Need some answers to a few things

[yssej]

Im writing my first story for this site, infact its my first public thing.

I noticed the rules said for, if you need a bold/italic setting to "note it" or something along those lines. IF i submit a rich text file with formatting in bold and italics will it be picked up and shown this way on the site?


Edit: Second question seemed to be shot down.



Also, If my story seems to take a while to get into the sexual nature of things, is this dull writing or attention to detail? I just dont want people to get bored, but also to enjoy the story and to embrace it fully. I just check and about 3thousand words into the story, the real sexual theme becomes into play. Is this too far in? I have small little sexual details and such through out the beginning, but it doesnt get "dirty" til the 3 thousand word mark.

 

[cloudy]

Im writing my first story for this site, infact its my first public thing.

I noticed the rules said for, if you need a bold/italic setting to "note it" or something along those lines. IF i submit a rich text file with formatting in bold and italics will it be picked up and shown this way on the site?

If you use Word to write your story, the easiest way is to use <I> text </I> for italics (substitute B for bold), and just copy and paste the story into the box.

"Note: this story is about consenting individuals of the age of consent in my home state. but age will not be mentioned. Let your imagination play."

I didnt want it to come across as illegally young... like someone who is 12. But in my state(illinois), age of consent is 17. Other then this thread, and this reference their will be no link to story and this piece of information.



Also, If my story seems to take a while to get into the sexual nature of things, is this dull writing or attention to detail? I just dont want people to get bored, but also to enjoy the story and to embrace it fully. I just check and about 3thousand words into the story, the real sexual theme becomes into play. Is this too far in? I have small little sexual details and such through out the beginning, but it doesnt get "dirty" til the 3 thousand word mark.

Age of consent in your state makes not one whit of difference here - get used to it. The rules state "18 and older." Live within them or post your story elsewhere - Period.

 

[rgraham666]

If you want special formatting your best bet is to put them into the body of the story yourself as HTML tags. <b></b> for bold, <i></i> for italic, etc. If you submit an rtf file someone else sets it up and they may miss something.

No. That will cause the story to be rejected. There can't even be a hint of people under eighteen actually being described in sexual actions. The characters have to be 18 or over.

And three thousand words? I've had stories here that were close to 10,000 before I got around to getting the characters naked.

Welcome to the AH.

 

[yssej]

okay, so. if i removed the statement about my home state is it possible to just leave it as

"Note: this story is about consenting individuals of the age of consent. but age will not be mentioned. Let your imagination play."

is this okay?

If you want special formatting your best bet is to put them into the body of the story yourself as HTML tags. <b></b> for bold, <i></i> for italic, etc. If you submit an rtf file someone else sets it up and they may miss something.

No. That will cause the story to be rejected. There can't even be a hint of people under eighteen actually being described in sexual actions. The characters have to be 18 or over.

And three thousand words? I've had stories here that were close to 10,000 before I got around to getting the characters naked.

Welcome to the AH.

awesome, i didnt want people to be like WTF wheres the good part.

 

[cloudy]

okay, so. if i removed the statement about my home state is it possible to just leave it as

"Note: this story is about consenting individuals of the age of consent. but age will not be mentioned. Let your imagination play."

is this okay?

No, because you're implying that the characters are younger, and you're just trying to find a way around the rules.

 

[yssej]

k it will be removed.


thanks for the input rgraham. I apprecaite it. I wont be referencing age then in this story what so ever.

 

[maggot420]

k it will be removed.


thanks for the input rgraham. I apprecaite it. I wont be referencing age then in this story what so ever.

That is the safest course. The 18 or older rule is probably the most strictly enforced rule here.

Good Luck and don't forget to post a link to your story in your sig once it's posted.

 

[yssej]

That is the safest course. The 18 or older rule is probably the most strictly enforced rule here.

Good Luck and don't forget to post a link to your story in your sig once it's posted.

Ah, so thats how i could get a bit of advertising to my stories. Thanks. except i cant see other peoples signatures... maybe its a setting? I wont worry about that right now.

your guys feed back is helpful.

 

[tickledkitty]

The only problem with not mentioning it at all is that if age is inferred by characters being in high school, living with parents, etc., you still might get rejected.

So maybe a better way to word your disclaimer would be appropriate. I'd leave out the part about letting your mind play or whatever. Cloudy was right. You're kind of implying something with that.

 

[glynndah]

You'll get much better reception from the submissions review if you don't try any tricks. They tend to frown upon those.

A welcome for the little newbie from the good little witch.

 

[Weird Harold]

I noticed the rules said for, if you need a bold/italic setting to "note it" or something along those lines. IF i submit a rich text file with formatting in bold and italics will it be picked up and shown this way on the site?

As others have said, you have more control over bold and italics if you do the markup yourself.

However, Rich Text Format shoul dbe your LAST choice for your submission.

The fastest and surest way to submit is via C&P into the submission form -- it does require you to do the HTML markup yourself, but it also gives you a chance to preview the submission to make sure you've done it correctly.

The second best is to submit a plain text file -- it's almost as good as C&P.

Third choice would be a MS Word .DOC format file.

Rich Text Format files tend to contain traces of every edit ever made to your story and overwhelm the conversion scripts with extraneous formatting. Unless you're familiar enough with the format to clean up the formatting codes embedded in a RTF file, you're likely to get a corrupted story when it finally posts.

Whatever format you submit in, what you see in the preview or when your story posts will NOT look the way it did in your word processer. Leading spaces and other "white space" provided by the word processer's WYSIWYG formatting will disappear. "Smart Quotes" (that look like sixes and nines) may or may not show up or be displayed as 'control codes.'

 

[yssej]

The only problem with not mentioning it at all is that if age is inferred by characters being in high school, living with parents, etc., you still might get rejected.

So maybe a better way to word your disclaimer would be appropriate. I'd leave out the part about letting your mind play or whatever. Cloudy was right. You're kind of implying something with that.

so far, mention of age is merely "schools out for summer"

As others have said, you have more control over bold and italics if you do the markup yourself.

However, Rich Text Format shoul dbe your LAST choice for your submission.

The fastest and surest way to submit is via C&P into the submission form -- it does require you to do the HTML markup yourself, but it also gives you a chance to preview the submission to make sure you've done it correctly.

The second best is to submit a plain text file -- it's almost as good as C&P.

Third choice would be a MS Word .DOC format file.

Rich Text Format files tend to contain traces of every edit ever made to your story and overwhelm the conversion scripts with extraneous formatting. Unless you're familiar enough with the format to clean up the formatting codes embedded in a RTF file, you're likely to get a corrupted story when it finally posts.

Whatever format you submit in, what you see in the preview or when your story posts will NOT look the way it did in your word processer. Leading spaces and other "white space" provided by the word processer's WYSIWYG formatting will disappear. "Smart Quotes" (that look like sixes and nines) may or may not show up or be displayed as 'control codes.'

and if i just copy/paste this into a text file? will it then be okay?

 

[Caitano]

I think you're missing the point

so far, mention of age is merely "schools out for summer"

and if i just copy/paste this into a text file? will it then be okay?

Have another look at Weird Harold's post. Think about the Submissions page as you do that.

On the Submissions page, there is a big empty box. If you're submitting a story as a "C&P" (cut and paste) you paste it into that box. You can paste ordinary text in there, and that's the best way to keep from having mistakes.

Plain text will NOT contain any italics, though.

To make italics appear in the story as you see it on the site you need to edit the Plain Text file to mark them up, yourself, as Weird Harold said. Three people have told you what the codes are. Put those right into the text of the story, and then paste it. The posted story, on the site will then show your italics.

Pasting into a text file is not the idea, but pasting into the box on the Submissions page is.

 

[cloudy]

so far, mention of age is merely "schools out for summer"

...and that will most likely get your story rejected.

I don't understand the fascination with writing something about kids having sex. It's boring, for one thing. I didn't know jack shit about sex at 17, thought blow jobs were "icky", etc.

Why is it that important for you to find a way around the rules?

 

[glynndah]

...and that will most likely get your story rejected.

I don't understand the fascination with writing something about kids having sex. It's boring, for one thing. I didn't know jack shit about sex at 17, thought blow jobs were "icky", etc.

Why is it that important for you to find a way around the rules?

Listen to Cloudy. She knows what she's talking about.

... and she's really scary if you make her angry.

 

[cloudy]

Listen to Cloudy. She knows what she's talking about.

... and she's really scary if you make her angry.

eta: the reason we all seem so protective of this site is that we are. We like it this way, and we'd hate to see it get shut down in this age of sexual witch hunts simply because some idiot just had to find a way around the rules.

 

[yssej]

...and that will most likely get your story rejected.

I don't understand the fascination with writing something about kids having sex. It's boring, for one thing. I didn't know jack shit about sex at 17, thought blow jobs were "icky", etc.

Why is it that important for you to find a way around the rules?

its not even really around the rules, college students do get summer breaks to. unless perhaps i am mistaken?

at this point all things possibly even hinting at age is "once when he was 16" which, is not the current thing.

the story even starts out, with "after having a few drinks"

the story is about a brother and sister, who still live at home/together. I dont recall if i had said they lived with their parents anymore. But i didnt want their to be a feeling like wow, they are "## years old" and live at home, what losers. Because i know some people who live with their parents til they were 30 and some who moved out after they turned 18. I wanted the reader to have some creativity.


perhaps samples could help?

"I layed there in my bed late that night, alone after having had a few drinks with a friend. We were out partying for a while and i had gone home after a few margaritas. I was not drunk but some may have wondered if i could drive"


"He began dating as well, i even once had stumbled in on him in the living room at the age of 16 with his hand up some girl's skirt just brushing her thigh and two tongues that were dancing with each other"



"I strolled inside, my parents being that of accepting individuals as they were could careless of my drunken stouper" --- closes thing to actually say they lived with their parents.


I apologize if you may have felt i was trying to avoid the rules entirely. I was just hoping some mystery would help.

Have another look at Weird Harold's post. Think about the Submissions page as you do that.

On the Submissions page, there is a big empty box. If you're submitting a story as a "C&P" (cut and paste) you paste it into that box. You can paste ordinary text in there, and that's the best way to keep from having mistakes.

Plain text will NOT contain any italics, though.

To make italics appear in the story as you see it on the site you need to edit the Plain Text file to mark them up, yourself, as Weird Harold said. Three people have told you what the codes are. Put those right into the text of the story, and then paste it. The posted story, on the site will then show your italics.

Pasting into a text file is not the idea, but pasting into the box on the Submissions page is.

i understand HTML coding, i know what he was referring to, but as to these other things that would corrupt the file.. well i was oblivious as i do not usually use RTF

 

[glynndah]

You need an editor, sweetie.

 

[yssej]

You need an editor, sweetie.

yeah, how is it i would go about getting one? once submitted does someone from the site do it?

i know their are volunteer editors, but by submitting it will it still be reviewed and edited?

 

[tickledkitty]

yeah, how is it i would go about getting one? once submitted does someone from the site do it?

i know their are volunteer editors, but by submitting it will it still be reviewed and edited?

Try the Editors Forum.

No, it won't be edited once it's submitted. You need to do all that before you submit.

 

[michchick98]

A question about re-submitting a story...

Okay, I've been having a bit of a problem re-submitting one of my stories here on Lit. The story is already posted and I've been tweaking and polishing most of my work as I post it to another site.

I want the same content in my stories on both sites, but I've run into a snag here. Normally when a story or chapter is resubmitted after being edited, we add "- EDITED" (without the quotes obviously) after the story.

My problem is that the title of my story is too long and I cannot fit the "- EDITED" part after to indicate that it's an edited version of the chapter.

Here is my example:

The story title is: Reflections of a Stranger Ch. 01

I want to submit the newer version of each chapter as I tweak them. When I resubmit the story, this is all I am allowed to add to the subject line:

Reflections of a Stranger Ch. 01 -

I cannot add EDITED after the hyphen as I would like.

So after my lengthy (but hopefully not confusing) explanation, does anyone have a solution to this problem? I PMed Laurel last night and still have yet to receive a reply.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance.

Sheri

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I would put as much of the story as I could fit into the field with EDITED and then in the notes specify the full title fo the story being edited.

 

[freshface]

yeah, how is it i would go about getting one? once submitted does someone from the site do it?

i know their are volunteer editors, but by submitting it will it still be reviewed and edited?

Go to the Editor's Forum and post a request. They generally like to know how many words it is, what sort of editing you want (grammar correction, story development or both), and the category. Some editors won't take certain story types. Make sure you have private messages turned on in your profile, because most likely that's how an editor will contact you.

The VEs can be very helpful in improving a story.

 

[Weird Harold]

Here is my example:

The story title is: Reflections of a Stranger Ch. 01

Reflections of a Str... 01 - EDITED

Crop as few characters as you can get away with and still leave an unambiguopus reference to the story and chapter you're editing. Putting the full title in the Comments field couldn't hurt if there's any possibility of confusion.

 

[DeeZire]

For the age issue - consider adding 'she was wearing the new tank top she got on her eighteenth birthday', or 'he was driving the car his parents gave him for his graduation present'. At least it's apparent the characters are of legal age. I saw a story on this site where the eighteen year-old girl was written with the intellect of a thirteen year-old, and was still wearing a training bra, so apparently stating the age is more important than the character's actual age in the story.

The question about how soon you need to introduce a sex scene depends on the plot. If you draw the reader in with some kind of conflict or tension, it won't matter how far into your story the sex scene appears, because you've already hooked the reader. However, if you bore the reader with superfluous details, they'll be gone by the third paragraph. (Or at least I will.)