, it's just the delimiters that are different.

the HTML definitions also include predefined "variables" that are in the format &xxxx; for special characters like a non-breaking space or em-dash. Those usually work in the forums as well, because it's the browser that parses them and not the forum software.

cool yeah, just checked out the preview of the story and it's all coming up rosy

i put in with the title -- EDIT instead of -- EDITED, as lit had instructed, but hopefully they'll get the idea I just hope it turns out okay this time... I do wish they brought back the option of deleting a story once you had tried to submit it and it is waiting in queue, because I made a slight error with the spacing of my #breaks, but that's a minor thing I might or might not bother changing

Capt

 

[Dr_Strabismus]

Another tip for authors who have to markup a the same story in different ways, for different sites:

Keep all your documents as plain XML, and just apply different XSL transforms to them and generate the submission URL and POST data for the form, right from within emacs' LISP interpreter, using custom or canonical DTDs. Presto!