I need to vent.

[_Lynn_]

This is from Feb 2013. The topic of the thread was on story rejections.

Actually, I do use a spellcheck. I check every story in Microsoft Word, which has a spellcheck feature among other things. However, as anyone who has edited anything using software has seen , spellcheck does not mean I won't miss homonyms and other errors.

As the pilot noted previously elsewhere, we do not edit stories. We expect authors to edit the stories themselves before submitting. We do check for basic spelling and formatting issues to make the story as readable as possible for our readers' sake, along with content issues. If we find issues, we send the story back to the authors for correction. The volume of submissions we receive makes it infeasible for us to edit all incoming submissions AND post stories in a semi-timely manner.

We do not reject stories based on regional dialects of English. We do expect consistency - so if you spell it "colour" in one paragraph then "color" later on, it may get sent back.

If you believe your story was rejected in error, please open the submission, respond to the rejection in the NOTES field of the submission, and hit SUBMIT.

Please do not add the word EDITED to the title, as that denotes someone editing an already approved story. Since we process all edits after the new stories are posted, adding the word EDITED to a title will cause a delay in the posting of your new story. If you are submitting an edit of a rejected story, simply open the rejected form, make the changes in that form, and hit SUBMIT. Do not start a new submission.

If anyone has any specific questions about this, please feel free to PM me anytime.

 

[slyc_willie]

Exactly.

My guess is she uses a lot of macros fed with keywords/phrases to flag stories for her and she reads those which come out flagged. I remember there was this story where no specific age is mentioned, but the protagonist acts like a kid throughout (I think it was something along the lines of coming back from school, playing with action figures and other general pre-teen stuff). It got passed simply because there was no number and the macro didn't think there was a problem.

I remember reporting the story, but didn't check to see if it's still there.

One of the first stories I read here at Lit, some seven plus years ago, made it very clear that the main character was underage. But there was no specific age mentioned, only that she was in high school and was "definitely not a senior." Looking back now, that story was obviously written by someone who wanted to sneak an underage story into Lit, "just because."

It's gone, now.

Some people will try anything and everything to get a story past Laurel, taking a juvenile sort of satisfaction if they manage it. I think Laurel has gotten more and more strict about it in recent years, though, thus the number of complaints I read scattered around the boards concerning stories rejected because of age requirements. Laurel is playing it safe.

 

[slyc_willie]

This is from Feb 2013. The topic of the thread was on story rejections.

I think that post should be a closed sticky with bold, glowing letters in the title: READ THIS IF YOUR STORY WAS REJECTED.

 

[_Lynn_]

This is from another of hers.

Originally Posted by Laurel



As far as things slipping through: one thing to realize is that the stories are not approved by a robot or script. They are approved by human eyes, which tire easily as I age. Every story must be formatted; tags, title, and description checked; and skimmed for content issues. The daily update takes hours. If I could find a way to do all this properly with a script, I would. But in the last 12+ years, the only way to do things right is to do it by hand, so to speak.

Mistakes happen. The site has been on a huge growth streak in the past year, with readership & unique visitors up nearly 20%. This means a corresponding growth in submissions. We want to post stories to the site as quickly as possible for you authors. We also want to make sure that the updates are as top-quality as they can be - with a minimum of formatting errors and no forbidden content inadvertently posted. Thorough checking of stories and timely posting is a balance we will continue to work to get right.

I'd like to be able to read every story through, but I can't. Reading 100+ stories/novels a night - much less formatting, tagging, etc. - is just not possible. So, if while skimming I see something that sends up a red flag and further reading doesn't clarify things, I often send it back to the author. If I stopped and read through each novel we receive to check on whether an underage character is sexually active at any point, I would be even further behind than I already am.

When a story is sent back to you for any reason, this is not a final rejection and it is not meant to be taken personally. This just means we have issues or questions. You are free to resubmit either with corrections - or, if you think we're wrong, an explanation of why we're wrong in the NOTES field.

If you believe your story was rejected in error, please open the submission, respond to the rejection in the NOTES field of the submission, and hit SUBMIT. Please do not add the word EDITED to the title, as that denotes someone editing an already approved story. Since we process all edits after the new stories are posted, adding the word EDITED to a title will cause a delay in the posting of your new story. If you are submitting an edit of a rejected story, simply open the rejected form, make the changes in that form, and hit SUBMIT. Do not start a new submission.

 

[LaRascasse]

I think, and this is purely my opinion, that there should be a distinction when it comes to underage content in erotica. There is such a thing as a "gratuitous" underage story tailor-made for sick pedo minds and stories about teens under 18 who have sex (yes, shockingly enough I did have the requisite organs before my 18th birthday).

There are some really good, non-gratuitous stories with underage stories in sexual situations. A recent example would be the French graphic novel Blue Angel and the movie it inspired which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year.

But I do appreciate why she wants to have no story involving under 18s involved sexually.

My opinion is that Laurel mainly wants to rid her site of the first kind of underage stories (understandably enough), but there is no practical way for her to individually weed out pedo-target stories unless she reads all of them in detail (simply not possible). Hence the blanket ban.

I see I have digressed from the topic of this thread, but this is my 2 cents.